Zach Wales Just Blew Our Minds

Zach Wales, the philanthropic/marketing strategy blogger from OnLine, over at Changing Our World, has written an article about DonationPay.  Zach’s blog is terrific, informative and well-written, with detailed analyses of the challenges and joys of all things related to online philanthropy.  We are so flattered and thrilled to be featured and it couldn’t be by a friendlier or more well-informed fellow blogger.  Thanks, Zach!

Get your crayons ready, writers, and get to work!

As I think I’ve mentioned numerous times before, simple SEO techniques that can be performed by any decently savvy non-profit manager (or an extra-smart chimpanzee) can make or break a sites success online.  It can be truly shocking just how much difference a few image tags, submissions to relevant directories and keyword-rich text can make.  If you’re building a website, it’s sometimes very hard to create a informational structure that is both usable and appealing to your web traffic and readable by the search engine spiders.  Here are some tips to keep in mind as you’re writing copy for your organizations website:

1.) Search engine ‘spiders’ search for keywords that pertain to your organization or cause.  Spiders are super-computers that search engines use to ‘crawl’ the web- when they visit your page, they determine which search queries might relate to your page.  Because search engine optimized sites are more successful, it is important to use certain ‘keywords’ in your site writing.  For instance, if you are a animal rights organization in Spanaway, Washington and you’re doing a fundraising drive, it is important to profusely use all those words in the block of text on your main page.  Depending on what type of traffic you anticipate or want to attract to your site, think of what they might type into a search engine like Google to try to find an appropriate organization to fill their needs: you!

Here’s a little more about keywords.

2.)   Save the more in-depth or esoteric writing for the second-level pages on your site.  On your landing or index page- the first page people see when they visit your site- it’s important to craft an eloquent, enticing and dynamically brief description of yourself or your organization’s basic principles.   People visiting your site from a search engine will decide within the first ten seconds whether they want to stay or not.  The attractive aesthetic and user-friendliness of the site will help keep your Internet traffic engaged with your site after those crucial first few seconds.

3.)   The second level pages of your website (the pages you would navigate to from the landing page) are the place to go into minute detail about the specifics of your organization.  Use the front page to convey only the most important points about who you are and what you do.  Chances are, as a non-profit, you’ll have a whole bunch of stuff going on on your front pages, bells and whistles and fundraising drives and associated organizations etc., but keep the text block about what your organization actually does short, sweet, and keyword-rich.

4.) Write with a conversion in mind.  A conversion is the intended action you want your website visitors to perform- for most non-profits it may be a donation, for some simply a visit to an informational page, for an NPO having an event,  it might be the online purchase of tickets.  For a purely informational site, it might be signing up for a newsletter or visiting your blog.  In your writing, be sure to mention, on every (or nearly every) page, what you want your site visitor to do, in so many words.   For instance if you want your web site visitor to donate to your cause, it’s important that on every single page of your site, you give them an option to click that donate button and move forward in the process.  If you want them to visit your blog, then for the love of god, promote your latest blog entry to the front of your site.  In your writing and in the aesthetic and layout of your site, remind them regularly what you want them to do.  And they will.

Here’s a quick article about how to write for conversions and improve your bounce rate.

Some simple tweaks to the wording and search optimization of your organization’s site can make a lot of difference in how much new traffic comes to your site and how effectively it converts.  Spend some time revamping your writing today and reap the benefits of your newfound search optimization tomorrow!

A.J.

And, once you’ve got one, how to optimize it:

If you can get through these (admittedly dry) videos, you should have a solid understanding of what a Google Adwords campaign can do, how it should and will work, and what you can do to improve yours.

Good luck!

A.J.

And I hope you do too. . .

Because I am an intermittent blogger at best, I end up accruing a large number of interesting gems from the Interwebs and elsewhere that I intend to share or reference later in my blog and then sometimes get lost in the shuffle.  I always think I’m going to use my favorites in one big, extensive blog post that really ties the room together, but alas, it’s not happening today.  There is literally no end to the useful information available online, but today I thought I’d just leave you with a hacky little list of food for thought:

1.) This 2008 article from the Harvard Business review is detailed and asks hard questions and about the viability, clarity of mission and operating procedures of healthy non-profits and offers extremely smart suggestions on how to improve.

2.) 10 Essential Social Media Slideshare Presentations For Non Profits is just what is sounds like.  Which is to say: awesome.

3.) 10 Blogs (actually 15) Pamela Reads.  You should listen to her.  She’s smart.

4.) The Arts Resource Network has a lot of information for emerging artists and arts-related non-profits.

5.) More on Founder’s Syndrome and how to tell if your founder has a little case of it.  Don’t let the picture put you off.

6.) 3 Apps And Networks Spurring Social Good.  Allyson Kapin is just amazing, she really is a wonderful resource for the non-profit world.

7.) A list of ‘how-t0′ resources for grantwriting.

8.) How A Non-Profit Brand Goes Bust, Part 1 was Nancy Schwartz’ opening salvo analyzing the KFC-Susan J. Komen brouhaha and how it weakened the brand.  Here is her in-depth analysis on the situation.  Right-on as per usual.

9.) I’ve been reading the Mission-Minded blog lately and you should check it out too.

10.) Wild Apricot’s tips on how to keep your organization Free of Spam Complaints.

Thats it for the day but I promise a real post for the next time, folks.

A.J.

Shameless Promotional Blog Post Ahead. . .

Here’s the deal: our service was initially conceived as a convenience fee-based service to help non-profits manage the cost of online donation processing.  The idea was that donors would pay their own processing costs, saving your organization a boatload of money.  As I may have testily mentioned, Mastercard changed their regulations so that convenience fees are no longer acceptable . . . except for government organizations and schools.

All our programming and design time on the old convenience-fee site is not for naught, because we now are  making our convenience fee service available to acceptable institutions.  In the case of Saddleback Children’s Center (no affiliation with Rick Warren’s church of the same name, btw), they’re using our service to collect tuition payments and donations.  Using our service will save them many thousands of dollars in processing costs per year, and the parents who are paying tuition understand that they’re helping relieve a financial burden on the school.  Our online application for this service is quick, easy and can save your school that theoretical boatload of cash.

Convenience-fee processing is also a great idea for municipalities and government organizations; in fact, we’ll soon be launching a whole site dedicated to providing this service, CityPay.   Cities can sign up to get DonationPay pages where their power users can pay utility bills online, make donations, or pay tickets.  Our convenience fee of $3.00 per $100.00 covers all processing costs, effectively saving your city from paying out a substantial percentage of your incoming monies.

Anyhow, thought I would let everyone know, that our convenience fee service is not fully dead- in fact, we’re seeing more and more interest in it now that it’s not available to absolutely everyone (and isn’t that always the way?).  If you are a qualifying organization, we can help you save a ton of money!

And, of course, if you’re simply a non-profit looking for an absolutely bill-free processing service, DonationPay is right for you.  We truly are excited to be able to offer such low-cost, comprehensive processing service to non-profits.  The amenities of our service far outweigh any others out there (custom-designed payment pages, easy management tools, great service, etc.).  Our service is by far the best available, especially for such a low cost; full-service processing like ours (PLUS, for pete’s sake, free design services), from our competitors like Network For Good, charge up to 5%, have massive set-up fees ($200.00 or more just to get started) and charge monthly fees.  We are quite a sweet deal, if I do say so myself, and our compulsively friendly and knowledgeable staff will do everything we can to get your organization the best rates available and provide the most enjoyable customer service experience.  All right, my pitch is over; I promise this blog will have only occasional flashes of blatant self promotion and, well, we can just chalk this up to one of those times.

To make up for it, here’s a video of the Wegman dogs baking bread:

Enjoy.

Detroit is Pretty Awesome, You Guys

Well, it’s been a light week for the blog, because I am vacationing (and very successfully, thankyouverymuch) in Detroit, to help ring in my best friends brand new masters degree in graphic design.  Since I’ve already written a bit on the topic of web design this week, I thought, in keeping with the theme, I’d put together some more design resources for those of you out there building, re-building or being fed up with your existing sites.  I’ve been walking around the beyond-beautiful campus here at Cranbrook and reading, in crumbling marble letters on their red brick buildings, one of their aesthete’s credos: A Life Without Beauty is A Life Half Lived.  I wonder, seriously, what my own corresponding tenet of website appreciation would be. . . A Site Without Usability is Scarcely a Site At All?  A Site Without Proper Search Engine Optimization is But Half a Site?  If You Hate The Way Your Website Looks, Then Go To Art School and Learn How To Change It?  A Beautiful Website Is Only Half The Battle?

Regardless, here are some items to help you with design implementation and inspiration:

16 Sites For Web Design Inspiration: this has some sites with CSS and WordPress theme examples, many of them a nice resource if you’re looking to start building a new site.

A Couple More CSS Galleries: One and Two

50 Favorite Design Resources From Pronet

The Ten Commandments Of Web Design

Design Blogs I like:

Outlaw Design Blog

Abduzeedo

Colorburned

And Finally. . .

A List of The  50 Best Web Design Blog Posts from 2009- I’ve gotten through almost all of these and they are uniformly awesome, so put on your reading glasses and get started.

Good luck finding inspiration, everyone.

-A.J.

That 404 error makes me want to go ape s–t.

I’ve been thinking this week about the merging of form and function.  We generally don’t think about websites as works of art; they’re far too utilitarian and work-horsey.  Most websites can perform a variety of tasks- you can spend or receive money, interact with all different types of media, share opinions. . . and, well, we all know there are a thousand other options for making an ass of yourself online, on nearly every site on the web- like this ridiculous Twitter fight (language NSFW) between Scott Baio (oh, Bob Loblaw, I’m so disappointed in you!) and the biting wits at Jezebel.  The duties a website performs can seem secondary to the design, to the naked eye, but anyone who spends more than a few hours on the computer a day can tell you that an attractive site is nothing but a lovely shell, without usability and functionality.

The sites most people love are the ones that have the elusive form/function combo- sites you know immediately how to use and navigate and where you never find yourself more than a few clicks away from where you want to be.  Some web designers air more on the side of attractive flourishes and elegance and some are more concerned with the practical side of things (for the record, Noah and I are generally fans of usability above all else).   Truly great websites have an equal measure of both.

An awesome web designer will help you create a site aesthetic  that is attractive and relevant to your organization and they should also be able to create a usable site with a funnel that will take your visitors where you want them to go.  Building a smartly designed site with conversion in mind isn’t like painting a picture- it’s more like assembling the components of an intelligent machine.  You want your site to work tirelessly to take your traffic to your donation page (if that’s what you want) and also let users comfortably navigate without giving them easy opportunities to leave your site.

When you’re working with your web designer to develop your site’s aesthetic, you don’t want to seem like a complete doofus. A website is not going to look exactly how you see it in your minds eye, or how you might draw it after a visit from the muse, a bottle of Jack and a run-in with some oil pastels.   You must weigh your desired functionality equally with your desired aesthetic.  Basically, what I’m saying is be willing to make some compromises in the service of usability (not utility).  Much of the time, you’ll be able to get what you want while making smart choices about functionality, but in those times that usability has to take aesthetics to the mat. . . well, I can’t make this call for you.  But usability should win, every time.

Here are some resources to bring you up to speed on basic web design principles:

Smashing Magazines Excellent List of Web Design Tenets

And here’s some stuff NOT to do.

This fiddler will tell you what graphic design is:

And a crazy time-lapse video.  If only we all could design sites so fast.  Sigh.

And. . . fin.  Have a nice Tuesday.

-A.J.

Take Your Victory Lap with Pride, Marketers

Welcome to the third and final chapter in our basics-of-email-marketing tutorial; you’ll laugh, you’ll cry, you’ll come to terms.  At this point, you’ve written a carefully worded, engaging, attractive, compelling email and sent it out to your email list.  Now what?

Part 3

1.  Tracking and Collecting Metrics

Whichever service you’ve chosen to use will be able to give you stats on how your email was received.  You can check who actually opened and read the email, whose spam box it went to and who discarded it without even reading, amongst many other things.  This data will be invaluable for your organization as you calculate your ROI and decide whether or not to rework the campaign.  I hope you’ll have success the first time, but if not, take advantage of this aspect of email-campaign services to help you do user segmenting and collect information about how to connect to your potential donors in a more focused way.

2. Use Google Analytics.

I’m quite the fan of this free tool that Google offers, as evidenced here (and a lot since then).  I’ve posted this tutorial video before, but if you didn’t catch it the first time, here’s a concise summary of how to use Google Analytics.

After sending out an email newsletter, you should see a major bump in traffic to your site, that day and the following, at least.  Figure out which pages people from your email are visiting, how much of an increase of traffic you had and how long traffic is lingering on your site to determine the effectiveness of your email.

3. Website Improvement

The  days following an email campaign also provide crucial information about how your site is working.  Using analytics, look closely at how the site traffic that comes from your email is moving through your site.  Is your landing page converting or are your visitors just bailing after a few seconds?  Is your site funneling your traffic correctly or botching the job?  When you send out an email campaign, you want to be sure that any link on the page takes your user directly to a place where the can perform the task you’re asking of them, whether it’s the donation page or the blog.  If people are coming to your site from your fundraising email, then just lollygagging around not making donations or commenting on your blog or signing up for your workshops or whatever, it’s worth making some tweaks to your site, to make sure it can actually convert once you bring people to it.

4.) What now?

Those are the basics of launching a successful email marketing campaign.  There’s a lot you can add to the process through careful assessment of the needs of your particular organization, market testing and further demographic investigative work.  The return on investment for email marketing is so high that it’s almost always worth it, if you can put together the interest-piquing material to initially draw people in.  As you are tracking your email marketing metrics, consider this

-How accurate is your list?  How many bounces were there out of your total sent mail?

- How current is your list?  How many people opened your newsletter, out of the total amount sent?

-How many positive responses did you get (how many people actually clicked through)? How many negative (how many people opted out)?

-The number of responses to an email campaign varies wildly based on the content of the email- an informational newsletter will get far fewer click-throughs than a specific promotion.

-3 is a good number to keep in mind with your marketing process: if you’re doing a fundraising drive, give your subscribers three chances to pitch in.  A typical response pattern goes as such: the numbers for the first two mailings will be pretty similar (with a slight decline in the second) and the third will help coax your undecided recipients into completing the task you’re asking of them.  The third mailing may bring in just enough to take  care of the cost of the mailing.

-If you’re not seeing a return by the time you’ve sent three emails, you need to change it up, re-analyze your data and try again.

All right, that’s it for this how-to.

Good luck, happy fundraising, and see you all tomorrow.

Take Two.

Introducing the New, Improved DonationPay

Yes, I know, I totally lied when I said we’d resume regular posting in February.  What I meant to say, though I didn’t know it at the time, was that Mastercard would radically change their convenience-fee regulations, rendering our entire service unusable.  This whole event was quite complicated and honestly, quite boring, so I’ll spare you the gory details.  Needless to say, we have completely re-vamped the DonationPay service!

After the regulations changed, Noah and I both agreed that we wanted to continue with DonationPay and as such, we’ve worked out a deal with Mertitus Payment Solutions to continue to bring NPO’s low-cost credit card processing.  We are now offering, to any 501 (c)(3) organization, full service, totally awesome, easily used credit card processing, sans convenience fee.  Our service is completely free of monthly charges, set up fees and per-transaction costs.  Sign up for our service and we take an industry-standard 3 percent per transaction, but you’ll still never get a bill from us.  There are no monthly costs or pesky 25 cent per-transaction fees.  We have the friendliest (I swear) customer service, a comprehensive Payment XP system where you can easily manage your account, and we can customize your donation pages to match your existing website.  Seriously, it’s a great deal, so get started by signing up today.  We can have a merchant account going for you in 2 business days.  We’re still as committed as ever, to helping your non-profit achieve online financial success.

The Mastercard Regulations Fiasco (as it is know affectionately around the office) has not, however, impacted this blog terribly much.  We’ll still be offering all our best observations and (sometimes totally non-expert) opinions and tips from the non-profit sector.  We’ll still be featuring a Non-Profit of the Week.  I’ll still probably be subtly pushing all our readers toward adopting shelter dogs.  We still want to help all the NPO’s out there struggling with your online fundraising.

So, that’s it in a nutshell.  Come check out our excellent new service today and be sure to check back in on the blog often.

-A.J.

DonationPay is Live!!

The radio silence here on the blog has been because of our push to launch DonationPay out of beta (boo!) and into live mode (yay!!)- now that it’s up and running, we’ll be resuming regular posting.

We’re so excited to have our site ready to accept visitors; we hope your non-profit or ones you know will enjoy taking advantage of our free convenience-fee processing, as well as the resources available on our blog.  We’re ready to grow our online community and continue serving the non-profit sector.

Start the Sign Up Process Here

We can’t wait to work with you!

-A.J., Noah, and The DonationPay Team