Web Content Best Practices for Nonprofits

Linda Kolker Best Practices for Web Content

AGENDA

 9:00-9:15 Orientation & Introduction
 9:15-9:45 Part 1 – Foundations
 9:45-10:30 Part 2 – Content Format
 10:30-10:40 BREAK
 10:45-11:45 Part 3 – Content SEO for Google
 11:45-noon Evaluations

2

Web user research on
Non-profit websites

3

What donors look for

 Causes that share their ideals and values.

 How the organization proposes to help

4

What’s most important to donors

Mission
Goals
Objectives
Work Presence in
reader’s
own
community

5

What kills donations on sites

Majority of problems are content-related

Content problems
53%

Navigation,
transactions, etc.
47%

6

What kills donations on sites

?
Donate

17%

Nowhere to click to donate!!!
7

Credibility
Engagement
Ability to deliver

8

Best Practices for Website Content

Part 1

9

Laying the foundation:
BEFORE you create content

 Define goals
 Know audiences
 Who you are
 What sets you apart from competitors

10

Know your website goals

Specific
Measurable

Examples of specific and measurable goals:

• Increase donations from small donors by 10%

• _____________________________________

• _____________________________________

11

Know your audiences
 Audience segments
 Age
 Gender
 Income
 Lifestyle
 Opinions & Values

12

Practice: audience profile
For ONE audience:

 Age _____
 Income ________
 Gender ________
 Lifestyle ____________________________
 Opinions & Values______________________________

13

Know who you are

A statement that sets you apart from competitors

14

Examples of taglines

15

Practice: laying the foundation

How well does your site

Reflect your goals?
Reflect your audience(s)?

Scale of 1-5 (5=best rating)

Is your tagline at top of home page? Every
page?

16


Part 2

17

Overview
 Brief, specific content written from the perspective of
your readers’ interests, desires and background.

 Content that is formatted to make it easy to find what
they’re looking for on the page.

 Headlines, subheads and content that are oriented to
their interests and goals.

18

Site visitor behavior

19


20%

Users read about 20% of text
Linda Kolker Best Practices for Web Content 20


What’s here?
How can I find what I’m looking for?

Short articles
Skim highlights

21


Ruthless about abandoning sites
22

Skimming
content

How people scan a
website page

23

Inverted pyramid


Use subheads

 Tell the story on their own
 Capture essence of paragraph

25

Make paragraphs short
6 lines MAXIMUM
3-4 where possible

27

6 lines MAXIMUM
3-4 where possible

Make sentences short

28

6 lines MAXIMUM
3-4 where possible

Make sentences short

Use bullets & numbers


Use boldface and italics

NEVER underline text unless it’s a LINK

30

31

32

Credibility

Grammar
Spelling
Punctuation

33

Pair up and review sites
First, take a couple of minutes to review your partner’s site

Home page:
 What does this organization do?
 What’s special about it?
 Is that clear at a glance?

Review lower-level pages:
 Can you scan and know what the page is about?
 Is the most important information at the top?
 What could be shortened, and how would you do it?



Part 3

35

Help people find you

Optimize your content for
Google organic search (SEO) results

36

37

What’s good for copy
is good for SEO

38

SEO for content

• Identify keywords (search terms)
• Make a list of 5-6
• Select one or two per page for optimization

39

What’s a keyword?

41

Select keywords

Know your audience

What words are they likely to use?

42

Identify keywords
 One of your audiences?
____________________________

 Two or three phrases they might search for?
____________________________
____________________________
____________________________

43

Research competition for keywords

44

Using your keywords

 Make a list
 Narrow down to 5-6
 Assign 1-2 keywords to each page
 Use no more than 1-2 per page
 Front-load in page titles and heads
 Top-load keywords – at top of page

45

Top-down content


Use keywords in page titles

“Selecting the first 2 words for your
page titles is probably the highest-
impact ROI-boosting decision you
make in a Web project.”

47

Where to add Page Title to a web page you’re creating

50

Where to format headings

52

Image captions & <alt> tags

54

Caption text

55

Copy text from page on your website, paste into text
editor (Word, Notepad, etc.)

SAVE this document!

• Revise the page title, main headline (Most important
words at beginning of each)
• Shorten a paragraph
• Underline something you could link to another page

56

Review
 Lay the foundation: audiences, goals, your identity,
competitive differences

 Make content easy to find on your site and read on the
page

 Make it easier for people to find you via Google: optimize
site content

57

Resources

 Letting Go of the Words—Writing Web Content That Works by Janice
(Ginny) Redish

 Herschell Gordon Lewis on the Art of Writing Copy by Herschell Gordon
Lewis

 Don’t Make Me Think, by Steve Krug

 Almost anything by Jakob Nielsen. Books. Web site = useit.com

 Usability.gov


Web Content Best Practices for Nonprofits

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