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.

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.

Try not to let the office dullard cramp your style, as you create your newsletter

So it’s an exciting day in the office for us nerds, as Glee is returning tonight after a terribly long hiatus- our squeeees! can be heard for miles.   I will try, however, to focus on the business at hand, which is Part 2 of this weeks email marketing tutorial.  Here goes. . .

Part 2:

1. Check It, Y’all

So you’ve written and designed a fabulous html email marketing newsletter or fundraising manifesto (or whatever it is you crazy kids are working on these days) and you think you’re ready to send it out.  Well, bad news: you’re not.  You have to test this thing before you send it out, so you don’t flood your entire list’s inbox with incorrect usages of their, there and they’re, dead links, inappropriate exclamation points and spellings of the word ‘definitely’ that somehow use an ‘a’.

As you are checking your email, make sure:

-your spelling, grammar and flow are impeccable and in keeping with the tone you will use in future emails.

-the content of your email matches the subject line.

-your organizations contact info is in two (2) different places in the email, but usually not more.  A link at the top and a link at the bottom of the page will do just fine.

- An opt-out message is included at the bottom of the page.   With a good, content-rich, engaging e-newsletter you won’t lose many subscribers, so don’t sweat it; an unsubscribe link at the bottom of the page is just good form and also a lot of services you might use for this project actually require it.

- you’ve checked EVERY link in your email and made sure it goes where it needs to go, not to anywhere inappropriate, of course, and not to a ‘Page Not Found’ purgatory.

- your email is written as if it is to one person only.  No ‘all of you’ or ‘you guys’- just ‘you’ and ‘your’ and other singular statements.  If you’ve written your email as you would address a speech to a crowd, please change it now to address the individual reader.  I’ll wait.

2.) Test It

Now that you’ve checked your email for errors in tone, grammar and content, it’s time to test it out.

-check the look of your email in as many different email and browser platforms as you can.  Create test email addresses at all the free sites (gmail, hotmail, yahoo etc.), so you can test every newsletter in this way.  You want to be sure that all your images work, the layout of your page is not radically altered, and that every relevant piece of information is visible.

-Spam-check.  Send copies out to ten people you know personally and find out if the email went to their spam folders.

-get notes on the effectiveness of the message, the aesthetic and the content of the email, maybe from your spam-test folks.

3.) Send It Out

This part should be extremely self-explanatory, especially if you’re using a service that makes this step even easier.  However, timing is important here: consider the demographic of your audience.  If you’re sending out a volunteer recruitment newsletter aimed mostly at high school kids, avoid sending it during school hours.  If most of your readers will be working standard hours (Monday-Friday, 9-5), don’t send it on Monday morning, when it will blend in with the beginning-of-the-week spam influx.  Best practice for a normal, working adult demographic is to send marketing emails on Tuesday or no later than Wednesday morning.

Tomorrow: tracking and follow up in Part 3!

Have a great Tuesday, everyone.

-A.J.

Get Suited Up For An Email Marketing Extravaganza!!

This week, I’ll be doing a three part tutorial about how, exactly, to launch a successful email marketing campaign.  I know that this method of direct marketing can be frustrating and expensive, but a well-calibrated e-fundraising letter can really rake in the dough or drum up serious interest in your non-profit’s website.  There are plenty of services out there- like Constant Contact and Emma (we prefer the latter)- who can help you get set up with a minimum of fuss; their whole business is making email marketing easier for you.  There is also software you can buy, consultants you can hire and ways you can do this a little more on the cheap.  For this how-to, I’m going to assume that your organization has a little money to spend and has someone reasonably web-savvy on staff.

How to Launch Your Successful Email Marketing Campaign, Part 1:

1.)  Strategize

To begin your campaign, have a strategy meeting with everyone on staff who will be involved in the project.  Talk about what message you want to send with your newsletter- is it a hardcore fundraising email or are you going to start with a soft-sell email trying to solicit traffic to your site or blog?  With a monthly service, you can advance your message every time: maybe start with a ‘Welcome’-ish letter, detailing the resources and info available on your site and a brief description of the undoubtedly amazing work your organization is doing.  You can move forward with specific fundraising drives more easily with an email list that’s already quite familiar with your organization.  In any case, get everyone working on this thing on the same page in your initial strategy meeting.

Also to think about while strategizing:

What is your budget and how will your money be best spent?

-What service should you use?  We recommend Emma, but there are dozens out there that could fit the bill for what you need.

2.) Design Your Email Template

Emma and similar services all offer free html email templates for your organization to use while setting up your online campaign.  These are easy to use and can be customized to fit your non-profits’ aesthetic identity.  When you’re designing the email, just remember that all best design practices and principles apply: keep it consistent with your site, your branding and ambiguous enough to be used for the variety of e-newsletters you will want to send.  Use your template for every email you send; your recipients will associate the visual design of your template with your organization, so make something you like enough to not switch it up for awhile.

3.) Write Your First Email Newsletter

When you sit down to write your letter, first consider the tone.  The tonal content of your newsletters should remain consistent, every month or week or however often you choose to send it out (btw, we recommend not more than twice monthly).  You don’t necessarily need a professional copywriter, just someone familiar with your organization and who can create engaging, concise content.  No matter what, keep the tone consistent.  If you use serious, corporate language the first time around, be prepared to keep it that way.  If you want your emails to be hee-larious more than you want them to be informative, than be prepared to sustain the funny.  A good tenet for most organizations is to follow the same rules that apply to blogging, but in a slightly more formal medium: keep it light, short, personable (but not too personal) and direct.  If you’re doing a fundraising drive, devote your letter to asking for money, telling your readers why you need it and what it will be used for.  Period.  If you want people to visit your site or blog, include excerpts or examples of the materials available.  Don’t muddy the waters with too much content or send out an email without enough content to be compelling.  A definitive call-to-action is essential.  The idea is to develop a distinctive, immediately-identifiable voice, that your readers respond to and don’t send directly to their trash box.

4.) What’s Up with Your Email List?

There are 3 above-board ways to acquire an email list: buy one, rent one or cultivate one yourself.  The best way, of course, is to develop a list yourself.  A list can be culled from blog subscribers, donors, site visitors, contacts out here in the real world, and dozens of other sources that all your non-profit worker bees out there are already pretty familiar with.  That being said, though, if you are a mid-size non-profit, it can still be pretty hard to come up with ten thousand email addresses that you’re vaguely sure will open your emails and not instantly trash them.  Even if you start out with a purchased list, which is frowned upon, make it a major priority to be building up your own marketing index.  This article about building up your email marketing list has some helpful tips and also a very persuasive passage about why NOT to buy pre-made email marketing lists.  The author’s most salient point, as far as I’m concerned, is this: if you could have an email go out to 100 people who care about your organization or 1000 people who couldn’t pick it out of a lineup of one, which would you pick?  That’s what I thought.

All right, folks, that’s it for now.  Stay tuned for the sequel and threequel to this post, arriving at a laptop/desktop near you later this week.

-A.J.

Shake The Money Tree

Fundraisers Galore

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times. . . for fundraising.  But seriously folks, all terrible, obvious literary references aside, fundraising in a recession can be incredibly difficult and incredibly rewarding.  Giving means more when there’s less to go around.  I’ve written at length in previous posts about how fabulously the Interwebs can convey your marketing messages and how useful a tool basic SEO is, but have left the direct, out-there-in-the-community side of things without much comment.

Grass-roots fundraising can be so much fun.  Observe:

Pie throwing, HA!

Some of the most satisfying experiences in my adult life have been coming together with my friends, family and community to do some grass-roots fundraising.  It’s spring, we’ve got good weather coming (though in the Northwest it will, admittedly, be a bit of a wait), and the time is right to get out there and raise some cash for a worthy cause.  This type of fundraising doesn’t need the power and structure of an organization to make things happen, it just needs a motivated adult or savvy teenager to get things started.  With two recent major natural disasters and all the non-profits we all know about that ALWAYS need money, why not add a fundraiser to your list of things to do for spring cleaning?

Five Community Fundraising Ideas

1.) Throw a Secret Cafe

I did this with friends in college on several occasions, for various causes that floated our boats at the time.  It helped us build our activist community and taught us some extremely valuable lessons about marketing, the many perils and joys of restaurant management and, weirdly, how to properly cook a turkey.

The idea is this: Your home is a restaurant for one night.  Put up some flyers at your local grocery store or neighborhood bulletin board (and don’t forget to tell all your friends), advertising the date and time of your Secret Cafe and a number people can call for reservations (I’d recommend 2 seatings- for dinner, one at 6 pm and one at 8), though of course walk-in guests are welcome.  Decide on a donation amount that people will pay at the front door (usually between $5 and $20, for a low-key SC).  A Secret Cafe works best in a house with indoor/outdoor space.  Set up a bunch of tables and enlist your pals to be the servers for the night.  You can either decide to buy the ingredients for your Secret Cafe Meal (here is a sample menu) or go and ask local restaurants to contribute ingredients or dishes.  In my  experience, some restaurants/co-ops/farms/where ever are willing to at least donate a side dish, a crucial ingredient or maybe a keg of beer (if it’s that kind of party), especially if you display news of their generous sponsorship on your flyers.  The easiest meals to prepare for Secret Cafes are ones that lend themselves to family style eating: roast a couple of large turkeys,  multiple racks of ribs or large casseroles of pasta or veggies.  Make cupcakes for desert or something similarly easy to serve.

For a busy SC, you’ll need to consider your ‘staff’ for the night and plan accordingly: maybe 3 people in the kitchen, 1 or 2 shifts of dishwashing (if you’re not using disposable plates), 3 servers and a host at the door to seat people with reservations and without.

The food takes some working out, but this is a great project for a group that’s already enthusiastic about entertaining.  I’ve had some of the most delicious meals of my life at various Secret Cafe’s and been a harried waitress, cook-in-a-pinch and bartender at a few, as well.  This is a great way, slightly more formal than a barbeque, to have a fabulous meal with your neighbors, not to mention raising that moola.

2.) Car Wash.

Total cliche, yes, but it’s spring, dammit, and you shouldn’t tamper with this tried and true formula for hustling up some quick cash.  This is a great one for teenagers to plan and have fun with- turn up the tunes (like this one), put out that money jar, and be sure to have a large cache of dry towels at the ready.

3.)  50\50 Community Garage Sale

As an avid garage saler, there is almost nothing that delights me more than running across a whole block that has pooled their used-goods resources and organized a multi-family garage sale.  Extra awesomeness at these events is often generated by a baked goods or cold drink table.  The next time you’re planning one of these extravaganzas (and, c’mon, spring cleaners, you know you want to!), consider giving 50 percent of your proceeds to a designated cause, or making an agreement with your neighbors that everyone will give half to the charity of their choice.  This can not only help you get rid of those old bar stools, VHS tapes and Star Wars posters, it could also, say, do a lot toward the rebuilding efforts in Haiti or go to your favorite local arts organization that is suffering in these trying times.  Or, for us stalwart Commie liberals, there’s always, always, an NPR pledge drive.

4.) Fun Run. Just don’t eat a big plate of Fettucini Alfredo (a la Michael Scott) beforehand and you’ll already be ahead of the game.  I’ll let EHow tell you how to get this thing rolling, as it is a complicated process.    This event will take a lot of planning, but is an incredibly fun and healthful way to join a community in a single purpose.

5.) Rent a Karaoke Machine.  This is not so much an idea for a specific fundraiser as a general tip: go out, rent one, invite 30 or so friends, neighbors and strangers, mix up a couple (or six) big jugs of hard tea or blended margaritas, put out that donation jar (a buck per song you sing, five bucks so you don’t have to sing, 5 bucks donation per drink etc.) and just see where the funnest night of your life takes you.  This is another fundraiser that could be held in a friendly bar, willing to yield their mic and karaoke system to some folks trying to raise some money and have a good time.  You can also use a rented karaoke machine to have a kid-friendly fundraiser, but that’s not really my area of expertise.

And now onto online fundraising: here are some sweet basic adjustments you can make to your site to take in more money for your organization.  Tinkering with your website in the middle of a beautiful spring day is, yes, slightly less fun than having a backyard barbeque or making bracelets for a cause, but suck it up, and you’ll be glad you did.

5 Easy Tips for Increased Donations Online

1.) Keep your Donate Button visible and above the fold.  If you’re a non-profit and one of your websites objectives is to raise money (and, somehow, I have a feeling it is), don’t be scared to place it prominently on your site.  ’Above the fold,’ in this case, means placed in the top half of your website, so no one has to scroll up or down to see it.  It needs to be immediately visible when your visitors land on your index page, or you’re looking at countless missed opportunities for donations.  This seems basic, but you’d be surprised how many people resist, or somehow, crazily, believe that online fundraising isn’t a big enough deal to warrant coveted space in the most visible areas of their site.  It IS a big deal and you WILL regret it if you don’t let your fundraising flag fly, in the most prominent place possible on your website.

2.) Make Your Goals Clear.  Keep a running tally of how much money you’ve raised and how much you need to raise to meet your fundraising goals- donors like to see the progress and are more inclined to donate if there’s a target amount specified.  I’ve already praised The Uniform Project for their use of this exact fundraising technique, and it’s still going smashingly for them, as they round the corner into this last couple weeks of their project.

3.) Provide Volunteer Opportunities. It’s counter-intuitive to be offering people ways to not contribute their cold hard cash, as a way to increase fundraising efforts, but the fact of the matter is that most organizations need from their donors both time and money and the two usually go hand in hand.   If you offer non-monetary options for people to contribute to your organization, this will also help you build up your donor base.  People who care enough to volunteer their time will almost always end up giving money to your organization.  When you do rope some folks into volunteering for you, here’s how to keep them happy.

4.) Timing is Everything.  If you use a service like Constant Contact or Emma to send newsletters or fundraising outreach emails (or if you don’t), there are some best practice tips to take into account: for the love of Pete, send your fundraising emails out early in the week (by Tuesday morning).  You want your email to be waiting in your potential donors inboxes when they get to work in the morning, so the smart thing to do is to send out any mass-mailings (repeat after me: it’s not spam!) late on Monday night or early in business hours on Tuesday.  Disobey me and regret it, dear readers.

Also, parenthetically, here are some things to ponder as you’re assembling those definitely-not-spam newsletters:

-keep the tone personable, but professional.

-keep it short.

-send consistently or don’t send at all.

-don’t be afraid to ask for what you want.

-if you’re not seeing any return, change it up and see what happens.

5.) Get Your Narrative Straight. People love a good story. Donors in particular love to be told exactly how their money is being put to use.  We all know the why, the who and the what we’re giving to; what we want to know is the how. How does it work, who does this money go to, how does it get there?  These are questions all your potential donors will have in their minds as they’re deciding whether to add that extra 50 bucks to their bills this month.  Explain it to them, in a relatable, specific way, with a minimum of overly-salesy language and you’ll increase your donation volume almost instantly.

All right, those are my dueling lists for the day.  Those you already enjoying shorts-weather, get on out there to your car washes and secret cafe’s and outdoor karaoke fundraisers- enjoy that sunshine, raise some cash and get to know a neighbor you’ve never met before.  The rest of us cold-weather nerds will still be inside, hiding from the drizzle and bluster of  long winter, making some slight adjustments to our websites that will yield some big cash.

-A.J.

Take charge of your sites potential

This is one of those weeks where I’m feeling like the creative well is dry, so I’ll be directing you today to a couple fascinating articles to help you develop your website further.

These 25 tips on how to improve your website are quite general, perhaps just the teeniest bit dated, and some of them are repeats of concepts I’ve already tried to drill into your thick skulls (just kidding, readers), but can be used as a kind of Web Improvement for Dummies bible.  If you don’t know too much about the web world and are trying to suss out best practices for guiding your website to conceptual and practical success, this is a handy one to have printed out and tacked on your office wall.

Article Number Two, for your consideration, is a fairly comprehensive guide to improving the conversion rate on your website.  The term conversion sounds kinda culty and scary, but it’s perfect for what it actually means: as far as web sites go, your conversion rate is the percentage of your web visitors that perform the task you want them to perform.  All websites have a different idea of what a conversion is, for their particular site.  For us, a conversion on the blog is someone subscribing to it and on our DonationPay official site, it’s someone signing up to be notified.  For an online retailer, it would be a sale and for NPO’s a conversion might be signing up for a newsletter or making a donation. Before you start your web design process, one of the first things you should decide is what a conversion is for you and build the site based on guiding your web traffic to perform that particular task.  And if you already have a site but you’re not sure what a conversion is for you, chances are your site is underperforming, so get sure, right quick, and start using these tips to guide your web traffic to the right place.

-A.J.

When you’re starting up a NPO, a small business or taking an existing business online, one of the most stressful aspects of your transition\startup can be finding a web designer.  Its hard enough to manage a website and wrangle it to even moderate success, once it’s already operational, but getting a site built that fits your NPO’s mission, looks the way you want it to (or some facsimile thereof), is within your price range and has the functionality you need. . . well, I’ll just say that it can seem sometimes to be an insurmountable task.  There are many factors that contribute to the creation of a successful website and one of the most important is that most elusive creature: the good web designer.

Your web designer should make you feel like this:

I Want To Go To There

Not like this:

Ha, Ha, Ya Burnt!

I digress, but seriously, picking a web designer or design company to build your site will take some time, some energy and definitely some cash, but, as usual, your efforts will be rewarded in the end.  Here’s some tips on the selection process and what to look for in a web designer:

Why You Should Pick Them

1.) You Think To Yourself : ‘I Can Work With This Person’

Assuming your potential hire is also a competent designer, you should evaluate their compatibility with whoever will be their primary contact at your organization.  Are they personable, genuine and non-salesy?  Do they make you feel comfortable?   This is a very non-specific tip, I know, but basically all I’m saying is for Pete’s sake, just make sure you like the guy before you pay him to work on your site for three months.

2.) You Like Their Portfolio

If it’s a small business or single-practitioner that you’re looking to hire from, be sure they can show you a portfolio that showcases their skills in programming, design and information architecture.  Be sure that you actually like this portfolio.  Most companies have at least sample portfolios up online (including us), and should also be able to provide you with at least one business reference, so you can talk to someone who’s actually had the experience of working with them.  Anyhow, be sure you like the portfolio and if you’re still not sure, ask to see more of their work.  Bonus points for other sites built with companies in your industry, but if  a company has designed lots of other sites for people you know or work with and their portfolio leaves you totally cold, don’t hire them.  You’re looking for the rare (ish) combo of liking the designer and liking the work.

3.) They Tell You ‘No’

This is not true 100% of the time, but often your vision for a website that represents your business is going to be a lot more expensive and complicated than you think it should be.  If you say to your potential designer that you’d like a site that can keep an archive, be regularly updated with new content, contain a blog, a store, a donation station and incorporate design elements reminiscent of Frank Lloyd Wright, all for around, say, 3 grand and they say ‘oh, totally, no problem, we can do that for you in 2 weeks’. . . well, either they’re severely undercharging for their time, they don’t know what they’re talking about, or they can’t clearly communicate what their process is.  A large, comprehensive, content-managed site is a serious undertaking, even for a big design company and while it’s not your job to know exactly how much web work costs, how long it takes and what is and isn’t possible, it is theirs.  And they should tell you.  You want a web designer that’s going to help you get the most and best bang for your buck- no matter how much that may be- and someone who will strategize honestly with you about what you can and can’t get for how much you’re willing to spend.

4.) They Give You an Incredibly Clear Estimate and Work Plan

Once you go through the initial meet-and-greet, look at their portfolio and decide to proceed to the next step, most companies should give you a written cost estimate and plan of attack.  This estimate should clearly detail the amount of hours the project is anticipated to take, the cost of labor for those hours and a statement of what, exactly, they will provide for the price they’re quoting.  When we do web design work, Noah and I come up with a low-end estimate (the cost of the whole project will not be below x amount) and a high-end estimate (the cost of the whole project will not exceed x amount) and we write a carefully detailed Work Prospectus that states, in precise detail, what features, design, project management, and functionalities are included in the prepared estimate.  If a client decides they’d like to add or subtract a particular feature of their planned site (say, they want to eliminate their online store, but add a subscription service), we re-do their estimate and Work Prospectus.  You should feel  confident that you know what’s going to happen once they start work, how much time (approximately) the project will take and have a clear design plan when you start.  Your web designer should also let you know things like how many design re-drafts you’re permitted before you start getting charged for labor, how much the cost of processing will be for your online store and should also offer reasonable suggestions about design and site development.

5.) They Want A Lot of Information About The Project

Don’t be put off if your potential web designer comes back to you multiple times about your desired aesthetic, functionality and site mission; be excited!  This means you have a web designer who cares enough to prepare you an accurate estimate and one who is invested in making a site as close as possible to the one you see in your minds eye.

What You Should Expect Throughout The Process

1.)  Promptness

After you hire someone, you should be able to get ahold of them, with a turnaround time of one business day.

2.)  A Thorough Timeline

Your web designer should have no problem telling you where they are on your project and where they expect to be in a week.

3.) Excellent Communication

Your web designer should give you regular updates on the status of your project and be professional and honest about how much things cost and how much they know.  If you’re having an issue with the quality or quantity of their communication, let them know.

4.) A Product You Love

At the end of the process, you should come out with a website you love that is a pretty close approximation of what you wanted in the first place, taking into account cost and functional limitations.

5.) A Clear Agreement about Upcoming Web Work

Most large sites, especially ones with a store, a newsletter or regularly updated content, require substantial management from the administrative end.  Your web designer should let you know how much it will cost for web management per month, if he or she is available to perform those services and what kinds of repairs are included in the cost of the initial service.  If maintenance work wasn’t included in your initial estimate, expect to pay for it or have someone within your organization learn to manage the site themselves.

How To Be A Good Client

I’ve included this last bit because being a good client is difficult. The easiest way get a product you love is to work harmoniously with your web designer- challenge them, expect their best work and devotion to your project, but also listen, compromise and cede to some of their more informed opinions.  It’s not like being an unruly or demanding guest in a restaurant; your web designer isn’t going to spit in your food or, say, ruin your website.  But there are some things that make projects take twice as long, cost more and feel exponentially more stressful.

1.) Please Know What You Want

When you get an estimate and initiate a project, be prepared to fill out a worksheet on what you want from your website: visually, functionally and informationally.  If you tell your web designer what you want at the beginning and then decide halfway through that you’d like to go in a different direction, expect to pay to have the project started from scratch.  Your web designer is not obligated to perform extra work because of your changing whims, so it’s smart to have an organizational meeting about what the desired website will look like and do, before initiating work with a web firm.

2.) Listen, for the love of God, Listen

When your web designer gives you suggestions about programming, SEO, information architecture, design or, you know, just about anything pertaining to their area of expertise, listen to them.  You don’t have to make every project modification or feel like you’ve lost control of your project, but, if you’ve selected a web designer that you trust, let them guide the project with their expertise and knowledge of the web world.  When you say you want your web traffic to land on two separate splash pages before they get into your site and your web designer gently tells you that this may have, er, a little bit of a deterrent effect on your chances of success, listen.  Chances are they know better than you.

3.) Do Not Ask For An Estimate Unless You Think You Actually Might Hire

For most companies, a comprehensive estimate and project plan take at least two or three hours work.  The best thing to do is shop around to five or six different web companies, have some phone conversations and whittle it down to two or three in final contention.  Most web designers complete five or six proposals per job they actually get, but, to be respectful, don’t initiate this process unless you’re pretty seriously considering hiring that company to work for you.  Just a heads up that it is super annoying to have to do an 8 page proposal for someone who is clearly not serious about having web work done.

4.) Elect One Person In Your Office to Handle Web Affairs

It can be insanely frustrating to have a constantly-switching point-person. Find a person who has enough time and energy to work with your web designer from a projects inception to it’s completion.  It’s best when we know who has final approval, who represents the interests of your NPO or company and who has the authority to guide the project from your end.

5.) Even When You’re Not Paying, Be Respectful

If you’re working with a company who’s volunteering their time, working at a reduced rate or are helping you out with some initial info to get a site launched, be clear about what you need and expect from them.  If you’re getting someone you know to build you a website for free, talk to them about the site as you would a paid designer, so they know what you’re expecting and so they can assess the actual amount of time the project will require from them.  Don’t expect your web designer to be your indentured IT servant indefinitely; make an agreement about how many hours per month will be spent on your website.  Many companies, including us, have done work for sites and friends whose organizations we believe in, and very happily, I might add.  However, it’s truly helpful to know in advance the depth and breadth of a project you’re getting involved in; don’t tell your web person that it should just be a couple hours a week, when they’re actually expected to comprehensively manage the site, perform maintenance and administrate your sites email newsletter.  It’s better to be honest and up front at the beginning, so you can get a corresponding reply from your web-savvy friend or pro-bono designer, so they’re only doing as many hours of free work as they have to spare and the whole enterprise doesn’t put too much stress on the relationship.

6.)  Be Like The Dude.

Okay, folks, those are the basics: how to find a good web designer and how to act right once you have one.  Good luck finding a web designer\designee relationship that will be creatively, financially and personally rewarding on both ends.

-A.J.

Side note: yes, this video is incredibly dry and boring, but it’s one of the quickest and most comprehensive basic tutorials around.

Before and after: the Presidential Palace in Haiti

Well, enough has been said by more intelligent writers than me about the unspeakably horrible tragedy in Haiti.  They need money, supplies, and bodies down there to assist in the rescue efforts.  Here is a quick list of places to send your financial support:

YeleHaiti- this is Wyclef Jean’s charity; they’ve already raised more than two million bucks and are just getting started.

The American Red Cross- you can also donate through the ITunes store.  Or by text:  I’ll let our gorgeous and brilliant First Lady, Michelle Obama, tell you how:

MercyCorps- also has lots of info about how to volunteer time and supplies.

Google Crisis Response

Action Against Hunger- have been working in Haiti since 1985.

The disaster in Haiti has, for me, really put our recession and national financial troubles in perspective.  We have a moral and humane duty to give what we can spare (and what we can’t)- whether it’s our time, resources or good old cash money.    We all need to come together and help this shaken branch of our human family.

-A.J.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is not like a Magic Eye Painting, where only programming nerds and web designers can see the sailboat behind the chaos. It’s not an esoteric concept or a unicorn or something that only techie geeks can understand.   SEO is a real thing, honest, and if you take note of some of these simple tips, you can build a successful site that will ably promote your business or cause.  No matter how web-savvy or experienced you are (or are not), you can improve the SEO practices of your site.

1.) Choose Keywords Wisely

Picking keywords is an art and a science.  There are many tools online (like WordTracker and the Google Keyword  tool) to help you with keyword research and guide you through the process.  Spending a little time enhancing your keywords, in text and tags, will result in increased traffic that is specific to your business and your website.  I find keyword research to be extremely fun and satisfying- even if you have a couple of false starts with keywords that don’t really pan out, the strategizing and investigation required to revamp or develop your keywords and phrases is pretty edifying.

Below is a video tutorial on how to do keyword research using the Google Keyword Tool.

2.) Title Tags

Your title tags need to be different on every page.  Most search engines, most of the time, will use the title tag on a webpage as the link text that pops up as search results so it needs to be in sentence form, human-readable, 65 characters or less (including spaces)and keyword specific.  It’s crucial to SEO success to spend the time to make sure you’re titling each page with an appropriate and accurate description of the information available on that page.  Your title tags should reflect your keyword strategy-what you discover in your keyword research, you can apply here, to solicit specific appropriate to the corresponding pages of your site.  SEOMoz is pretty much the ultimate resource for SEO tips, blogs and tutorials, and here is their owner, Rand Fishkin’s clear and instructive description of best practices for title tags.  Also, if you have a content managed site (i.e. one built on a Drupal, Joomla, WordPress, or others) there are ways (contained in the above links- you’re welcome!) to work around your CMS and personalize your title tags.  Dudes, you might not want to know about ‘em, but there are ways. . .

3.) Image Tags

Be sure to include keyword-rich alt-tags on images.  You never know when an image might break on your site or be unviewable by someone’s browser your image tags need to be in complete sentences, rife with keywords and descriptive of what the image actually shows.  The search engine crawlers cannot see the images, but they can see the alt text.  Your images add enormous value to your web content; you know that, but the search engines have no way of knowing that (those damn, dirty machines).   You have to tell them what your image is and why it’s relevant- with your alt- tags.  Also, web readers for the blind read the image tags, so this is a chance to make your website accessible to more people.  It’s easy enough to forget to include your image tags (I have been guilty of it many, many times myself on this very blog and others-do as I say, not as I do, as my mom used to say), but you will be doing your business or NPO a great disservice if you do so.  Here’s a more detailed how-to, if you’re so inclined.

4.) Link Building

Link building is a trick of the trade that can easily go awry.  Two relevant links from related sites are exponentially more valuable than ten links of dubious quality.  The search engines algorithms are complicated, but the basic deal is this: Google casts it’s expansive eye all across the web, looking at which sites are connected to other sites, and considering each in-link you have to be akin to a political endorsement- sites with the most links generally show up high on the search engine results pages.  Like political endorsements, some can help, some are neutral and some can badly damage your search engine standing.   Never pay for links, as this is, well, frowned upon by the search engines.  The best, easiest and most enjoyable way to link-build is to continuously update your site with interesting content and link to other industry blogs and sites; the more relevance your site has in the ongoing web dialogue about your industry, cause or featured topic, the easier it will be for you to link to other interesting sites and enhance your popularity with the search engines and your presence on the web.  Check out these savvy, detailed tips on how to improve your link building skills.  Also, these.

5.) Site Maps

This is actually an easy thing to do that some newcomers to the web world find intimidating.

Here is a brief tutorial on how to create and submit a sitemap using free tools.

Submit updated site maps regularly to all major search engines.  Just do it, you won’t be sorry.

6.) Directory Listings

Carefully choosing several online  directories specific to your industry can help your site’s search engine standing enormously.  Not all directories that appear initially to be valuable or relevant actually will be, so do a little research before you get on board with one of these.  Some good ones for non-profits are here, here and here.  Also, of course be sure to submit yourself to larger directories like the ones at Google, Yahoo, Bing, Joeant, Dmoz, etc.  But you already did that, right?  Ahem, I’ll wait while you get on it.

7.)  Social Networking

I know, I know, this is a topic that I have beaten to death in most of my blog posts and this will surely not be the last, but, seriously, social networking can work wonders for your site.  I know Tweeting is ridiculous and Facebook can seem like a steaming cesspool of old high school boyfriends and weirdos covertly trying to sell you something (or, ah, services), but for your business or NPO, both those sites can really be a boon to your web traffic.  There are many factors to consider when using social networking sites to enhance your own site, especially for a non-profit.  Be strategic in terms of which methods you choose, post consistently engaging content and your efforts will be rewarded.  Here is an article from the Chicago tribune about the doors social networking is opening up for non-profits (forgive their poor archive formatting.  Also, for laughs, check out Gawker’s sassy beatdown of annoying Twitter users tweeting their causes.

8.) Blog/ Post Relevant Content

Yep, if you want to have a compelling website, you need to have regularly updated, interesting content.  Period.  There’s really no way around this, so just suck it up and do it.  It’s fun, stimulating and makes you feel connected with your web community and it is the single easiest way to have a dynamic site.  When you’re first building the readership on a blog (like this one), it can feel like your carefully constructed posts are like shots fired into the darkness.  The important thing to remember if you are just starting a companion blog to your website is that it will take some time.  But once people start finding their way to you, they’ll have a fabulous archive to browse and a way to further connect with you, your website, and your business or NPO.  Also, the search engines know which sites are regularly updated and can recognize when web traffic is repeatedly returning to your site.  That’s right, search engines are now smart enough to assess whether or not your site is valuable.  Make it valuable.

So, again, man up (or, you know, lady up) and do the damn thing; it’s addictive after awhile and will make a dramatic impact on your web traffic.

Here’s some basics on how to write a blog post using WordPress:

9.) Analytics

One of the easiest way to track your burgeoning web progress is to install a free analytics package on your site.  It will let you track how many views each page of your site is getting, where your web traffic is coming from and gives a daily breakdown of your visitors and site activity.  This is an invaluable, free tool that can help guide your site to greatness.

10.) Be Dilligent

All these tips are fine and good, but SEO is like an endurance trial: it requires a constant, low-level effort that will ultimately bring you to achieve your web goals.  If something isn’t working, if your site is underperforming or your keywords aren’t working . . . well, the best advice I can give you is to try, try again.  Try a new  SEO trick every day, read articles, get proactive with your web presence and you will be richly rewarded for your efforts.

Have fun and happy search optimizing!

-A.J.