Are you considering a Nonprofit Website Redesign?
Some reasons to consider a redesign
- Is your website fulfilling its purpose?
- Is the website not working as well as it should?
- It has grown organically and now has been unwieldy and cluttered?
- Is the website slow? Does it need to be responsive?
- Is the imagery dated?
- Have you changed your branding or message?
When approaching a Nonprofit Website Redesign here are some points to consider:
What
- are you trying to achieve through the redesign?
- do you need your web designer to do and why?
- is your budget?
- are the most the most important aspects of the redesign?
- is your deadline?
Consider reading our article Overhauling a Website or Starting Afresh?
Look at your website from the perspective of the different groups that use your site. Is there a group whose needs are not well met?
Consider your Nonprofit website audiences
Your audience probably consists of at least two broad groups: volunteers/donors and people who use your service. Those two groups do not necessarily need separate content and there may be an overlap between those groups. But it is well worth getting some feedback from representatives from those groups as well as considering what kind of information they might be seeking to find on the site:
Are there parts that are too confusing or where they can’t find the information they need easily?
If your website is difficult to navigate this is a huge red flag and a restructure is a good place to start.
Over time an organisation tends to add more and more content, this can lead to the structure can become unwieldy. Not only does the website structure affect your user’s experience, but it can also affect your search engine optimisation.
Planning the Nonprofit Website Redesign
Nonprofit Web Design Checklist #2
Here are some more factors to consider:
- Consistent Branding
- Effective Content
- Quality Code
- Search Engine Optimisation
- Site Architecture
- Social Media Engagement
- Ongoing maintenance
Bearing in mind that depending on when you last updated and invested in your website, resigning an existing website can be as expensive as starting again.
Protecting your existing SEO
Some steps to protect your existing search engine ranking
- Diagram the existing structure and content of the website
- Collect your top ranking landing pages
- Do keyword research and document keyword phrases against existing content
- Highlight content gaps and create a content creation schedule
- Review site architecture
- Create redirects from existing page URLs to new page URL
Test and Check the following
- The homepage. Get a feedback from a few people eg from a few staff, volunteers and a few supporters
- The navigation
- Proofread content: spelling, typos and grammatical errors.
- Dates and events.
- Use a link checker to check for broken links
- Check links that they go where you intended
- Calls-to-action, Forms, Donate and Subscribe to Emails.
- Check the favicon
- Test across different devices and screen sizes
- Check across browsers
- Update new sitemap to google
- Track keyword ranking
- Check Google Search console for errors
Move to Live
- Communicate to your supporters for before and after launch. Invite further feedback.
- Track the bounce rate on your important landing pages over the coming weeks. Are visitors staying on your website?
If you’re considering a nonprofit website redesign, I would love to help. I offer professional high-quality web design and development services and will undertake the redesign with a view to preserve and improve your SEO and users’ experience.
I also create documentation and videos to make the everyday content updates easy for your staff and volunteers to manage.
Testimonials from Non-profit Clients
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