building a nonprofit website whitepaper

Building a Nonprofit Website e I

A White Paper by SW Creatives, LLC

Building a Nonprofit Website e 1


If you were to poll a hundred different nonprofit executives and ask them about

the process of creating a new nonprofit website, we suspect

(from experience) that many of them would tell you that it’s

as easy as finding a good creative team and writing a check…

and that just as many others would say that it’s a long and

complicated task that’s difficult to get right the first time.

Which one of them is correct?In a certain sense, both of them are. Or, you could say that neither is. The fact of the matter is that getting a great website for your nonprofit organization—one that doesn’t just look good, but helps your group to achieve its most important goals—isn’t all that difficult. At the same time, however, you can save yourself a lot of time and stress (not to mention more than a little bit of money) if you understand the process from the beginning and know what to look out for. That, in a nutshell, is the purpose of this paper. In this day and age, a nonprofit website could easily be your most important tool for marketing, fundraising, branding, and more. Given that, and the relatively hefty expenses that can be involved in building a strong online presence, it’s a decision you want to get right. That means knowing about the important steps and decisions ahead of time.

Given that this is a process we’ve been through count-less times, we’re going to offer you this report as a quick roadmap to the terrain. Rather than trying to tell you everything you would have to know to build a win-ning nonprofit website, which isn’t possible and always changes, we’re going to offer some tips and advice to help you get started and avoid the major pitfalls. As you read through, and later work with your creative team to build your nonprofit website, remember that the process can actually be a good exercise. Not only will it help you raise more money, increase your public profile, and possibly change the future of your nonprofit for the better in dozens of different ways, it can also be fun! With that being said, let’s take a look at what goes into building a great nonprofit website…



STEP ONE

Set Some Goals and Plans for Your New Nonprofit WebsiteIf you are going to build the nonprofit website you really want, much less the one your organization really needs, you need to know why you’re doing it in the first place. In other words, it helps to have a sense of what you really want to achieve, besides simply “looking better” or “pro-moting your nonprofit.” Those are admirable goals, but they aren’t concrete enough. If you are using those kinds of notions as a start-ing point, try to replace them with something a bit more solid. Ideally, you want to have some kind of firm, measur-able, and realistic targets that you are hoping your new nonprofit website is going to help you achieve. Whether you want to raise online donations by 20%, double your

registration list for your next event, draw in two dozen more volunteers every year, or do something completely different isn’t important. What matters is that you have some kind of firm goal to work toward. That isn’t to say that you’re going to reach all of those goals right away, of course. You may, but you also may not. By having these stated, measurable ideas in place, however, you make it possible to refine your approach later so that you can eventually reach them and then set new, more ambitious goals. So, before you begin actually thinking about your nonprofit website, spend some time thinking about what you’re hoping it’s really going to do for you.

STEP TWO

Find the Right Design TeamJust as you can’t begin building your nonprofit website without some vision for the future of your organization, neither can you get started without a creative talented team behind you. To be sure, there are some nonprofits that build their own websites, but unless you happen to be (or know) a supremely talented web designer with non-profit experience, I advise you to stick to the professional ranks. The impact that the right, or wrong, website can have on your organization is just too profound. With that being said, how do you find the right creative team to work with? It all comes down to looking closely at a handful of different factors. For one thing, your web design team has to have some great creative chops. In other words, they should be able to come up with a design that you can barely stand not to look at. As important as the creative side of things is, however, don’t make it your only criteria. Go beyond samples and portfolios to look at things like testimonials, case stud-ies, strategic approach and, most importantly, what kind

of bottom-line impact you think they could have on the future of your nonprofit. At SW Creatives, we employ a number of different tools, from the simple to the complex, in order to learn more not just about the organizations we serve, but the users who will eventually come to their websites. Finding insight through a study of audience demographics and psycho-graphics, SWOT analysis, and information architecture are all important steps that have to be taken before a nonprofit website can be built. You want an organization that does the same for you. And finally, you also want to make sure that personali-ties and working styles match up the way they should. Choosing a nonprofit web design team isn’t a popularity contest, of course, but you do want a group of profession-als that you firmly feel is going to go above and beyond the call of duty to do their very best work for your organi-zation. That’s an important criterion… one that is impor-tant enough to keep looking around for until you find.



STEP THREE

Have Your Creative Team Audit Your Current SiteYou won’t actually have to remind your web design team to do this (or at least you had better not!), but I include this step because it’s one that a lot of clients undervalue, if they realize they need it at all. After all, you have cho-sen a creative team, looked at their samples, and probably even written a check…isn’t it time to get to work? It is, but maybe not the work you’re thinking of. Before a single sketch or pixel is drawn, your nonprofit web design team is going to want to know a few things like what’s great about your current website, what features you would love to change, and how other nonprofits in your sector are using websites to accomplish their goals. They’ll also want to look at things like visitor traffic pat-terns, search engine positioning, the state of your social profiles, and other details.

The point of all of this peeking under the hood is partly to avoid throwing out the good with the bad. What’s the point of “starting over” with your nonprofit website if you already have certain elements or messages that are work-ing well? It’s also designed to help you, and your creative team, understand your web users (the men and women who will actually interact with your site) as thoroughly as possible. The knowledge you gain about them will be the basis for the structure of your new site, the content you put into it, and even your strategy for promoting it. Whether your nonprofit website is in great shape or needs to be built from scratch, performing an audit and finding out is a critical step in the design process.

STEP FOUR

Gather the Text and Content for Your New Nonprofit WebsiteMost likely, you will have already discussed issues of website content with your creative team long before you reach this stage. Still, it’s imperative that you know exactly who will be writing the pages for your new web-site, and supplying things like images and logos, as well as their respective deadlines for these activities. Obviously, there are pros and cons to having different parties handle the messaging on your nonprofit website. Doing it yourself can save money and put the copy in the hands of someone who knows your organization inti-mately. Hiring a professional copywriter who specializes in writing for the web or content strategy, on the other hand, costs more but usually leads to better long-term

results (in the form of new donations and other bottom-line kinds of measurements). Regardless of which road you take, however, depend-ability and scheduling need to be key factors. It would be fair to estimate that there are thousands of nonprofit web pages and marketing pieces that are ready to be launched right now, at this very second, if only someone had the time to write, edit, and proofread the appropriate pages of text. Given that delays in writing are one of the most prevalent reasons for missing the scheduled launch of a new nonprofit website, make realistic project timing an important consideration in your decision.



STEP FIVE

Develop the Strategic Plan for Your New Nonprofit WebsiteWould you trust a builder who planned on putting to-gether your dream home without a set of blueprints or architectural drawings? Of course not, you’d take your money and run quickly in the other direction. Apply that same level of thinking to your new nonprofit website. As important as a site map—an outline of all the pages that will be in your website—is to the process, it’s really only an initial step. How people will navigate through your site has to be thought through, along with the vari-ous calls to action. Your nonprofit website plan should also include a lot of detail-oriented elements, and espe-cially things like a schedule for completion, a final budget (if the scope or direction of the project has changed since your first meeting, which isn’t unusual), a list of different tasks and team member responsibilities, etc. At this stage in the game, it’s all about putting together a solid plan for what you will end up with later. Another element that should be present in your plan is a strategy for marketing your new website. It might seem

a bit premature to think about this before you even have a page to look at, much less a completed site, but figuring out how you will promote your new website later can lead to better design decisions now. Otherwise, you could end up with pages that aren’t a good fit for the course you mean to pursue. This, too, is another step that clients sometimes like to hurry through as they rush toward the launch of their new site. Resist the urge, though, as a few days spent on creating a good plan will almost always pay you back later. At the end, you won’t just have a theoretical plan for building a new website, but a clear information architec-ture that will serve as a roadmap—often in the form of a wireframe, interactive prototype or some other easy-to-follow tool—that show you where the major elements of your nonprofit site are going to be and how the content strategy fits into the site.

STEP SIX

Choose a Layout for Your New WebsiteWith some key decisions made, and a firm direction in place (perhaps with a wireframe or grayscale prototype guiding the progress), your design team will likely not take long to show you some “mockup” versions of your new website for you to critique and choose from. In most cases, these won’t be working web pages, but simply images of what your new pages would look like, so you can get a sense of the creative direction they’re taking. When you consider these, remember that it isn’t just about colors and photos, although these will typically be the first elements that jump out and catch your atten-tion. Instead, you should also pay attention to the tone and feel of the layouts, as well as the branding effect and emotions that they convey. Much of this comes in

the form of first impressions that are hard to express, so don’t feel compelled to answer or give feedback imme-diately; it’s perfectly all right to take a day or two and consider your options. Although there isn’t usually a lot for nonprofit clients to do at this stage, it can be a very exciting time. That’s because this is the stage where the website starts to “come to life.” Enjoy that feeling, but don’t get too excited that you miss key details, or too nervous to share your opinion. One more helpful hint is to decide ahead of time which members of your organization will be responsible for making the final decisions. Once a nonprofit website reaches the creative stage, it isn’t unusual for a lot of varying opinions to come out. Knowing who you want



feedback from, and especially which team members have veto power, can be important to keeping your project moving along. Another important thing to note at this stage is that there will be a lot happening behind the scenes. That’s because a lot of work goes into taking an image-only ver-sion of your website and turning it into something that can actually function online. The designers and develop-

ers at your creative agency are going to get together to integrate the layouts, content, and functionality decisions that have already been made and put them together in a way that seems transparent and seamless. In other words, they’ll turn your website into a living and breath-ing thing. You might only see a handful of design con-cepts or test pages during this time, but it’s when all the magic is happening!

STEP SEVEN

Launch Your New WebsiteWith the layout completed and the content for your new website ready to go, it’s time to actually put your new site online and have it go live! This can feel like a really big moment, and it is. The only thing that can dampen the excitement, in the coming days, is a lack of visitors (or interest in general) in your new-and-improved non-profit website. That’s why the planning stage I mentioned before is so important. Coinciding with the launch of your new non-profit website, there should be tools like press releases,

e-mail blasts, and new blog posts that are ready to go… and ready to bring you new visitors. Surprising as it may seem, a lot of the hard work for promoting your new nonprofit website happens well before it ever goes live. The more time you have taken to plan and prepare in advance, the more visitors you’re going to be able to bring in from search engines, social media sites, and elsewhere—and the larger bottom-line effect your new nonprofit website is going to have during the first months it goes online.

STEP EIGHT

Add More Content to Your Website and Social ProfilesHere is a secret that those of us in the web design indus-try know all too well: No website, nonprofit or otherwise, is ever really finished…at a certain point they are simply ready to go online. What happens after that is just as important. That’s because, over time, your site should be growing, getting better, and attracting more visitors. If it isn’t doing any of those things—if it simply “sits online”—then you aren’t making the most of your investment, or the opportunity that a nonprofit website truly represents. Whether you are generating new content like blog posts

and social media updates internally, or you have farmed it to your creative team, what’s most important is that it keeps happening. You need your nonprofit website to be a moving target, if only because it’s so much easier to attract attention when you update your pages regularly. At our firm, we rely largely on predetermined editorial schedules to keep our website (and our clients’ nonprofit websites) growing and extending our reach. You should definitely be doing the same for your organization, using the plan you developed when you first set out your goals for your new online presence.


STEP NINE

Pay Attention to the Metrics from Your Nonprofit WebsiteOne of the most valuable things you can get from visitors to your nonprofit website, besides donations, is their feedback. The more that visitors and potential donors tell you about what they like, what they don’t like, which pieces of content feel engaging to them, and so on, the more you can refine your site to their tastes and use it to meet your goals. Unfortunately, most people aren’t going to stop and take the time to tell you exactly what they thought about your nonprofit website…that is, unless you know how to listen to them. A good metrics package—software that watches and measures the way users interact with your nonprofit website—can tell you more about its effectiveness than a thousand surveys ever could. That’s because it’s based on

behavior, not opinions. The more you study the behavior of your visitors and potential donors, the more you under-stand them and their motivations. The things that a good metrics package can tell you are almost endless: Are you getting increasing numbers of visitors, and from new sources? How are visitors interact-ing with your nonprofit website? Which pages, articles, and topics are of most interest, and which ones lead to new donations? These are the kinds of things you’ll want to find out from studying the metrics you get from your nonprofit website. Your creative team will undoubtedly help you to find the metrics package that’s right for your nonprofit web-site. It’s up to you, however, to work with them and use the data you get to reach your online and off-line goals.

STEP 10

Make Adjustments and Grow Your Nonprofit WebsiteOne of the very few things you can be sure about, when it comes to your nonprofit website, is that it will change over time. As you have probably noticed by now, your work is only beginning once your new site goes online. That isn’t bad news, however. Smart nonprofits make adjustments over time—especially to content and social profile—to ensure that things are going the way they should, and that their most important marketing tool is doing its job. After the time and money that you’ll have to invest to get the website you need, it only makes sense to get the most from it. Besides, your website isn’t the only thing that will change over time. Perhaps your mission will be different in a few years, or your staff, or even the size and structure of your nonprofit organization. No matter what changes, though, keeping an up-to-date nonprofit website should be part of your group’s branding and marketing strategy.

Astute nonprofit executives, or ones who’ve been through this process once or twice before, have noticed that there are two things that are common to every one of these steps: first, that each of them gets much easier if you have the right focus and vision for your organiza-tion; and second, that they become a lot easier—and more effective—if you have the right creative team working on your side. At SW Creatives, our passion is for helping nonprofits to generate websites, marketing materials, and other proj-ects to reach their full potential. If you’re looking for a partner who has years of experience in this field, and one who wants to see your mission succeed as badly as you do, let’s get together to schedule a meeting and talk about your next website…

www.swcreatives.com » [email protected] 301.891.0111 » 11002 Veirs Mill Road, Suite 700 » Silver Spring, MD 20902 » copyright 2012

building a nonprofit website whitepaper

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