Homepage: The Big Five

There's been a lot of focus on social media, networking, and pushing out content. However, a recent examination through 40+ Inspirational Non-Profit Website Designs and some recent grumblings on Twitter made me think about good design: it's always in demand and always necessary. I always enjoy when an organization launches a new website design and really nails it: the color, layout, and message just work together. I'm not a designer, but I love good design.
Of course, I always go by five rules when looking at a nonprofit's homepage. Even the most awe-inspiring design needs to get these five things right in order for me to get that warm-fuzzy feeling about the rest of the design:

• Consistent branding and compelling imagery
• Simple navigation
• Timely information
• Constituent registration area (newsletter, advocacy, etc)
• The "Donate" button

Its easy to agree with these points, but much more difficult to ensure these points with your website's designer. These aren't subjective points (like a shade of blue or the type of photo); these should be hard points that will keep your organization's homepage simple, timely, and interactive. The best video or the coolest Flash application means nothing if a designer can't pull these "big five" into the design.
 
Stop reading now and look at your organization's or your favorite organization's homepage. Did they get these big fve right? If so, good. Now, enjoy the rest of the design and feel comfortable knowing that the organization is putting their best face forward.

Free Lunch with Google - Google Custom Search

[Part 2 in my "Free Lunch with Google" posts series]

Now that your website can accept donations and sell products to benefit your non profit, its now time to focus on your website's usability.

At onLine, we review a lot of non profit websites, so we're always on the look out for the elements every website should have, the large donate button, the non-pixelated logo, the mission statement, etc. One feature that surprisingly is not often available is the "search bar".

It use to be that for a site to be able to have a search bar, code more complicated than basic HTML was required. Or, if you're non profit that was built on a CMS platform, an additional fee was likely required to activate it. Well, Google is sharing their search expertise with everyone for free. Enter Google Custom Search.

From Google Search Engine product page:
With Custom Search Engine, you can harness the power of Google to create a search engine tailored to your needs.

With several pages of galleries, on the field stories, board members, and products on your website, inserting Google Custom Search will help make things easy for the visitor to your site find exactly what they are looking for. To view some examples, visit Google's Picks, a list of businesses and organizations using GCS [link].

Setting up is uber-easy. After you've created your account, your control panel lists several customization options including "Look and feel", "On demand indexing" (allows you to submit a select number of pages to be quickly indexed) and "Code" (includes the HTML code that you can insert into your site wherever you want the search bar to appear).

Typically, like most of Google's offerings, the tool displays advertisements that would appear along with your search result unless you upgrade to the paid version, Google Site Search. However, for non profits and educational institutions, Google allows you to disable advertisements. Which is great! In doing this, Google gives you the option to have a clean search results page, or if you want to bring in some additional funds to you non profit, you can keep the advertisements and make money on your searches (this requires signing up to Google's Adsense for Search program [link]).

Why Linking Works

A website without links is like a bicycle without a chain (or a million other metaphors): nonfunctional and pointless. The Web was created for hyperlinks; seems like a given. However, some organizations worry about sending away traffic to other organizations and groups. So, they want to remove links on their website-- a few links or even all of them.

Creating and managing external links is an important part of building and maintaining any website. Organizations want to maximize their links to corporate partners, other NGOs, and other online resources without losing traffic and driving potential donors and registrants to other websites. Many organizations struggle over how to prepare and manage their external links. However, few organizations devise programs or best practices to help with this process.

The Internet is a web because of how links are put together; to simply ignore linking takes away for the dynamic qualities of this medium and can hinder Search Engine Optimization (SEO) practices.  A website needs to connect to other resources to be part of that connected web of sites that string together the Internet. Ignoring link opportunities or removing them from a website leaves a very flat experience and does little to ensure that visitors stay longer on the website. It also gives the appearance of an organization with few connections to other resources.

Your organization can devise a simple list of best practice or link policy to build and maintain external links and maintain a navigable and well-connected online presence:

Reciprocity: Ensure links to corporate partners, other organizations and NGOs, foundations, or any other resources will feature reciprocal links. Linking improves SEO and helps market the organization to other resources.

Open New Windows: Links to resources not affiliated directly with pertinent content can open a new browser window with the "target="_BLANK". For example, a link to other organizations can open a new window. Be very careful with opening new windows, as it makes for poor accessibility for visitors with impairments.

List Resources: Post resources at the bottom of articles and pages, rather than link with copy. For example, list "Other Resources" at the end of a story or piece of content, then display a small message that the link will open a new window. 

Use Copy Links: When you link with copy, avoid phrases such as "click here" or "read more". Instead, make strategic links, such as "Visit XXXXXX's website". This linked copy will help boost search results for  related to that group or company can improve SEO ratings.
 
Use Logos and Visuals: Linking to corporate and nonprofit partners with their logos and visuals provides a very professional appearance and can be used as leverage to creating meaningful partnerships with other corporate or organization brands. Corporate branding offers a substantial link presence and can be leveraged for strong, reciprocal partnerships.

Make Your Website a Resource Center: Having a links page can provide a resource for anyone interested in hunger-related or global development-related issues and need to locate resources. This links page can be created with tools such as Delicious to combine online bookmarks, syndication feeds, and social networking tools. A good example of this resource can be found on the KnowH2O website.

Watch your Google Analytics or other web log reports and pay attention to your top exit pages. If these pages feature a lot of external links, you might want to revise how many links are on these pages. Check your referrer logs to make sure your partners are driving traffic your way, too.  Don't be afraid to be part of the larger whole; have confidence in your message and show the world that your organization is an important resource in the vast sea of websites.  

Social Media for the MLK National Day of Service

Every year, Martin Luther King, Jr. Day is considered a day of service. But with it falling on the eve of President Obama’s inauguration, MLK Day got more publicity – and more service projects completed  – than ever before.

Like Obama’s campaign, the MLK Day organizers used social media to generate interest and participation in the event.

And, the National Day of Service – dubbed “Renew America Together” – was covered by famous blogs like the Huffington Post, which included a video of Barack Obama's remarks after volunteering. Thinking ahead, marketing guru Seth Godin offered suggestions on how to keep the spirit of the National Day of Service going all year long with a list of ideas that you can do online or in your community. 

Remember that though your organization may not get all the fanfare that the National Day of Service generated, it still has the same social media tools available.

So, Renew Your Organization with inspiration from MLK Day’s recent efforts:

• A Facebook Fan Page can connect with some of your fans and identify key supporters. MLK Day on Facebook
  
• You can use YouTube to share your message and challenge your constituents to speak on your organization’s behalf. MLK Day asked supporters to submit a 3-minute YouTube video on what they planned to do on MLK Day and what service means to them. Check out the contest winner, a local food bank’s video “Yes We’re Cans!”
  
• Twitter gives you an easy platform to talk about real-time projects and needs. MLK Day on Twitter
  
• Blogger outreach can generate interest about your cause and links back to your organization’s website. As above, MLK Day was covered by the Huffington Post and Seth Godin.
  
• You can use Google Maps to reinforce the local aspect, or national reach, of your organization. MLK Day allowed users to search for a volunteer opportunity and plotted the results on a Google Map.   

My Mother Is on Facebook...

I'll admit it -- my mother is on Facebook. And lately, a lot of my friends' mothers are on Facebook too. Sure, some parents are joining to monitor their kid's online activities, but clearly an older generation is also using it to reconnect with one another. My mom was overjoyed when she recently reconnected with people she went to high school with just shy of 50 years ago. But enough about mom...

The Pew Research Center released a report this week highlighting a growing trend of adults joining social networks. One highlight from the report: "The share of adult internet users who have a profile on a social networking site has more than quadrupled in the past four years -- from 8% in 2005 to 35% now." You can read the full report at Social Networks Grow: Friending Mom and Dad.

With the new year upon us, now may be the perfect time to re-evaluate your online constituents. Consider a survey of your email list, Facebook fans, Twitter followers, and others to ask about their age range, income levels, interests in your organization for the year, and any other tidbits that will help you communicate and cultivate your community. If you don't have any in-house survey tools, consider these to get you up and running in a few minutes:

- SurveyMonkey.com
- Zoomerang.com
- SurveyMethods.com

Free Lunch with Google

The impact of Google on Internet browsing is evident and undeniable. By "simply" leveraging it's search tools into an advertising medium, Google has made it easy for anyone to sell something, buy something, or make money (just ONE example is by hosting ad space on your website/blog). In doing this, Google is in someways showing us the pen, selling us the pen and than holding the paper.

Their impact and presence in the technology industry is in line with that of Apple's, Microsoft's and David Pogue, but unlike Apple or Microsoft (and David Pogue really) Google offers it's tools to us for free - specifically, no money out of pocket is required. Yet, they still make lots of money. While there are many GTools out there, the tools I'm specifically referring to are those listed within the (often ignored) link below the search bar titled, "Business Solutions". 

Keeping with our mission at onLine, these tools are a godsend for the non-profit on a budget and passionately understands the importance of their site for promoting their mission and receiving donations. It's for this reason I will cover, in a three posts series, the tools a non-profit website should be making sure they are taking advantage of (if they're not already).

I cannot afford to waste my time making money. - Louis Agassiz

I. Income

Bringing in funds to your non-profit is tremendously important, but is probably a secondary thought to your mission (otherwise you'd be a for-profit). So it's important to make sure that you are using a reputable tool that offers security and ease of use. Enter Checkout.

 Tool: Google Checkout

"Google Checkout is a fast, convenient checkout process that brings you more customers and allows them to buy from you with a single login – and you can process their orders and charge their credit or debit cards for free."

Selling with Checkout requires no money out of your organization's pocket. For every sale, a 2% + $0.20/transaction is charged. For some this may seem like a lot, but given the ease of use and and security from Google's Payment Guarantee, which "protects 98% of Checkout orders on average  - [so] when an order is guaranteed, you get paid even if it results in a chargeback" - it seems very worth it. 

Implementing requires knowledge of basic HTML and can be completed within an hour. Beginning Checkout simply requires signing up and integrating the HTML code onto your site.

The kicker with using Checkout is that for non-profits (501(c)3), you can also accept donations online. This two-fold opportunity not only allows your non-profit to sell, but to accept donations- all for the benefit of your cause!

Learn more about Checkout here.

Learn about Checkout donation.

Ways of Sharing Video Online

It is pretty common for everyone to want to share videos of what their organization is doing so that their constituents and volunteers can keep actively involved in the efforts.  So today I figured I would give a few options of how to share a video on your site, which is best for you is really based on your needs and specific circumstances.

The first is YouTube.  I think by now almost everyone is at least familiar with what YouTube is and how it works but for those who are not let me explain.  YouTube is an online service that will allow you to create an account which you can upload your video to and share it with the world across the interenet.  The reason I like to use YouTube is that it is very viral, meaning videos spread fast and have the ability to be shared really anywhere else online while not causing you to deal with huge bandwidth costs on your hosting server.

Another nice way to host your videos online is Vimeo. Vimeo offers some features similar to YouTube in that they will host the video and provide an embedd code so that others can show your video on their own site.  While this helps to spread the video Vimeo unfortunately does not have as large of a community as YouTube which can cause it to spread a little slower.

Finally you can host the video yourself.   For this I prefer to convert the video to work with an FLV format, and use the JW FLV Player to run the video.  I like this player for how easy it is to set up and get running on a site.  It is not as simple as YouTube or Vimeo but in the instance where you cannot for whatever reason place the video on a third parties platform this is a great solution.  The basics of setting up th eplayer are to upload the files that control the player, the video and then insert a script into the code of the page you want to display the video.  Realizing this may not be an quick task for those with little to know coding experience they have created a great installation guide with code you can just copy and paste where you need it.

Of course there are more ways to share videos online and play them on your site, these are simply the ones I use the most often. 

A resolution for change (and a chance to go to the inauguration)

 

There are plenty of resolutions being made right now (and some may have already been broken... did you skip the gym already?).

But here's a worthwhile mantra for the new new year: "Change begins with me."

The Case Foundation announced this new campaign to build on the election excitement and carry it through the inauguration and into Obama's presidency.

They ask you to complete this sentence... "Change begins with me. I commit to..." A winner will be chosen at random to go to the 2009 Presidential Inauguration and the Hawaii Inaugural Ball.

As someone who works to gain supporters for your cause, take this opportunity to make a promise to yourself, to those your organization serves, and yes, even to your boss: "In 2009, I commit to finding creative new ways to inspire our supporters, achieve our mission, and change our world."

First creative way to do it? Tell your constituents about this inauguration giveaway, and ask them to commit to making change by their support of your organization in 2009.