Non-profit web site design: examples and best practices

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Nonprofit sites share some of the best practices like many other sites. What they need is a user-friendly interface, easy browsing, and the use of appropriate fonts, colors, and other design elements. But often a non-profit site needs to provide more content than a typical corporate web site. What a non-profit site needs is that users can easily find out about their service category, donate information, and get more involved. It facilitates media contact to find the information they need and the contact details of key personnel. All this is to somehow invite the Organization's target donors and volunteers to participate more in the site's operations.

Here are some of the best examples of nonprofit Web sites.

1. Make it easier for donors to use the Web site.

Donations are important to any non-profit organization. For donors, especially new donors, your agency's website should be a very good platform for soliciting donations. It also makes it easier for regular donors to increase their contributions. In both cases, you want to make it easier and more straightforward for people to donate money.

There are some caveats when creating a user-friendly web site. First, make sure that the donor page links are prominently located on the home page. Whether you use a special banner ad or button, or if you highlight it in an inbound navigation, you should give the donor a clear idea of where to complete the donation.

Second, make the actual donation process as convenient as possible. Visitors do not need to set up a donation account. The process of donation should not be more complex than any other online transaction. They should not be required to provide any additional information except for the processing of required credit or electronic checks. Use one-page donation request form as much as possible, and a confirmation page. In this way, using a Single-page page can greatly reduce your browser or connectivity problems.

2, make the media more convenient to use the website.

The impact of media attention on nonprofit organizations will be enormous. Whether it is due to the media's attention to bring more direct donations or enhance the image of the organization, it is very important to attract journalists, bloggers or other media with audience groups.

It should be easy for journalists to find information about the organization, including the board, founders and other key personnel. Ensure that key personnel contacts (e-mail and telephone) are included, providing a downloadable package containing all printable information.

Downloadable pictures are available on the Web site, and journalists and bloggers do not need to contact you or wait for a reply before they can use the picture. It should also provide a quote that can be published, whether members or boards of directors are like outsiders, and that journalists and other organizations can publish these news reports without prior contact with the relevant organizations for permission.

3. Make it easier for volunteers to use

Site visitors can easily find information about how they participate. Many volunteers may not have the money to donate but are enthusiastic about the organization's career.

Whether you are directly providing detailed information about volunteering, helping people take action, or simply providing contact with volunteer organizers, be sure not to ignore this crucial point.

Provide a wide range of contacts to make it easy for volunteers to get in touch, so you should provide contact such as email address, telephone number, network contact form, etc.

4. Ensure that your organization's goals are obvious

How many times have you gone to a website without getting any clues about what this site is about? This happens often, and designers and customers often think that visitors to the site already have some knowledge of their organization.

But please consider how much information can be divided into convenient browsing lengths, like Twitter or Facebook, and no one knows how many viewers will be visiting. Some organizations can easily tell what kind of organization it is based on its name, but some of it is not so easy.

Putting a brief mission statement on the homepage is one of the solutions, another approach is to place a significant link somewhere on the home page, where the visitor links to a page to find information that describes the organization's career in a concise, plain language (rather than a "marketing term").

5, to ensure that the content occupies a central position

The design of any website should be concise and clear, especially for non-profit websites. This is not to say that your site does not have an interesting design, but that the design should revolve around organizing the content and mission of the activity, rather than in the opposite direction, and taking into account the types of information that will be available on the Web page and the format used.

Anticipate which multimedia elements will be used, and whether they will be used on every page or only in the topic Bar section. If you plan to publish videos and multiple-page photos, you need to ensure that the column widths and other portions have enough space to match.

For example, the width of a web site should be large enough to accommodate YouTube videos. Otherwise, any time you embed a video (or similar element), your site design will look cluttered (your site content may eventually be overwritten).

6. Ensure that your website is consistent with other promotional materials

Logos should use the same patterns and colors as other promotional materials. Maintaining a consistent brand image will greatly increase the chance of recognition. Web sites do not need (and should not) be exactly the same as print publicity, but the look and feel of the echoes will increase brand recognition.

Make sure that the content is also consistent, proofreading and editing the content of the site is like printing material. Although it is easier to change the content of the site, but the site is full of mistakes and omissions will give a negative impression.

7. Know the goal of the website in advance

The leader of the Organization (or the project owner of the organization's web site) should list the objectives of the site before the project begins to be designed. Is it primarily to keep current members abreast of the latest developments? Is it to solicit donations? Is it to recruit new volunteers or members? or to raise public awareness?

No matter what your purpose, prior understanding and communication with designers in the design phase will be a hassle-saving project. Make sure everyone has the same vision, so you don't have to make unnecessary changes halfway, saving time and money.

8, to have the public news or blog

There are blogs or public news that have an advantage over nonprofit sites. First, it is a reason for people to visit the site. If you have information and events that are relevant to your organization, people who are interested will return regularly (or subscribe to RSS feeds). This will increase the browsing rate of the site and may make them more involved in the coming days (if they are already involved, they will keep participating).

Second, blogs and public news are often cited by other blogs and news websites. This increases site exposure and may bring more traffic to the site.

Third, constantly updated content, so that the site's search engine rankings. This makes it easier for people to dynamically find information related to the site and eventually search the site.

Article reproduced from: E Hui Society [http://www.ecauses.org]