Charity Website Tips: Use Flash Sparingly
Flash presentations – particularly as an intro page to your website, are extremely irritating for most web users. They want to get straight to the information on your website, choosing what they want to see, rather than having to wait for your video/animation to complete. Flash can be used in effective ways, to add a dynamic edge to a page, but consider if this could be achieved using alternative techniques such as using Javascript and CSS. Libraries such as jQuery make many popular effects very easy to achieve.
If you do decide you need a Flash intro for any reason, make sure that you still have navigation on the page so visitors can explore the rest of your website. At the very least have a skip intro link that takes them to the next page of your website. Make sure these links are done in standard HTML so that they appear before the flash has finished loading.
It is very easy to use Flash in bad ways. Only very experienced web designers should be contracted to provide you with Flash designs otherwise you may find your website ineffective, slow, and inaccessible to search engines.
Everywhere you use Flash, remember that some people won’t see it as they won’t have Flash installed or will have an older version that may not be capable of displaying your animation. Make sure you specify an alternative, static representation so that these users still receive a good experience when browsing your website.
Charity Website Tips: Use Photos Effectively
Photos on your website can have an enormous impact on your visitors. For charities, photos give the opportunity to create an emotional response with their visitors, and help them identify the people they’ll be helping.
Carefully select photos that are appropriate for the audience of your website. The purpose of the photos isn’t to shock visitors, but to inform them. Images that are positive, showing the impact your charity has in the lives of the people you are help are often the most effective, however there is still a place for photos that show people in need to show your work isn’t finished.
The way you use photos can also vary depending on the area your charity works in. For example animal welfare based sites wouldn’t want disturbing photos of animals on their opening page, many people can’t stomach the sight of these images and will simple turn away without exploring any further. If your images are extreme in nature, or likely to make people upset, consider putting them on a page deeper inside your website, with a clear warning. Keep the photos on the main pages of your website more positive in order to maximise your websites pulling power.
Charity Website Tips: The Donate Button
For many charities the donate button is one of the most important design elements on your website. Online donations can be a big part of your income and leading people to this page on your website is important to get maximum return on investment.
Make sure your donation link is always displayed at the same place on each page, and is placed in an obvious and prominent location. As such an important element of your page, make sure it is always “above-the-fold” so it is always seen when visitors first hit your website, preferably on the top left or right where people will find it easily.
If you use a service such as PayPal to receive online donations, consider keeping their donation button rather than designing your own. For smaller charities this gives a sense of security as the symbol is recognisable and may encourage visitors to give when otherwise they may not.
Another effective way to increase online donations is to let your supporters know what their donation will achieve. For example, £10 will buy a first aid kit, or £100 will provide a family with food for a year. Choose amounts that are achievable for individual visitors. This may encourage them to give to the next level in order to achieve a particular target.
Charity Website Tips: Use Video
The web is no longer just about static content pages. Multimedia is becoming increasingly important, especially now that a large number of your visitors are going to be on broadband. YouTube is currently the 4th most visited site on the internet so video is definitely here to stay.
Charities can make great use of videos on their websites, to show more of their cause and the work they are doing. It’s cheaper than ever to produce a video yourself, you can do it on most home computers with a fairly cheap video camera, or you can employ a specialist company to give you something professional.
Hosting videos on your website can be expensive if they are popular. Many charities choose to use YouTube or Vimeo to host the videos and put them into their website using the services embeddable player. This means that the other site has the cost for the bandwidth, but also your video will get more exposure by being available in their directories.
Charity Website Tips: On Site Advertising
In recent years it has become very popular to include streaming “pay-per-click” ads provided by major search engine companies such as Google on your website in order to get extra income. However, increasingly these adverts are being placed excessively on websites in order to increase revenue, which makes all websites that include these adverts have a similar feel. Internet users are becoming aware of these adverts, and seeing them on a site often puts visitors off, as many sites using these adverts have little or no real content of any real value.
If a visitor has come to your website to find information about your charity, the last thing they want to be staring at is a collection of irrelevant adverts. If you have to include “pay-per-click” adverts on your website, try to do so subtly, without taking the focus away from the main content of the website.
You should also be aware that even though the adverts automatically displayed on your site are supposed to be relevant to your charity, they are often not. For example, if your charity focuses on animal welfare, the last thing you’d want would be adverts being displayed selling farming implements. Unfortunately, the way the keyword matching works this is a highly possible link that could be created. There are also a suprising number of "get rich quick" type adverts that come up, even when there is little relevance on the host website.
If you do want to try to build a revenue stream for your charity with on-site advertising, look instead at the more directly relevant “affiliate” advertising methods. With these, you can display adverts on your site, and receive a payment or commission for all sales made through your link. You can choose exactly what adverts to display, and carefully select who you wish to be affiliated with. Instead of adverts being displayed on every page of your website you could try having a “shopping” page and put all the adverts on their.
Affiliate advertising is generally run through large advertising networks, although some sites may have their own systems in place. Look out for an “affiliates” link in the footer. Some popular advertising networks are Commission Junction, Affiliate Window, Affiliate Future and DGM.
Charity Website Tips: Content is King
Quality content is the number one key to a good website. On the internet, content really is king, and always will be. People use the internet because they want to find information of some sorts, and in order to stand out from all the other websites out there you need to offer something of a high standard.
For charities, the quality of your content will make the difference between having a website that may look pretty, but is rarely used, and does nothing to support your charitable aims, and having a website that is engages your audience, attracts repeat visits and receives significant donations towards your cause.
In addition to making your charities website more engaging to your visitors, good content will also help your position in search engines. If done correctly, good content will lead to good search engine positions, the same things your visitors are looking for are what the search engines are looking for.
Consider your audience
If your audience is “the general public” try not to write in technical language that only an expert in your field can understand. It’s easy for charities to fall into this trap, using the same wording on external marketing as they would in an internal report. Try to use the same and similar words in your content that your visitors would use when they search so your page has a chance of matching in the search engines.
Have enough content
The amount of content you have on your website can be very important for a charity, as if you don’t have enough content you won’t look like a significant charity and this creates an impression in your visitors mind.
Show what’s happening right now
Regularly updated information such as news, blogs or project updates are features that make visitors come back to your website. Return visitors are a valuable commodity for any charity, as its these visitors who are going to be your biggest and more regular donors. Keeping your website up-to-date with new information is also good for search engines which like to see that a website isn’t getting stale.
Keep content well organised
It’s great to have loads of content on your website, but it’s no use if no-one can find it. Internet users are generally impatient, they want to get to something quickly. Your most important information should never be more than a few clicks away, and the website needs to be easy enough to understand so they visitors know where to click next.
Present content in more than one place
If for example you have a latest news page, why not display your latest headlines on your homepage, or other pages of your website so that visitors to these pages don’t miss this important information. Do make sure the information is relevant to the page you are feeding it into though.
Don’t overdo it
Try not to take on more than you can handle. If you have too much content it will likely become out of date quickly. If you are only a small organisation, don’t pretend to be something you are not, it will soon become obvious when most of your pages are a year out of date.