As a nonprofit, having a great website matters. Nonprofit website design is unique versus other for-profit companies or e-commerce sites. Your site must provide clarity on your vision and attract visitors to donate and/or volunteer. Without your website working as a recruiting platform, you can’t get people excited about your cause.
Here are some tips for nonprofit website design.
Determine your target audience.
First, you need to determine who your target audience is and what actions you want them to take. These are the fundamentals with which your design should be borne. Once you answer these questions, this will help you determine what is necessary in your navigation. Keep it simple though. Focus on action words like donate, volunteer, explore, or engage. For additional content, develop a blog. This keeps fresh content on your site and allows you to post specific content on educational topics, events and commentary.
Create page layouts.
Once you have a site map fleshed out, it’s important to flesh out the layout of each type of page: Home, main menu pages, blog, etc. Visuals will be key elements in your design. Imagery should represent your organization. Stay away from stock photos as much as possible. Having real images of your organization will allow users to connect emotionally.
Consider infrastructure.
Next, you need to determine the infrastructure. How will your website be hosted? Will you use a Content Management System (CMS) like WordPress to add and update content? What additional functionality may be required (such as a place for volunteers to sign up or links for donations)? There may be several other software platforms that need to be integrated so you’ll need to consider all these options.
In addition to integrating other software platforms, you will want to embed social media on your site to make it easy for users to connect with you. Tying social media into your website design is critical for nonprofits because any additional exposure or reach you can gain is a plus. You could also include the latest tweets or posts on your website.
What happens after launch
One additional important consideration is what happens after launch. Will your internal staff be able to update the website going forward? How will you keep content fresh with new blog posts? How does your social media strategy complement your website? A website isn’t a one-and-done kind of thing. You want to add new content and enhance it regularly. Your website is really a living thing; as it keeps growing and connecting you with others, it will help your organization become stronger.
