Resources
Tips on strategy, user research, content, roadmaps, and more.
Articles to help you define, optimize, test and maintain your own effective website.
Optimizing Existing Websites
Using Objectives to Optimize Nonprofit Web Pages
It’s difficult to effectively prioritize a page without first understanding what it should accomplish. Defining “Page Objectives”can help you balance your nonprofit’s goals with what your visitors are hoping to do on a page. These objectives then provide a map for defining Calls to Action (CTAs) and prioritizing the information and features on a page. I provide step-by-step details and three examples.
10 Guidelines for Nonprofit Website Credibility
In 2004, researchers at Stanford University released highly influential guidelines for establishing web credibility. 20 years later, they are still nearly completely applicable. I’ve laid them out in a somewhat reordered framework and supplemented them with descriptions that address the distinct needs and best practices for today’s nonprofit websites.
Managing Nonprofit Blogs and Articles
Motivating Your Colleagues to Create Effective Nonprofit Website Content
It’s very tricky to get stories, blog posts, or expert articles from your co-workers on a schedule. It’s even harder if those people are in a different department or have different priorities. I share six questions you can use to optimize your process and hold your colleagues accountable.
How to Do a Nonprofit Website Content Audit, in Six Steps
Doing a content audit means reviewing each of your nonprofit website's content pages to help you make informed decisions about which content to keep, update, or remove. With a good plan for who will do the audit, what criteria you’ll use and the steps to follow, this doesn’t have to be a daunting process.
User Research for Nonprofit Websites
Building a Habit of Tiny Website User Studies
Every nonprofit should be trying to do more website user research, and there are a lot of options that give you a ton of good information with comparatively little time investment. How little time? In this article, I walk through seven different miniature user studies you can do in less than eight hours.
Nonprofit Website User Interviews… on a Shoestring
User interviews are one of my favorite research techniques when money is tight. It’s amazing how much you learn from talking to four or five actual people. Here’s tips and techniques for getting the most of your “research budget”... even when you don’t have any budget at all.
Designing Nonprofit Websites and Roadmaps
Digital Cardsorting to Determine Nonprofit Website Priorities
Are you looking for a way to determine priorities among a lot of different stakeholders? I used cardsorting, more typically used as a user research technique, with a lot of success with the Learning Policy Institute. It helped us figure out where to start addressing a complex list of possible priorities and the need to get buy-in from more than a dozen stakeholders.
Using Engagement Pyramids to Define Nonprofit Websites
When you're creating a vision or roadmap of a website, it can be tricky to balance your organization's goals with your audiences goals. Creating an Engagement Pyramid can be really helpful in thinking through the right way to support both. Here’s an example of how it can work.
Measuring Your Nonprofit Website
Turning Your Metrics Into a Nonprofit Website Measurement Plan
A solid measurement plan provides a straightforward way for your nonprofit to integrate metric reviews into a busy schedule, ensuring your website moves consistently in the right direction. It pinpoints exactly which metrics matter for your goals, and then how you’ll collect and use them to decide what to change. In this article, I outline the seven questions you’ll need to address to develop your plan.
Seven Metrics to Measure Your Articles
How do you ensure that your informational content is not merely existing but achieving its purpose? Using these seven metrics in combination, and comparing them across different pages, you can identify trends, strengths, and areas for improvement. They can help you understand the effectiveness of your content and allow you to make adjustments to content strategy based on what you find.
Finding Nonprofit Website Development Firms
Traditional RFPs: Inherently Inefficient and Inequitable
Putting an RFP out into the world is less likely to result in proposals from exactly the types of firms you should want to work with: high quality, busy firms, with lean sales overhead, who perhaps are women or BIPOC led. Consider instead: a Request for Information process.
Request for Information Template: Get Started with RFIs
Do you rely on open RFPs to find firms and consultants? You shouldn’t. You’re almost certainly not getting many proposals from exactly the types of firms you want to work with: high quality, busy, with lean sales overhead, who perhaps are women or BIPOC led. Instead, use this template to get started with a Request for Information and then whittle down to the best set of potential partners for a next step.