15 Reasons Why Websites Matter in 2022

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Over the past ten years, there’s been an enormous focus on social media and businesses of all sizes have had to make decisions on how and where to spend marketing dollars. With all the focus on Facebook, Yelp, Google Business, Instagram, Snapchat, TikTok, and whatever this year’s newest social media phenomenon is, it’s easy to come to the conclusion that maybe a business doesn’t need a website anymore. However, there are many reasons why websites still matter in 2022. If you don’t have a website, it’s time to hire someone to design one for you. And if you have a website, it might be time for a website redesign.

1. A Website Gives You Instant Authority

A well-designed, user-friendly, responsive website with informative, quality content establishes trust between author and audience. A website demonstrates expertise, authority, and permanence. While social media sites come and go, your business website should be the central focal point of your online presence. Think of the website as a businesses marketing hub and the social media sites and backlinks as the spokes.

2.You Don’t Own Your Social Media Pages

If you rely exclusively on social media sites, what happens when your entire audience hinges on a social media network and that network starts making decisions that negatively affect you, your customers’ experience, your brand image or identity, or all of the above? We have seen this recently with Facebook. Social media sites change algorithms without warning, create new rules that may restrict your ability to communicate with your customers, or even disappear altogether. Former President Trump knows this all too well. Anyone remember MySpace or Friendster? If you drive traffic from the social media spokes to your own website, you are and will always be in control.

3. You Get A Huge Return On Your Marketing Investment

Consider the cost of online advertising (which is constant – if you want to keep advertising you have to keep paying) or the cost of creating print materials which are out of date as soon as you print them. Then compare those costs to the $4,000 required to create your own business website. It almost always makes sense to invest in a website.

4. Your Local SEO Relies On Your Website

Good search results require a solid internet presence. A website is a fundamental part of that internet presence. You need your own domain and your own content. It’s far more difficult to rank in Google’s local pack listings without your own website.

5. Consumers Expect It

Most consumers expect a business to have a website. As a business owner – if you want customers – make it easy for people to find you online.

6. A Website Showcases Your Expertise

Nothing shows off your expertise better than your own website. You can create any kind of content you want, publish portfolio pages, blog posts, informative articles, and select which customer testimonials to highlight. The content on your website gives you a chance to show potential clients that you understand their problems and their needs.

7. Your Website Can Hold And Keep A Visitor’s Attention

When a visitor lands on your website, your are not positioning yourself next to a bunch of other social media sites all vying for attention. When people get to your website, it’s up to you to hold and keep a visitor’s attention. You can do that by anticipating their needs and writing content that answers their questions.

8. Without A Website, Customers Will Consider You Less Professional

On average Americans spend 23.6 hours online per week. People tend to spend 5 hours a day scrolling on their phones. If you don’t have a website, potential customers won’t take you or your business seriously.

9. Your Customers Need Answers

Both your current customers and potential customers are looking for information. Don’t you want to be the one to give them answers rather than having a search engine point them to someone else’s answers? During your website design you will want to answer three questions:

  • What is your business?
  • What services or products do you offer?
  • How can customers reach you?

Make sure that function and communication are as important as aesthetic design.

10. Be The Leader Online

The answer to the “Do I need a website?” question revolves around being the leader of your field. A high-quality, user-friendly website that answers your customers questions will make you the leader of your field online. If your competitors already have websites, make sure yours is better. Show customers why your company is better and why they should buy your products or services.

11. Websites Are Essential For Building Your Brand

It’s impossible to create a professional image for your brand without a website. Anything short of a website looks cheap and unprofessional.

12. Websites Are Great Customer Service Tools

Modern customers look to social media for customer service when a website doesn’t meet their customer service needs. The problem is that by that point most customers are angry and they aren’t turning to social media to be productive. If you have your own website, you can control your customer service process and direct customers to up-to-date FAQ pages or customer service contact info simply by sharing a link.

13. Websites Are Important For Link Building

Links are essential for SEO but they are even more important for referrals. A business website has greater authority and is of greater use when promoting your brand.

14. Increase Your Working Hours

Website visitors can access your online marketing material at any time of any day at their leisure if you have a website. Being available at all times helps with marketing and sales and is also a step towards optimal customer service. If you have chatbots on your site that can help clients with simple issues when they need it most, you can take this idea one step further.

15. Provide Social Proof

Customer behavior is influenced by what others have said about your company. People expect to check your website to learn more about your company regardless of whether it has a 5-star rating on review websites. Customer recommendations on your websites are a terrific method to impress potential customers and give social proof.

Final Thoughts

It’s absolutely vital to have a professional, high-quality, user-friendly, responsive, brand-differentiating website in 2022 if you want to increase sales, increase your bottom line, and expand your company. Business websites in particular help customers make purchase decisions. A simple website costs pennies but can yield huge rewards in the long term.

 

 

25 Best Practices for Nonprofit Websites

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At Connect4 Consulting we specialize in websites for nonprofit organizations and small businesses. Nonprofit Websites have substantially different requirements than websites for businesses. Websites for non-profit organizations are essentially e-commerce sites with a single product – the donation box – or a single goal – growing engagement via subscriptions. The nonprofit website needs to clearly and convincingly communicate the problem, impact, and solution.

We look at many nonprofit websites each year and one thing is painfully clear: nonprofits and charitable organizations have a lot of catching up to do in terms of internet presence. For every truly great nonprofit website, there are at least a dozen other examples of what NOT to do. In this post we look at best practices for nonprofit websites.

Top 25 Best Practices for Nonprofit Websites

1. The Donate Button

Almost all nonprofit websites are trying to raise money online. With that goal, the donate button and the donation process is mission-critical. The donate button should be visible on every page of your site. Make it stand out by using a color that contrasts with the rest of your page.

Examples of Great Nonprofit Websites – The Donate Button

example of prominent donation bar in nonprofit websites

2. Problem

Don’t assume visitors already know what your organization is about. Prospective donors will find your site through organic search, referral links, and social media, and they may not be familiar with your nonprofit. You’ll need to clearly communicate the problem that your organization addresses. We recommend featuring a prominent link where visitors can learn more about the organization – including the problem you solve, who you help, and why it matters for visitors to get involved. Help visitors dive deeper into taking action by offering clear calls-to-action related to your organization’s core purpose.

Examples of Great Nonprofit Websites – The Problem

example of great nonprofit websites

3. Solution

What is the solution that your nonprofit organization provides? The solution to the problem must be immediately visible and apparent to the website visitor. And the solution should lead directly to the impact statement.

Examples of Great Nonprofit Websites – The Solution

example of great nonprofit websites - the solution

4. Impact

What is the immediate impact of your organization? As we discussed above, you should follow up the “problem” with your organization’s solution to that problem. Prove the efficacy of your solution by demonstrating impact through eye-catching infographics, statistics and stories.

Examples of Great Nonprofit Websites – The Impact

example of great nonprofit websites - the impact

5. Transparency Is Important

According to a study in The Chronicle of Philanthropy,

1 in 3 Americans lack confidence in charities. In deciding where they will donate, 50% of survey respondents said it was “very important” for them to know that charities spend a low amount on salaries, administration, and fundraising; another 34% said it was “somewhat important.”

Anywhere you can put a number to something your nonprofit organization has done, you can better communicate your impact to a potential donor or sponsor. The more transparent your organization is about this, the more trust you will gain with your visitors.

Examples of Great Nonprofit Websites – Transparency

example of great nonprofit websites - transparency

6. The Blog

Writing about your organization regularly is perfect for demonstrating impact, engaging supporters and sharing the work you’re doing with people new to your organization. Consumers want to be told a story. According to survey conducted by Adobe & research firm Edelman Berland, 73% agreed that brands should tell a unique story.

There are always opportunities to tell stories. It makes content so much more compelling when it is presented in the context of a story. Make sure your organization is taking advantage of the stories behind how your nonprofit began, why your cause matters, and who your organization is helping, and make sure that content is communicated on your website.

Not sure what to blog about? No problem! Here are some nonprofit blogging ideas for you:

• Letters from staff, volunteers or constituents in the field
• Photo essays from events or fieldwork
• Fact roundups on your specific cause or cause-sector
• News updates specific to your cause-sector or the region you’re working in
• Impact stories
• Behind-the-scenes videos or write-ups about your work
• Announcements about partnerships or matching grants
• Celebrate milestones and supporters

Examples of Great Nonprofit Websites – The Blog

example of great nonprofit websites - the blog

7. Subscription Box

The subscription box is related to the blog in the sense that newsletters increase transparency, deepen engagement and keep people up-to-date with how their support is directly impacting your cause.

Encourage supporters to subscribe to your newsletter by including a clear call to action on your homepage. “Join us” seems to be a popular call-to-action.

Examples of Great Nonprofit Websites – The Subscription Box

example of great nonprofit websites - the subscribe box

8. Look Beyond the Home Page

It’s important to look beyond the home page. If you look at site analytics, you might even discover that more traffic enters your site from other pages than the home page.

The homepage is becoming less and less relevant. The home page still serves many functions. It represents your brand/organization, and in many cases it’s the first introduction to your brand for people who search for your organization by name or navigate directly to your URL.

But the home page is also the most unfocused page, because it has to consider the needs and motivations of every potential audience member, as well as introducing your organization and explaining why someone should care.

9. Resources Page

Have a Resources page accessible through your site’s top-level navigation where the public can find reliable, current information about issues central to your nonprofit’s cause. Keep this page updated and well maintained. If part of the value your nonprofit creates is from publishing resources, this is the place to host them.

Examples of Great Nonprofit Websites – The Resource Page

example of great nonprofit websites - the resource page

10. Members Only Page

There are quite a few reasons why you would have a members-only section set up on your nonprofit website. In some cases, this type of section may be needed for privacy and security reasons, preventing the release of confidential information.

In other scenarios, a members-only section might host exclusive resources, or a member directory for paying members of the organization. Just seeing the “Members-only” tab on your website is enough to entice some potential members to join your organization online, knowing they’ll get instant access to these things.

11. Campaign Landing Pages

Apply the same principles from your main website for your specific campaign microsites. For a campaign, make sure you add your campaign’s goal and campaign’s progress.

12. Optimize For Mobile

Mobile traffic now makes up 53% of all internet traffic. People today expect a great mobile experience. It’s imperative to make mobile content not just passable or functional, but truly seamless and easy.

At this point, this should go without saying. If your website is not mobile optimized, then you are really missing the boat – or at least a boatload of donors. Unfortunately, many nonprofit websites lag far behind on optimizing for mobile.

Your nonprofit organization should keep mobile in mind while designing to ensure that your site will translate well. Keep layouts vertical, use larger fonts and buttons, and avoid cramming too many elements onto the page.

If you’re unsure of whether or not an element will look good and be easy to use on mobile, remember: you can always take out your mobile device and check!

13. Intuitive Navigation

Well-planned and intuitive site architecture not only informs search engines of the importance of pages in rankings, but it is also important to user experience. Is it easy to find the expected information? What are the real goals of your nonprofit website? Does the architecture of your site support those goals?

  • Including a top or left side navigation bar that’s visible on every page of your website (minus your donation form).
  • Keeping all navigation titles between 1-3 words.
  • Avoiding jargon, elaborate words, or language that doesn’t clearly or accurately portray the content on the page it’s linking out to.
  • If they’re needed, sticking to only one level of drop-down menus.

14. Page Load Time Under 3 Seconds

Page load time is essential. By minimizing page load time (ideally less than 3 seconds), your organization will significantly increase the chances that the donors who click on your website will actually land there and stay long enough to look around.

If donors have to wait minutes (or even too many seconds), they’re likely to simply abandon the page. After all, visitors can easily turn to another site to access the information they want if it takes too long for your website to load. Check out your website page load speed by visiting GT Metrix.

Here are a few things you can do to help your website load as quickly as possible:

  • Resize and compress all images.
  • Minimize the number of scripts, plugins, and custom fonts used.
  • Opt for HTML and CSS over Flash Player.

15. Website Security

Most of the recent and high profile security breaches can be traced back to weak passwords and faulty website authentication.

If your nonprofit organization wants to maintain a secure website, it’s time you looked into more secure credentials, like two factor authentication and SSL encryption.

Having a secure website protects you and  your donors’ information so that you can maintain your supporters’ trust.

16. Matching Gifts

One of the easiest ways to increase online donations is to offer matching gifts. After all, you’re essentially receiving two donations for the price of one!

The problem lies in the fact that many donors simply aren’t aware of the option to give a matching gift.

To add a matching gift tool to your website, you’ll first need to find a vendor (like Double the Donation!).

Ask your website developer if your website is compatible with a matching gift service. If so, it should be easy to embed the tool into your website with a simple piece of code. If not, you’ll need to work with a vendor who provides custom development options.

By adding a matching gift tool to your site, you ensure donors know about this option and give them the resources they need to follow up on submitting their gifts.

17. Nonprofit Website and Donor Database Integration

Between online donations, event registrations, membership signups, and other online forms, your organization will likely be receiving a lot of donor data through your website. By integrating your website and your CRM, you’ll eliminate the need for manual data management, which can be time-consuming and prone to human error.

Instead, all new data you collect will automatically filter into donor profiles, making the data collection process much easier.

18. Marketing Automation – Email and Social Media

The two most common digital communications channels are email and social media.

Your organization can incorporate email into your website by adding a subscription box that enables visitors to sign up for your newsletters. Your email marketing platform should generate a code that you can easily place on your website to get this feature.

As far as social media goes, include social sharing buttons so that supporters can forward your content to their networks. If you’re active on social media, you can also embed social media feeds to share current updates.

19. Consistent Branding

Standardizing branding will ensure that visitors feel secure when browsing your site.

Think about it: if users suddenly land on a page that looks completely different from the rest of the site, chances are they’ll mistake it for someone else’s website. Considering that they want to engage with your organization, they’re not likely to trust pages that don’t look like they came from you.

If, on the other hand, they see your organization’s look and feel throughout your site, supporters can be confident that they’re interacting with you, which will make them feel much more comfortable submitting donations and taking other actions.

As long as your organization is using a content management system (CMS) like WordPress or Drupal, this is not so hard to achieve.

20. Powerful Photography

Photography plays a big role in first impressions. Research shows that using faces in your design can increase engagement by over 30%. Just take a look at this image below and take note of how much it grabs your attention:

example of great nonprofit websites - powerful photography

21. Minimal and Uncluttered Design

Donors don’t respond well to complex, busy websites. They are already going out of their way to help your cause, the last thing you want to do is scare them off with a cluttered and complex web site.

Minimalism is important because:

  1. It makes your site easier to navigate, since visitors won’t have to wade through a bunch of information and elements to find what they want.
  2. It helps your most important content stand out, since it won’t be competing for visitors’ attention.
  3. It will keep your site looking current for longer and reduce the amount of major updates you’ll have to make. Simplicity is always in style!

Ultimately, taking a minimalist approach highlights the problem, solution, and impact provided by your nonprofit organization.

22. Multiple Opportunities for Engagement

While making sure that you can receive online donations might be your organization’s main website goal, some of your visitors might not be ready to take the leap and make a gift.

If you don’t include other engagement opportunities throughout your website, you’ll be missing out on building relationships with supporters who wish to engage with you in other valuable ways.

A supporter who gives their time through volunteering or access to their network through social sharing is just as an important to cultivate as a potential donor.

23. Highlight CTAs in Site Navigation

Visually highlight your most significant call to action within your navigation menu. On any page, that goal will be prominent and easily accessible. Secondary CTAs can be a more muted color but still be visually prominent.

24. Optimize Donation Pages

There are a number of things you can do to optimize your donation pages:

  • make it easy to donate
  • use trust indicators like badges, independent ratings, and financial disclosure
  • make an emotional appeal
  • translate donation amounts into monthly impact
  • provide the option for recurring donations

25. The Post-Donation Experience

Don’t forget about the post-donation experience. After a person has donated, make sure the thank you page shows them your appreciation. Then, make them feel valued with a tailored thank you email, including further steps on how they can continue to support your nonprofit’s mission and cause.

Put these best practices into practice, and your nonprofit website will truly be a great website. Does your non-profit need a technology partner to help implement strategies like these for your website? If so, contact us!

How to launch a new website? Ten Tips

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Few investments have as immediate a positive impact as a new website.

A good website provides immediate credibility. Credibility means trust. Prospective clients, donors, readers who trust you make for repeat clients, donors, and readers.

An outdated website sends a message that you aren’t up on the latest trends. There comes a time when it’s time for every business to redesign and re-launch their website for maximum business impact.

For example, older websites might not be optimized for speed. About 40 percent of those who visit your website will bounce away if it doesn’t load within three seconds. You can’t afford to keep a bulky, outdated website with statistics like that.

While a redesign project might seem overwhelming, we’ve developed some tips at Connect4 Consulting to launch a new website in an easy, productive manner for maximum business impact.

Existing Benchmarks

Before you start a redesign process, be sure to record your website’s existing statistics. You’ll want to know:

  • traffic
  • bounce rate
  • site load time
  • average time on site
  • most visited pages

Without these existing benchmarks, you’ll have no idea whether your new project is successful.

Goals

Once you know what kind of website traffic you have, you can set goals regarding the quantity and type of traffic that you want. This is important because it will impact exactly how you go about redesigning and relaunching your website and web presence. You should set several goals.

Look at what your competitors are doing online. You can do some intensive research through sites such as SEMRush or SERPSTAT and find out what keywords competitors are ranking for, as well as their most visited pages. Using this information, set some firm goals for your own website.

  • What do you hope to accomplish with your re-launch?
  • Do you want more traffic?
  • Perhaps you want more visitors to convert into customers.

Whatever your goals, write them out and then work backward on how you will get there.

Let Your Customers Know What’s Going On

Send a short note to your mailing list and social media followers. Let them know you are redesigning your website, why you chose to do so, what you hope to accomplish with the redesign and when they can expect to see the new look. You probably already have some loyal followers who have been with you and your website for years. They deserve to know before anyone else that you are updating, improving, and relaunching your web site. You might even get some valuable feedback from your customers that will help your process or the final outcome.

Don’t Forget About SEO

There are more than 1 billion websites on the World Wide Web. You are trying to differentiate and stand out from all of those, rise up in the search results ranks and capture the attention of potential site visitors. There are so many factors that play into ranking and how many people visit your site, but in general, you want to do some basic keyword research.

Find the keyword strings that make the most sense for the type of visitor you most want to attract and create content around the information those searchers would actually want to read. You can drive people to your site, but if you don’t have the content to hold them there, it won’t do you much good. For more information on keywords and content marketing, you can check out all the blog posts we have written on search engine optimization, keyword research, and content marketing.

Get Feedback From Your Site Visitors

Once your website has been relaunched, gather feedback from your site visitors. Devote as much time as you can to answering questions, listening to concerns and fixing problems as they crop up. This is your best test of how users are interacting with your content.

Make Sure To Test Different Browsers

Ideally, before you launch your new website, you should test how the site performs across different browsers and screen sizes. There are many services online that allow you to do this for free or a small fee, such as BrowserStack and Browserling. Browserling will let you use their system for free for short 3 minute increments. Choose the one you like best and see how your site might look on a mobile device or on a larger screen.

The photos and text should be responsive – adapt to the device and screen layout – and be clear to read, and images should still have a sharp resolution. Also, test out the way the site functions on a mobile device versus a traditional PC.

Update Your Content

The best time to revamp old content is during a website redesign. Freshen things up. Fix any issues, such as broken links. You can easily find plugins to help with this, such as the Broken Link Checker plugin WordPress. You can also push older, but still popular, articles to the top by doing a roundup around a certain theme and linking back to those articles.

When site visitors come to see what has changed, they’ll see the content is fresh and updated and of even greater value to them.

Extend New Branding Throughout Your Online Presence

Your site may be rebranded with new colors, logos, fonts, etc. Now it’s time to extend that new branding throughout your entire online presence. Colors and designs should repeat on social media, for example. Update your social media headers and profile images. Link any interesting new content to your social media pages. Update any contact info or “about us” info.

Identify The Influencers In Your Niche and Get Feedback From Them

In each industry, there are influencers who have a lot of consumer reach. Figure out who the influential people are in your industry and reach out to them about your redesign. Ask for their input and feedback. You’ll get some amazing tips, and if you’re lucky they may decide to announce your re-launch to their social media followers, which will increase your traffic.

Test For Speed

Remember that three second rule from the beginning of the blog post? Whenever you add new features, images, plugins and such, there is always the possibility one or more of those things will slow your site down. Site loading speed is an important aspect of whether or not a visitor sticks around beyond that three-second mark.

Test your website’s speed. GTMetrix has a free and easy speed test you can use to see how quickly your pages load. They will give you a percentage grade and suggestions for ways you can speed up your site a bit more. Follow a few or all of the suggestions to make your site “sticky” and avoid that dreaded high bounce rate.

By implementing these tips, you’ll have a much more successful re-launch and a site that will work well for your visitors. And if you’re thinking about a website redesign or new website, Connect4 Consulting has got you covered. Contact us today.

Website Redesign and SEO

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Idjwi Island Education Fund Website

Website Redesign and SEO

When you are considering a website redesign, it is crucial you take SEO into consideration so the website does not lose current traffic or drop in the search rankings. Sometimes in the anticipation of a site redesign or migration, it can be easy to overlook important items and stay organized. I wanted to pass along what we have learned redesigning websites for clients and how you can make sure you are properly prepared when you’re faced with a site-wide redesign.

Here are some questions to ask yourself / look into before launching a new website.

  • What pages get the most traffic and referrals?
  • Which pages receive the most back links?
  • Will these top pages (found in #1 and #2) have a new URL?
  • Are any pages being deleted? Is it necessary to delete these pages?
  • What pages will the deleted pages be redirected to?
  • What internal pages do the the deleted pages link to?
  • Are the new pages that will receive the redirect relevant to the old page and target the same keywords?
  • What changes are being made to the site architecture?
  • What pages are changing position (example: main menu to submenu)
  • How is the internal linking structure changing? What links are being removed from the main navigation, main menu and sidebar?
  • Will content change on the existing pages?
  • Will the current on-page optimization be carried over to the new site?
  • Are the same images going to be used?
  • Do images currently refer any traffic?

If pages are being eliminated during the redesign or if not all pages are being migrated over to the new site, you need to create a proper 301-redirect strategy. If you do not implement necessary redirects you run the risk of negatively impacting your site traffic. No matter how much you prepare, there is always a chance that some things will not go exactly according to plan. However, if you have the proper steps in place, like checklists, QA plans and other preemptive strategies, you will be more equipped to deal with issues that arise.