I posted this blog back in June of last year but this is still a topic "du jour".

A non profit websiteshould always be in a state of improvement and trying to enhance the user's experience while browsing. The more engaged your readers and members are, the more likely they are to come back in the future.

Here is what you need to do to improve your Landing page:

• The 4-7 seconds rule
  You have about that much time to have them stick around on first visit or....move on and never come back. The decision will be strickly based on visual appeal. Do this test: ask someone to look at your site for 7 seconds then ask them to tell you what the site is about. If they can say describe what you do, then you nailed it.
  Your website needs to communicate visually what you do.
   
• People do not read
  We know that from studies: people do not read on the web, they glance, gravitate to keywords, buttons, but read...no, not really. Your words are mostly pointless, unless they are keywords, in bold and few of them. Large chunks of text will mostly be ignored. Look at your site and see if there is any areas of your site using too many words, could you replace some of the words by an image? Remember that an image can say a thousand words!
   
• Web credibility
  A survey was recently done and asked people how they rated the credibility of a website from most important to least. Number one by 46% was the design quality, number two was the layout of the page by 28,5%. Name recognition came in with 14.1%. Don't rely on your name alone, it won't be sufficient to keep them browsing. Does your web design look professional? if not, it's time to upgrade.
  
  
• Less is more
  I see too many websites with way too much information on the home page. Looks like the board couldn't agree on what needed to be on the home page and as a result...everything ended up there! Bad idea. Think from two point of view: what are the top 3 areas that are most important to the organization or the business and what are the top 3 things people will go on your website for. Design your layout & graphics around that. The rest should be an interior page easily accessible from the navigation menu. Avoid the multiple navigations all over your landing pape...on the left column, in the header, in the right column, in the footer...oh my! Keep it to one main navigation.
  
  
• Hire a professional designer
  A professional designer that caters to your industry that is. There is most likely a designer with a great deal of expertise in your industry or business type. If you are a non profit member based organization, it would make a lot more sense for you to hire a web designer that specializes in non profit websites.

If you are like me, you watched the recent drama between the Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Foundation and Planned Parenthood with a mix of horror and morbid curiosity.  Think what you may about either organization, it’s unfortunate to watch such large, successful organizations tarnished. 

This was a great learning opportunity, though, on the dangers of letting your organization get off mission. Without getting mired in the details, I thought it important to highlight some lessons I was reminded of from the kerfuffle and how to avoid them before they happen:

1. Avoid Cognitive Dissonance:
   Your donors have an image of who they think your organization is and that’s why they give you their financial support.  Organizations should be doing everything in their power to not upset that opinion.  Stick to your mission statement. There’s an old saying; “There are two things you don't talk about in mixed company; religion and politics...”  For religious and political organizations, this is obviously a non-issue.  Otherwise though, it’s likely that your donorbase comes from a diverse background and you should do your damnedest not to stir your supporters.
   
   
2. If You Disregard #1, Have a Good Reason:
   And explain it!  Not every move a nonprofit makes is going to make everyone happy at every turn, but it is pretty easy to know in advance when you are making a potentially risky move.  Your donors are naturally pre-wired to agree with you; if your decision making is sound, you should be able to explain your moves in a way that donors will be able to understand.  Be consistent and ACCURATE when explaining it!
   
   
3. Know Your Donor:
   The reasons that people give to your organization are probably wide-ranging, but there are likely some trends regarding who and why people give you their support.  Immerse yourself into their world, so that you are better aware of what potential pitfalls you might face with changing or new initiatives.
   
   
4. Help Your Donors Know You:
   Your financial house should be in clean enough order that donors should have no doubt where their donations are going.  The more explaining you need, the less compelling your offer seems.  This can be taken to various extremes, but it’s always good practice to let donors know where and how their dollars are helping.
   
   
5. Know Yourself:
   This is one of those leadership issues vital for the long term success of any organization.  There are often short term incentives to move a small, monetarily insignificant project to your forefront.  However, it’s very important that these short term pushes don’t trump the long-term goals of the organization. I’ll give an example: An emergency need on the periphery of your organization’s work is gaining media attention, so you shift communications to highlight your work on that issue.  The short term dollars gained are a boon for the organization, but you are also attracting and renewing donors that don’t necessarily support your primary mission.  It’s important that efforts be made to shift back on topic.  Otherwise, you risk cultivating a database of donors that aren’t compelled by the body of your work.

(This is a blog re-post: original source: http://www.newrivercommunications.com/)

Someone just recently asked me about this blog I originally wrote back in March 2011, so here it is:

After receiving several emails last week, I was reminded how more often thant not, email signatures are done poorly.

Many people want their signature to reflect their personality, provide pertinent information and more, but they can easily go overboard.

Others have none, just their first name at the bottom of the email. If you want to call them or go to their website....you'll have to dig.

Why are email signatures important? They may be boring and the last item on your list of things to get right, but they affect the tone of every email you write.

Email signatures contain alternative contact details, pertinent job titles and company names, which help the recipient get in touch when emails are not responded to. Sometimes, they give the recipient an idea of who wrote the email in case it has been a while since they have been in touch. 

Here are some tips on how to create an email signature that works.

Be Concise
Start by adding your website link to your signature. In many cases, more than half the traffic a website gets, comes from emails....talking about easily improving your SEO by simply adding your website link!!

An email signature shouldn’t double the email’s length, so make it as short as possible (3-4 lines is usually enough). Don’t get into your life story here. The purpose of a signature is to let them see who you are and how to get in touch with you.

Make Sure to Include…

• Your Name,
• Your Title,
• How to get in touch with you. (Phone, Email)
• Your website

No need to include...10 different ways to get in touch with you. The rule should be, less is more; and then they’ll know which way you prefer to be contacted. Go to 3 or 4 lines, with a maximum of 72 character per line (many email applications have a maximum width of 80 characters, so limit the length to avoid unsightly wrapping). An optional fourth line could be your company address, but use caution if you work from home.

Antoine Dupont
(561) 272-8567
adupont@adminesolutions.com
www.adminesolutions.com

Don’t Include…

• Personal Twitter, 
• IM or Skype details;
• Your home phone number or address (unless you want to be called by international clients early in the morning);
• The URL of your personal website unless its relevant to your business like a blog;
• Random quotes at the bottom;
• Your entire skill set, CV and lifetime achievements in point form.

Random quotes are fun for friends, but you risk offending business associates with whom you don’t have a personal relationship. Unless you want clients contacting you while you’re watching Lost, don’t share your home details far and wide.

Also, don’t share your personal contact information with your corporate partners. They certainly won’t be interested in it, and you may not want them to know certain details about you. However, mentioning your corporate Twitter account or alternative means of contact in your signature might be useful, in case your correspondent is not able to get in touch with you by regular email.

Images And Logos
Let’s get this out of the way now: your entire signature shouldn’t be an image. Sure, it will look exactly how you want, but it is completely impractical. Not only does an image increase the email’s file size, but it will likely be blocked before being opened. And how does someone copy information from an image?

Any images should be used with care and attention. If you do use one, make it small in both dimensions and size, and make it fit in aesthetically with the rest of the signature. 50 x 50 pixels should be plenty big for any logo. If you want to be taken seriously as a business person, do not make it an animated picture, dancing dog or shooting rainbow!

Most email clients store images as attachments or block them by default. So, if you present your signature as an image, your correspondents will have a hard time guessing when you’ve sent a genuine attachment.

Don’t Be A Fancy Pants or Cutesy
While vCards are a great, convenient way to share contact information, in emails they add bytes and appear as attachments. It is often said that you shouldn’t use a vCard for your email signature, because as helpful as it might be the first time you correspond with someone, receiving it every time after that gets annoying. Besides, the average email user won’t know what it is. 

If you do want to provide a vCard, just include a link to a remote copy.

Cutesy images or colors, heart shape, etc can be counter productive if the recipient finds it annoying, keep this for your private email account.

What About Confidentiality Clauses?
If your emails include confidential information, you may need to include a non-disclosure agreement to prevent information leaks. However, good practice is never to send sensitive information as plain text in emails because the information could be extracted by third parties or forwarded by recipients to other people. Thus, including a non-disclosure agreement doesn’t make much sense if you do not send sensitive information anyway.

Keep in mind, too, that the longer a confidentiality clause is, the more unlikely someone will actually read it. Again, check your state’s privacy laws. Some big companies require a disclosure with every email, but if you’re at a small company or are a freelancer and don’t really require it, then don’t put it in. The length of such clauses can be annoying, especially in short emails.

HTML?
If you can, stay away from HTML formatting. Every Web designer knows the pain of HTML newsletters, and while HTML is supported for email signatures, you’ll likely have problems with images and divider lines in different email clients. Some nice ASCII formatting may work in some cases.

Of course, if you’re really keen to use HTML, keep it simple:

• Make sure it still looks good in plain text. 
• Use black and standard-sized fonts, and stay away from big, tiny and rainbow-colored fonts. 
• Don’t use CSS. Inline HTML formatting is universally accepted. 
• Use common Web fonts.
• Including a logo? Make sure the signature looks nice even when the logo doesn’t load or is blocked.
• Check how it looks when forwarded. 
• Do all the lines wrap correctly?

It may seem obvious to organizations that currently provide a street address, e-mail addresses, phone numbers, and other contact information on their website, that if you want to make it easy for people to do business with you, you have to give them multiple ways to reach you or ask for more information.

Surprisingly, a great number of websites we see, still make it difficult for their visitors and customers to find contact information on their sites or provide just one option.

Here are few tips to help you with this:

• Have as many options as possible for contacting you. Some people like to pick up the phone, others will prefer sending an email, you may even have someone that will want to send you their request via fax. Provide them all.
   
• An 800 number might be a good idea if you do business with out of state prospect. This could help you if they prefer calling and talking to a human being and they are out of state
    
• A "Contact Us" form is good but provide additional options beyond the basic First, Last & Comments fields. Based on your organization or business model, offer checkboxes or drop down selections to help your prospect narrow down their inquiry, i.e. I need some of this, this & this. It helps people pre-qualify themselves with easy checkbox so they don't have to type so much in the comments box.
   
• Other forms such as "Ask a question" or "Request more information or a brochure". Some people may not want to talk to anyone....yet. All I want to know is (fill in the blank). They are either very busy or shy and don't want to be called, they just want an answer to their question. If you have that form available, then those people will use it and you will gain from it.
   
• Provide several social media connection. People may feel more confortable to post a message on your Facebook wall rather than calling you directly.
   
• The staff page or team page needs to include pictures, period! People want to relate to others. A surprising conclusion from two separate A/B tests: putting human photos on a website increases conversion rates by as much as double. Scientific research backs this up, saying that we are subconsciously attracted to images with people. 

• Make a donation or make a payment should be so easy to find and to complete that your grandma could do it without asking for help. If Grandma can complete the transaction and says at the end "that was easy" then you nailed it. Also, the donation button on the home page should be so self evident that a blind man could tell you where it is. Upper right hand corner of your home page could be a good spot for it. Button color: Along with its other A/B tests, conversion rate was increased by 34% on some test site, simply by changing the color of the sign-up button from green to red!

Remember, it's all about making it easy for people to take action!

On September 7th, 1982, Ogilvy sent the following internal memo to all agency employees, titled "How to Write":

"The better you write, the higher you go in Ogilvy & Mather. People who think well, write well. Woolly minded people write woolly memos, woolly letters and woolly speeches.Good writing is not a natural gift. You have to learn to write well. 

Here are 10 hints to help you with web content writing :

1. Read the Roman-Raphaelson book on writing. Read it three times.
2. Write the way you talk. Naturally.
3. Use short words, short sentences and short paragraphs.
4. Never use jargon words like reconceptualize, demassification, attitudinally, judgmentally. They are hallmarks of a pretentious ass.
5. Never write more than two pages on any subject.
6. Check your quotations.
7. Never send a letter or a memo on the day you write it. Read it aloud the next morning — and then edit it.
8. If it is something important, get a colleague to improve it.
9. Before you send your letter or your memo, make sure it is crystal clear what you want the recipient to do.
10. If you want ACTION, don’t write. Go and tell the guy what you want.

David"