Do you know why your organization needs a website redesign… or maybe it needs a website made? If you do have a website already made, doesn’t it have the correct physical address, phone number and hours? Doesn’t it tell people generally what it is that you do? Doesn’t it come up at the top of the Google search results whenever your name is typed into the Google search engine? Doesn’t it have a picture of the front of your building? That should all be enough…right? What more do you possible need to worry about having on your website?
Is this something that you’ve heard from someone higher up in your organization? If so, then let’s talk about the importance of a quality website… and in terms that your executive director would understand and appreciate. Here are three things to keep in mind when trying to show how an updated website will make a significant difference to your organization when it comes to visibility online.
Usability and Accessibility
When people come to your website, how easy is it for them to find the information they might be coming to find? Is it just as easy to navigate on a phone as it is on a desktop computer?
With over 70% of the searches online coming from a smart phone it is critical for a website to be mobile friendly. If it isn’t easy to navigate from a smart phone, then people are likely to quickly leave your website. That experience does two things for your website.
First, it discourages the user from wanting to come back for any other information it might be looking for. That reduced interest in returning means they are less likely to donate at some point in the future. If the experience was negative enough, it might encourage others to recommend other to avoid it.
Second, Google in recent years has decided to rank mobile friendly websites higher in people’s searches. If your website is not optimized for a smart phone, then Google will place your website much lower on people’s search results. If you then add on people quickly leaving your website without doing anything on there… that is another big red flag that your website should go even farther down the list of search results. Just how far can these two actions push your website down the list of results pages? It could easily be at least several pages.
Search Engine Results
In most cases, when you type in your name as a search it will pull up your organization’s website. In fact, the only two ways it wouldn’t pull up is if you happened to have the exact same name as another organization or if there were people complaining about your organization a lot.
When it comes to an online search, your organization should be more concerned with the words used by your potential donors, volunteers or clients…which each have the chance of typing something different for their searches. Those groups of words, or keywords, used to search for organizations with similar missions, are the ones you want to have your website come up for.
For example, if you are an organization focused on helping abused children work toward recovery from the experience and justice then you would want to use terms like child advocate, how to report child abuse, signs of child abuse, etc…
Let’s say you know at least some of the keywords that you want to be found by…but you don’t know how to start being found by those terms. There are two things you can do to help Google find you for those keywords. One way is by making sure you use them in the content throughout your website; on your homepage, in blog posts… anywhere it would be appropriate to bring up the keywords when talking to your visitors. The other way you can do it is by adding the terms to your page description, meta description, and page title. Within Wordpress, you can use a plugin called YoastSEO and it will allow for you to edit those sections easily. It will also help you check for the use of a desired keyword on a page.
Online Donations
People are using their phones to do more and more things in their lives, including searching for information and making purchases/donations. Wait…people want to make donations from their phone? Absolutely! It’s quick and easy, plus people aren’t forced to take the time to mail a check or wait for business hours to deliver it in person.
Just mailing a check seems quick and easy, but with the rise in postage costs people are not keeping envelopes and postage around their house like they used to. In fact, with more companies being willing to take credit card online, it is become more readily accepted to take credit card for most things on an organization’s website. Does your website have a place for people to make donations? If it does, how easy is it for people to make the donation from your website? If it does not, how many more donations do you think you could receive by adding one?
Conclusion
With over 345 million people searching online for information, it is critical to have a mobile friendly website that engages the visitors. The message you have on your website is important because it needs to bring value to the reader while showing Google that your content is relevant for people making searches for the keywords on your website. In addition to all of this, it is very beneficial to provide a place for visitors to easily donate to your mission.
