I was advising an organization on their website, and one of the things I advised was this:
Make your DONATE button a contrasting color from the rest of the page. Make it the easiest thing on the page to find.
The web designer flipped his stylish lid. “That would be a disaster, he said. “It would undermine the entire color palette!”
The conversation went downhill from there.
This often comes up in discussions with designers, brand cops, and keepers of visual identity systems. They really stand up for those color palettes. They see them as paramount to the integrity of their designs. Straying from the palette to create contrast? That would be like slapping a barcode across the face of the Mona Lisa! A disaster!
Okay, it would be a disaster indeed if the entire purpose of the website were to have a perfectly congruent color palette. But that’s not the goal of any nonprofit website I’ve ever heard of. The real goal is something a little more action-oriented. Like producing donation revenue.
Or it would be a disaster if a perfectly congruent color palette were necessary to produce donation revenue. Except it isn’t. Go ahead and test it for yourself, but calls to action in contrasting colors are clearly the way to go. If you want people to act on your calls to action.
The people who insist on perfect color palettes and other forms of brand consistency that depress fundraising results are choosing aesthetic satisfaction over funding their own mission.
Beauty matters. But I think most people would agree a well-funded organization with lots of supporters is a higher form of beauty than a nice color palette.
Filed under Future Fund Raising Now by on May 16th, 2013. Comment. 
Even if you think you’re raising all your money through traditional offline channels, your website is an important part of your fundraising. Donors and would-be donors routinely check you out online. Does your website build trust and give them what they need to say yes?
Here are some ways to do that, from the GuideStar Blog, at Using Your Nonprofit’s Website to Build Trust with Visitors:
- Make financial data easy to find.
- Make reaching out easy. (Anyone who wants to connect with a human being should easily be able to.)
- Give specifics.
- Stay true to your word. (Deliver what you promise.)
- Give concrete examples of past success.
- Send progress reports regularly.
- Include thoughts from past supporters.
- Include thoughts from the community you serve.
- Include endorsements from experts.
Filed under Future Fund Raising Now by on Apr 6th, 2013. Comment.
From John Haydon’s blog, Ten Ways To Make Your Nonprofit Website Simply Awesome:
- Professional Design
- Intuitive Navigation
- Fewer Choices
- Good Redirects
- Consistent Page Layouts
- Pictures of People
- Mobile Versions
- Answers to Common Questions
- Strong SEO
- Sharable Content
Note that few of these things are all that sexy. Just good-old getting stuff right.
Probably the most impactful item on the list is the least “exciting”: #9. Search engine optimization (and/or search engine marketing) requires a lot of not-visible, highly detailed, downright drudgery — but it can really drive a lot of the right people to your site for the right reasons.
It’s almost always that way: The things that make the most difference for your organization are the least glamorous. The big success stories are from organizations that understand that, not the ones that chase the fad of the moment or sexy, thrilling wonder-drugs.
Filed under Future Fund Raising Now by on Aug 29th, 2012. Comment.
If you’re like most of us, your website gets a shocking number of visitors who never sign up for anything, never take action, never give donations.
They just show up (who knows why?) and then leave.
Here’s a simple, look at this problem from the KISSmetrics blog: What The Highest Converting Websites Do Differently.
Conversions — people converting from visitors to action-takers — are what you want. And here are what the smart kids do to get them:
- They Make Their Unique Value Proposition(s) Clear
- They Test Their Calls-to-Actions
- They Test Their Headlines
- They Tend To Have Short Forms
Filed under Future Fund Raising Now by on May 18th, 2012. Comment.
The internet offers many methods in order to increase website hits. SEO is among the most widely used ones. SEO or Search Engine Optimization is an organized approach to increase website hits. At present time, it is very significant to be able to generate your website’s traffic; no wonder why “search engine optimization tools” have been improving through time.
Information about the up-to-date search optimization tools are very much available so you will know how to get your website on google. Every tool has its distinctive function and they are classified in relation to this as well. Check out the foremost search engine optimization tools listed below.
Keyword Research Tools
Researching and analyzing keywords is one of the basic processes of SEO. It can also be considered as the most crucial part. All your content is dependent on your keywords and in choosing the right keywords, it is a must to maintain a balance between popularity and competitiveness. One of the top keyword tools of today is the one by Google AdWords (https://adwords.google.com/o/Targeting/Explorer?__o=cues&ideaRequestType=KEYWORD_IDEAS&__u=9967420570&__c=5350075690#search.none ) – absolutely free and definitely useful.
Backlink Checker Tools
Knowing the fact that the competition these days play on how to increase website hits especially inbound links, it isn’t a surprise why backlinks checker tools are present in this list. If you want to know how well your website ranks in Google, you will need a backlink checker, also known as a website checker. A backlink checker can tell how many sites there are that have links back to another specific website.
One of the backlinks checker tools that is available for free is Social Monkee. Simply click on http://www.squidoo.com/free-online-backlink-checker to know more.
Sitemap Generator Tools
Web crawlers (a software agent that surfs the World Wide Web in a systematic and organized manner) can browse more easily when you do sitemap submission. You can manually create a sitemap for a website containing only a small number of pages. On the other hand, sitemap creation becomes more tedious for websites with more number of pages. With the aid of sitemap generator tools, you can have a sitemap in just a matter of seconds even for websites containing lots of pages.
Google also has its very own Google sitemap generator (http://www.xml-sitemaps.com/).
You can find lots of other SEO tools and certainly, they are beneficial to your site’s performance and increase website hits. Using these tools does not assure you that you have a great website. What makes a good website are actually useful content, pleasing graphic design, and reliable credibility; so make the most of these SEO tools.
Filed under Chris Stoddard by on Mar 17th, 2012. Comment.