Everybody’s strapped for cash these days, but budgets vary widely. Some non-profits are run out of a basement and have a budget of exactly zero, and others are housed in city high-rises and have budgets in the millions. They all need websites.

Any given day at Talance, someone from either camp may call with a new web communications project. Before we know how we can best help whoever is on the other end of the phone, we need to know how much money they have to put into the project. Some people simply can’t afford the kind of work they want done.

Many people are hesitant to reveal how much they can pay for a project, but be prepared to at least have a ballpark prepared during the first phone call. Buying a website isn’t like buying a car – hiding the amount you have doesn’t help with negotiation. Web developers need to know if your budget matches the work you want done. We tell our potential clients what they can or can’t expect – even when that means the work you need does is less than you expected.

We’re really there to help you figure out what you need, and if we don’t know how much you can afford, we don’t know how to start helping you.

[Photo credit: Spaghetti and Meatballs (explore) by jshj, on Flickr]

Inclusiveness is always nice to have in any project, Web-related or otherwise. Give everybody a voice, and everybody’s happy, right?

Wrong.

In fact, having too many voices feeding into your website can create chaos for your users. The problem is that everybody has their own ideas about what belongs on a website, and those ideas might compete with one another. Plus, there’s only so much room on a homepage. You can’t cram everything on.

Add to this the fact that some of those people jockeying for their ideas to appear on your website know absolutely nothing about creating a manageable experience for Web visitors, and you’ve got one snarled, political plate of website spaghetti.

If you’re at a non-profit, there’s a good chance a little light bulb is going on over your head right now. You’ve been there. Too many people trying to take control of the site. Sadly, this is a problem non-profits frequently have, since many organizations are managed by committee. That might (or might not) make sense for day-to-day operations, but it never works with websites.

Nip this problem in the bud. Take these steps to make sure your Web project starts off with a clear vision and a clean outcome.

Include everybody – at the start.

Our solution is to send out a “needs assessment” at the very beginning of a project. This survey, distributed to a whole bunch of people, gives everybody a chance to say what they think is important to have on the website and makes everyone feel included.

Form a small committee.

Hand those surveys over to the core website team to scan for insights, ideas and important issues. And, of course, to sort out the muck. But importantly, this body is small, and has only one head.

Appoint a strategist.

It’s helpful that the leader of that team be uniformly concerned with the experience your website visitors have, the marketing and business message of your organization and have some idea of the way technology works. If this isn’t possible, at least choose a person humble enough to take direction from a hired Web strategy consultant. That’s money well spent.

Request for proposals rarely fill me with joy. More often than not they’re a source of confusion, business-speak and unfinished thoughts, which we have to sort through and make sense of so we can send a reasonable bid to an organization that wants a website.

But last week I received an RFP from a non-profit that may have performed a Vulcan mind-meld on Talance. It was as if they had seen our new-client questionnaire and had preemptively answered all the questions I have at this early stage of a project. It filled me with delight (because I’m sad that way), and I know that it will make the project run smoothly, no matter who they choose to build the site.

What made it so great? Here are a few stand-outs that you can incorporate in your next RFP to help your project move smoothly from inception to completion:

1. Think it through.

The clearest RFPs benefit from discussion and planning beforehand. Make sure you talk with your team to form clear ideas of what you want your website to be, and then communicate your wishes through the RFP.

2. Write clearly.

Some people think “RFP” and pull out their cryptic businessese thesaurus so they can load it with fancy words nobody really gets. Pretend you’re explaining what you want to an idiot. Trust us, we Web developers get more out of it that way.

3. Plan your objectives.

You cannot hope for a site that reaches your goals unless you know what they are before you begin. If you want to be the go-to guide for volunteering opportunities, write it down and make sure that every decision you make from that point forward feeds back into that goal.

4. Order your objectives.

Some objectives are must-haves, others are nice-to-haves. Rank yours.

5. Go window shopping.

Everyone has seen sites they love, whether they be your competition or a mega-commercial site like Amazon. Start keeping track of sites you like, and make notes on what you like about them.

6. Know your branding.

Unless they’re new, most organizations have gone through some kind of branding exercise in the past, where colors, logos and other standards were developed. If you’re not aware of what these standards are, start asking around. We just had to redesign a website whose colors and logo were completely wrong in an earlier version, because no one checked. Translation: expensive.

7. Name your widgets.

If you want any special functionality, like slideshows, animations, photo galleries – anything – write it down.

8. Technical needs.

If you’re bound to maintain your website in a particular format, you like a CMS like Drupal or you don’t have the staff bandwidth to do updates, cite these constraints. Also note if you need Web hosting.

9. Name your budget.

I know, I know. You don’t want to come right out and say how much you want to spend, but your Web developer really needs at least a ballpark. We receive calls from clients who have $400 to spend, and those who have $40,000 to spend. We can’t help everyone, but it saves everybody a lot of time if I can tell them up front whether we can or not.

10. Make a schedule.

Decide when you’ll accept RFP questions, submissions and make decisions. Also note any ideal launch dates.

11. Contact information.

Sounds elementary, but make sure your prospects know how to reach you if they have questions. We received a bizarre system-generated RFP a couple weeks ago that had no personal contact information and was so hard to read we couldn’t even consider responding.

Laying this groundwork is incredibly useful for Web development companies like ours, but your staff will also thank you if you take the time to plan. Bonus: your funders will love you for eliminating money-wasting mistakes early on.

Getting your website to work for you doesn’t have to mean a complete overhaul. Here are five small updates you can make without suffering.

1. Add a feedback form

One of the very best ways to get more use out of your website is to give its visitors a way to interact. If you add a contact form to your contact page (here’s an example), you’ll open up opportunities for accepting comments. It’s welcoming, will help limit spam, and can increase the amount of feedback you receive from your site. A pretty big payoff for something so small.

2. Make menus consistent

Clicking through the pages of your site should not cause motion sickness. Yet some websites have inconsistent navigational menus. Sometimes they actually jump around. Sometimes the options change. Sometimes they don’t even work. Make them consistent and reliable, and you’ll find more people will be clicking around.

3. Limit what’s on your homepage

You wouldn’t stuff all your house’s furniture into the foyer, would you? Same thing with all the content on your website. Put your front-page stories on the homepage, and tuck the rest of the information where it logically belongs.

4. Add some links to and from your social networking accounts

Many organizations have well-used Facebook, MySpace or Twitter accounts, but you’d never know it from the website. Do some cross-linking, and add some links on your site. (Note: Join for the Talance Facebook Fan Club, and we’ll give you some lovely social media icons.) People can learn more about what you do, and they can subscribe to your accounts and receive updates and reminders.

5. Launch a blog or microblog

Even if you update it just once a week, a blog is a great add-on to a website. It increases your chances of telling the world what makes you so great, and it keeps people coming back for more.

When people at an organization start sharing information about their website, they’re generally surprised at how much their ideas differ. That’s one of the key reasons you need to assemble a reliable website committee to guide your organization through the process of building or redesigning your website. These people can help you decide who your audience is, clarify the purpose of your site and determine how it meshes with your organization’s mission.

Put together a group of people that represent different parts of your organization. Maybe this is the executive director, volunteer coordinator and office manager, along with whoever is part of your communications committee. Don’t have a communications committee? Get one.

Having a Web dream team helps you gather feedback in an organized way, without everybody’s opinion overwhelming you. But remember that it’s imperative for successful projects to have one person who can give the nod on development, and then have one person who can give the nod on an ongoing basis. Make sure you appoint a leader to your dream team who is a master of organizing and moving things forward.

Volunteers are great members of your dream team. Frequently, your supporters know how to do more than you think. I guarantee you have marketing, communication or technology specialists who are fans of what you do. Recruit them to help.

All (successful) development projects work with a team of people who are able to work together on a single goal. They’re the keepers of the project and can steer it in the right way, so borrow from what works.

http://www.jfsmetrowest.org

We’re glad to announce the launch of Jewish Family Service of MetroWest New Jersey. It’s a social service agency that needed help reaching families in need and more donors via the web.

Jewish Family Service of MetroWest New Jersey offers a wide range of mental health and social services to people of all ages. But the agency was having a hard time delivering its message online. They were worried about their low presence in search engine rankings, the site’s confusing navigation, a lack of new donors and a low number of new client intakes. What’s more, the in-house staff couldn’t edit – or even see – the old website.

We (Talance, Inc.), a Boston-area Web development and design firm that specializes in user-friendly websites for non-profits, created for them an easy-to-use website with high visibility and the ability to accept online payments.

The Drupal-based website—which includes optimized search engine capabilities, an online shopping cart for accepting donations and selling tribute cards, a calendar of events, a news updates section, a newsletter and more – is now manageable by a staff without any in-depth technical expertise. The site also effectively informs its constituency about upcoming events and community resources. The new platform has helped JFS MetroWest achieve its goal of having a lively website that’s easy to maintain, increase donations and publicize a rich selection of programs and services.

Project Breakdown

• Better design: the old black and white design was replaced by a vibrant site with color photos that represent the services offered by the agency.
• Expandable text-based menus: Given the extensive menu of services available to the community, Talance created a menu that allowed for many options that don’t look overwhelming.
• Shopping cart: The new shopping cart allows donors to purchase tribute cards, make donations and buy tickets for events.
• Calendar: The new and improved calendar brings the numerous events and programs onto the homepage while highlighting what’s available on the current day.
• JFS in the News: A list on the homepage allows the agency to highlight its most recent media coverage.
• Newsletter: A customizable newsletter can go out to the constituency while being archived on the website.
• Friendly URLs: As part of an overall search engine optimization (SEO) campaign, each page has a unique address that’s easy for visitors to read and that is easily catalogued in search engines.

Check out the whole case study to learn more.

Someone wrote me yesterday looking for details on how I work with clients. I was saying on an N-TEN blog that it’s important to perform an internal needs assessment before you really begin to work with a website developer.

People generally know when they need a new site, but many tend not to start by asking what purpose the site should serve, what kinds of issues it should resolve and how it should look. Of course, this step is important in all companies, but I find it an absolute necessity with nonprofits that are governed by a board or committee.

So the first step we take with a new client is to encourage them to have these conversations together internally before talking to the website developer. That’s the idea behind a questionnaire we developed and hand out to our new clients before beginning on a project. I encourage our clients to send out copies to everyone on the team (from receptionist to CEO), have them fill it out independently and decide together what the final version should look like. Then they come to me with a filled out copy, and we talk through it together.

Everyone’s always really glad of this exercise, because people at organizations often don’t realize how different their thoughts are about their website. And it saves a lot of time and money when it comes to making a solid decision and putting together a reliable schedule.

Make sure to read through this blog posting on how to go about asking for a new website. It’s about what to expect from the company you hire. This is very important, because I find increasingly more often that a designer or a web developer will offer to build a website, but a designer lacks understanding of the underlying architecture, and web developers lack an understanding of how to bring it all together aesthetically.

We work with a project manager, a web developer who is an expert in human factors (meaning the way people naturally interact with technology) and a designer. All of us are able to address many questions before they’re asked and we consider our chief role as that of advisor. Inevitably, with expectations set early on, everyone is always happy with the final outcome.

You can find more info on our site on the kinds of sites we build. Oh, and we also have a deal with N-TEN members, so we can offer a discounts there, depending on what you need.