Web to the Max

The Web is fast-paced and dynamic. Blogs, YouTube, social media, RSS feeds and online communities are changing the way nonprofit organizations engage their constituencies. But it takes time and resources to maintain an organization’s Web site — let alone implement Web 2.0 strategies. And the progression of Web-based tools for constituency engagement leaves some professionals scratching their heads.

If this sounds like your organization, don’t panic. The great news is that you recognize the Web as a critical part of your fundraising strategy. So let’s start with the Web site and resources you have. You can move your organization’s Web site forward, even by taking small steps at a time.

Design and content
The foundations of a solid Web presence are relevant content, site design, style and tone. The best sites have a clearly defined target audience, but they also may provide information for other constituencies. When using the Web as a fundraising and donor-engagement tool, give donors the information they want from your organization. They shouldn’t have to look elsewhere, such as Charity Navigator or GuideStar, for those details. Make it easy for them to find it on your site.

Along with providing relevant information, your Web site should make people want to stay. A great way to do this: having calls to action, such as contacting their congresspeople, attending a community event, volunteering or finding Fluffy — a new kitten at the shelter — a home.

Another great source of engagement is a “rate this page” feature that allows visitors to tell you whether they found what they searched for on your site. Rating information can provide great direction for making content and site improvements.

Like other forms of marketing, the Web has design aesthetics and best practices. If you’re not a Web-savvy person, find someone — volunteer, board member, etc. — who can give you guidance. The Web isn’t going away, so make costs associated with updates, consultations, redesigns and new tool implementation part of your marketing and fundraising budgets.

Web metrics 101
Aside from direct feedback, most hosting companies will supply some basic metrics for Web performance indicators. It can be confusing, however, to determine which metrics you should track in order to understand your site’s effectiveness. For purposes of this article, we’ll focus on metrics that look at interactions with your site’s content. Keep in mind that Web metrics are best looked at over a period of time, for trends, rather than day-over-day or month-over-month numbers. Common metrics include:

■ Hits, visits, visitors and unique visitors: These metrics basically tell you that someone came to your Web site and then viewed a page or multiple pages. It could be the same person over and over again, so this data is good to know, but relative.

■ Page views, page-view duration, bounce rate, visibility time, session duration, depth and frequency: These metrics help provide visitor-loyalty information, including the frequency and amount of time visitors spend on your site, and how many pages they view before leaving. This information is valuable to determine your site’s stickiness. How easily users find what they need, how clearly and understandably the content is presented, and how relevant your content is to the visitor all will determine how long they stay on your site.

■ Clicks, impressions and clickthrough rate: These metrics measure the level of interaction visitors are having on your site and the effectiveness of the links on a page. Clicks tell you how often a visitor clicks on a link, image or banner ad on your Web site, while an impression tells you how many times a page loads on a user’s screen. The CTR is the number of clicks, divided by impressions, for a particular ad, image or link, and is used to put these two metrics in relation to each other. A high ratio means visitors are very engaged with your site.

Inbound links
To help increase your site’s visibility, maximize the number of relevant inbound links to your site. Ask national affiliates, partners and grantors if they will put links from their Web sites to the appropriate pages on your site. Also, make sure that your organization and its Web address are listed in appropriate directory listings and on relevant membership pages.

Another simple and effective way to increase both inbound links and search-engine page ranking is to add links to social-bookmarking Web sites on select pages of your site. The concept of social bookmarking recently has gained popularity. The idea is similar to bookmarking favorites on your computer (local bookmarking), except that you’re saving the link directly to your account on a bookmarking Web site rather than on your computer.

Once you’ve bookmarked a site, you can access it anytime by logging back into the social bookmarking site from any computer. Since your bookmarks are on the Web site, instead of your computer, they can be shared by everyone.

The social-bookmarking site serves as a huge database of many people’s favorite sites. One advantage of putting your bookmarked site on a social-bookmarking site is that it can be shared with others with similar interests, such as potential donors.

Popular social-bookmarking sites include del.icio.us, Digg, Newsvine, reddit and StumbleUpon. You can view links to various social-bookmarking sites on many top-ranked Web sites to promote news, events, articles and whitepapers.

The Web is an integral part of many people’s lives. Organizations must dedicate time, resources and budget to the Web, just as they do for direct mail, special events or grant writing.

Don’t get overwhelmed by thinking you have to do everything at once. Start with understanding your Web life cycle, and make plans now to maximize your Web site’s effectiveness for attracting and engaging donors. The annual appeal will be here before you know it! FS