Support Elemental

-Keep available navigation minimal. Make sure that your users don’t get distracted by other navigation on your donation page. It’s a great idea to have links/navigation on the Thank You page (the page that your contributors will see after they’ve made a successful donation) but don’t distract potential contributors with bells and whistles.  If your organization runs lots of events or has a particularly content-rich website, be very sure that you don’t include full navigation on the donation page- it will likely be a distraction for your donors and will tacitly encourage them to explore other areas of your site instead of contributing.  Let them accomplish their business (by business, I mean financially supporting your organization), then direct them back to a full-nav page of your site to maintain engagement with your organization.

-Keep It Donor Friendly.  Simple, clean and usable: make sure every graphic and word of text on your donation page packs a big punch.  Your donation page is not the time to give a lengthy description of your mission statement- if they’re ready to contribute, they already know what you do.  Keep information about your organization’s mission brief and instead use your text to illustrate where your donors dollars will go, specifically, and, of course, to profusely thank them for their support.

-Make Your Suggested Amounts Count.  Many organizations include suggested amounts on their donation forms and it’s something we highly recommend.  It’s different for every organization and fundraising campaign, but using a very small amount as the example donation (i.e. just $5 will do x at our organization) is a great way to shoot yourself in the foot.  Unless it’s specifically necessary to your fundraising plan, start your suggested amount buttons at between 20 and 25 dollars.  Asking for 5 bucks here and there may work for Ira Glass, but it’s probably not going to yield a substantial enough result for organization that don’t have massive donor bases.

-Your Donate Button Is Not Your Fundraising Campaign.  Putting a ‘Donate Now!’ front and center on every page of your website is a given, but easy donation buttons do not a fundraising campaign make.  Track your Analytics (and if you don’t have Google Analytics or another program already installed, for the love of God, install it now!) numbers and figure out which page of your website is most effectively funneling donors to your donation page.  Know your potential donors likely pathways through your site to conversion (donation) like the back of your hand and make sure it’s a simple leap from every page of your site.  For organizations relying largely on individual donations, it’s extremely important to clarify to donors how and why they should donate.  Don’t just slap a button on there; make sure your donation links are well and prominently placed and provide a logical through-line for a donors visit to your site.  Be sure your website sets up a narrative-style process your donor can follow from start to finish; Home page to About Us page to Blog to Donation, know what I mean?

More fundraising season prep posts coming soon!  Happy Fundraising!

-AJ

Designing Websites for Non-Profit’s

As a web designer/developer working with non-profits and grassroots organizations, I have probably learned more from the groups I work with than they have learned from me. Groups working for social change have specific needs that differ from those of other organizations and individuals.

Step Back, Listen

This is the hardest part – especially for techies who tend to think that we already know everything. But the fact is that before starting the design process, and before implementing the technical solutions, you need to have a very clear idea of three things:

- What is the goal of the organization?
- What do they want a website for?
- Who is the intended audience of the website?

The more specifically those questions can be answered, the more closely integrated will the website be with the actual work of the organization, and the more relevant and useful it will become.

Reflect the Work of the Organization

A website isn’t just a collection of cool widgets – it’s a communication’s tool that is supposed to support the work of the organization.

Within 10 seconds of looking at the front page of a (good) website, you should already have a pretty good idea about what the organization does, what their current projects are, how to get involved in the work, and last but definitely not least – how to contribute financially to the organization.

Designing Technical Solutions Based on Needs

The expertise of the web designer really comes into play once the initial research has been done. Every design decision that is made hereafter, whether technical, graphical, or relating to content, should convey the essence of the organization to the intended audience.

This goes for the design of the logotype, the choice of font and colors for the site, but also more general attributes such as how “busy” you want the website to be.  A bustling, overflowing website conveys a wide array of activity and action, and a simple, clean and less cluttery website allows for a stronger focus on a certain goal or project. One is not better than the other, rather, they serve different purposes.

Integrate With the Cloud

Creating content is a time-consuming and costly process for the staff and volunteers of any organization. Because of that, it is important to make the most out of every piece of content that is created.

So, when the non-profit project manager hits “Save Post”, without having to do anything else, we want that information to pop up on the front page, we want it to be tweeted, we want it to be sent out to the mailing list, appear on Facebook, and so on.

The internet today is not so much defined by a collection of individual websites, but rather by the communications between them — the apps and social media that exists in “the cloud”. I’ve yet to come across a non-profit that doesn’t use Facebook, Twitter, and other networks in their outreach. And the web designer needs to look at what the organization wants to accomplish, and design a strategy for how to make that happen in the cloud.

Website Launched, Project Finished! Or…?

The launch of the website may be the end of the project for the web designer, but it is most likely the beginning of a project for the organization.

Thus, the web designer needs to be upfront about the time and cost involved in maintaining the new website once it’s launched. The hosting account needs to be renewed, the CMS system needs to be upgraded at regular intervals, the database needs to be backed up. Who is going to oversee these processes?

It’s a big mistake to leave these things unsaid. Staff will rightfully get annoyed because their work gets distracted by work they haven’t accounted for in advance. And a web designer needs to be aware that not all people in the world knows what a database is, or that it has to backed up. So it’s important to be really attentive when communicating these things, and make sure that everyone involved understands what is being said.

Avoiding these bits will cause grievances for the organization that was to benefit from the new website. It will also most likely mean that they will never hire the web designer again – and who could blame them?

Easy to Update

Back in the days of static html websites, updating content on websites used to be a time consuming and technical process. Now, with user friendly CMS’s in abundance, we’ve moved forward, right? Well, not always.

It should be a priority of the web designer to make the website as easy as possible to maintain. Is the organization going to add a newsflash? Well, then there should be a button in the admin panel that says “Add Newsflash”. End of discussion. These days, with tools such as WordPress available, if the website is configured correctly, there is really no justification for asking non-profit staff to add html tags to their text – they have more important things to do.

Tight Budgets and Fundraising

There is one characteristic that seems to be present in every single non-profit organization: a tight budget. For one, that means that we have to work hard to find simple, yet powerful solutions to the needs of the organizations. Few organizations have the money to pay a web developer to work for hours and hours.

And because of the tight budgets, most organizations spends a lot of time fundraising.  A website can — should — play an important role in a fundraising strategy, and it’s up to the web designer to propose how that is going to look. And in order to create effective fundraising solutions, the web designer needs to understand the process of fundraising. What does it mean to “cultivate a donor”? Is that some sort of organic farming?

Which conveniently brings me back to the original point: to create effective websites for non-profits, the web designer needs to understand what non-profits are, and what their needs and goals are. That’s first, middle, and last.

Get to work!

Johan Genberg is a lead developer at DonationPay and a Web Designer/Developer with TrickleUp Web Design, where he works with non-profits and grassroots organizations working for social change.  Check out his webpage at www.trickleupweb.com or get in touch: johan(at)donationpay.org.

The Pre-Holiday Donation Page Workout

Warm Up Your Index Page: Start on your website’s index/main page.  How easy is it to get to your donation form?  Can you immediately see the button that will take you to the page?  Are your Donate links and buttons prominently displayed?  If you have various fundraising campaigns running, are there links, front and center, that will take the user (who right now is you) directly to a page where you can easily complete whatever conversion your organization wants (whether this is signing up for an email list, making a donation, engaging with the blog content or following your organization on Twitter)?  Check the other pages of your site- is the Donation link prominent and easily found?  What you’re looking for in the warmup are any stumbling blocks to making a donation or engaging with your organization in the intended way. . . make sure you note any confusing areas or extra steps.  From the Donate links on your front page, you should be taken directly to the donation form- every page between a donate button and the actual donation form loses some donors.  The idea is to make the process as easy and painless as possible- don’t give your donors any excuse to ‘abandon the shopping cart.’

Exercise # 1: Donation Page Calisthenics

Donation page dress rehearsal- you’ve arrived on the donation page after a brief warm up and review of your site’s pages.  Now that you’re here, take a look around.  Is your page understandable and easy to use, even for the least tech savvy folks?  Make a test donation and see how it feels.  Is it easy to enter your billing information, to set up a recurring payment and maybe to enter an honorarium message if you’re donating in someone else’s honor?  Does the Thank-You page you land on after you’ve successfully completed a payment acknowledge your contribution and give you an option to return to the home site, sign up for a blog, or share new of your donation with friends through social media?  Make sure your donation experience is smooth, quick and makes you feel more deeply engaged with your organization.

Exercise #2: Strength Training For Your Story

What’s the story?  It’s tricky to bring a narrative to the forefront of the donation process, but the most successful donation pages do just this.  Is it apparent to your donors where their donation will go and how it will be spent?  Do they have an idea of what their donation will do?  It’s important to keep your donation form clean and user-friendly, but donors also like to see graphics and small text blocks describing what your organization does.  Limit long-winded explanations and favor anecdotal evidence of your donors positive effects within your mission.  Earthshare’s donation page does a fabulous job of this, as does A Home Within’s- both give great specific examples of what a donation will do and donors can easily visualize where their donation dollars will actually go when they make a donation.  Review your page- does it tell or suggest a story that donors are a part of?

Exercise #3: Some Social Media Cardio 

Are you linked in to social media? Once you’ve made a donation, can you easily Tweet about it or post to your Facebook page through links on the Thank You page or on your organization’s website?  Is it easy to join the conversation?  Is your donation page taking advantage of the, essentially, free marketing available through your donors social networks?  Make sure that once their donation is completed, your donor can immediately share a link to your donation page or a link to a content page on your site.

Exercise # 4: Stretch To Keep Your Fundraising Limber

What are the suggested donation amounts on your site and donation page?  Are you selling yourself short?  Donors respond well to suggested donation amounts, but will donate less if given the option.  Unless your fundraising plan is specifically based on lots of small donations, your suggested amounts should begin at $20 or over.  Of course, donors have the option of donating whatever amount they want, but does your site present a substantial enough example donation and with the example, provide a compelling enough reason for them to make that contribution?  Make sure your donation page offers inspiring reasons supporters should make a considerable donation to your organization.

 An Analytical Cool Down

Now’s the time for analysis: do you have your analytics program hooked up to your donation page?  Is it easy for your organization to track a donors path from site entry to donation completion?  Are you set up to do the kind of tracking necessary to make improvements to your site’s funnel and conversion rate?  Be sure you’re set up to collect as much data about your donors and your donation process as possible, because even if your fundraising is booming, there is always room for improvement.

Whew, that’s it for now!  Pat yourself on the back, take a look at your notes from the workout and get started improving your donation page.  We’ll be posting lots of helpful tips and tutorials in the next few months to help get prepared for the upcoming push.  The holidays are upon us, folks, let’s get your organization’s donation page tanned, rested and ready to bring in record fundraising dollars this season!

Happy fundraising,

AJ

The Convio white paper is very detailed and well-written, per usual, but the overall message is at once disappointing and liberating: there really is no magic bullet when it comes to donation page formatting.  There’s no set of rules that, if you follow them to the letter, will ensure online fundraising success.  There’s a major upside to this, though, because while there’s no perfect donation page that all organizations could use to really rake in the donation dollars, there’s also no wrong way to go about figuring out what works for your organization.  For our company, the most efficient method we’ve found to improve our site’s conversion rate is through direct user testing.  This does not have to be expensive, or massively time consuming, or unpleasant.  For us, it yielded some amazing results without breaking the bank or requiring the focused attention of our whole staff.  It was also fascinating.

We recently went through a redesign of our own website- new logo, new materials, pricing changes, new add campaign, etc.  While we performed hours of testing in-house and drove ourselves crazy over what to add, what to leave out, how much information is too much and how much is not enough, we couldn’t really come to a resting point on what we wanted the final site to present.  We’d all reviewed the site so many times that we started to not even be able to see it, you know what I mean?  We didn’t have a ton of staff time or financial resources to devote to strenuous testing, but we wanted to make sure that visitors to our site were converting into clients, or at least contacting us if they had further questions.  There are many user testing companies to consider- we chose UserTesting.com and I can’t tell you how highly we recommend this totally reasonably-priced, super-gosh-wow-awesome service.

Here’s how it works:

Once you choose how many users will be in your testing round, you’ll choose the targeted demographic (you can select your users by age, income bracket, gender etc.) that you’d like to test your site or you can leave it up to the company you’ve chosen and keep it completely random.  With the service we’ve used, we were able to then assign the testers three tasks to complete on our website.  For one of our rounds of testing, these were the three tasks we set for our users to complete:

-find and complete the online application.

-find and use the contact information to contact us for more info on the service.

-learn about our service and describe in detail what our company does.

For us, the testing was intended to gather information on how the ‘funnel’ works on our website (i.e. if folks can move smoothly and easily through our site to our application and if they feel like they have the information they need to come on board immediately).  For a non-profit, the list of testable tasks they could create might include some of these options:

-find and use the donation form on our site.

-find information and describe in detail what our organization does.

-describe in detail what a donation will be used for.

-sign up to subscribe to our blog, newsletter and Twitter feed.

-Share an interesting piece of content from the site via social media.

-find and describe a particular project our organization is working on.

-find and use any usual or signature features our organization’s site has.

Once you set tasks for your testers to complete, the fun begins!  Watching videos of random users trying to navigate your site is alternately exciting, painful, revelatory and, most importantly, extremely informative.  The videos provided by the company we used actually showed the testers mouse moving around our site, along with a running commentary from the tester.

Seeing actual users with no previous experience of our site or our company was shocking- many of the assumptions we’d made about our site’s user-friendliness, appeal and information architecture went instantly out the window.   Of course, you can’t take every piece of each testers opinion to heart; everyone has different personal taste and a different experience level with standard practices on the web.  However, it became apparent, pretty much immediately, that there were trends with every user that tested our site.

For us, it was that we weren’t offering enough information and not the right kind- it was making it difficult for site visitors to feel confident enough to sign up for our service.  The most significant change we made to the site was beginning to offer a live-chat feature so our staff could interact in real-time with users who were exploring the site and considering the sign up process.  In keeping with other trends we saw through all our tester videos, we also rearranged the information section of our website and made clear a few details about our service that we’d thought no-one would want to read the find print about (but which were making users feel confused about our service).

After implementing some website changes based on our user testing several months ago, we’ve already seen an enormous benefit to our company.  We are signing up about 35% more new clients per month, even though we’ve raised our pricing (slightly) and we’ve had nothing but positive feedback about the live-chat feature on our site (SnapEngage, check it out, y’all, seriously).  The reason I’m sharing the results of our user testing here on the blog is because it yielded a substantial result, with a minimal effort and financial investment on our part.  I think this type of testing will truly benefit non-profits looking to improve their online fundraising and it’s an option that’s scalable and affordable for organizations of all sizes and budgets.

The holiday season will be upon us in no time- though these have been some very tough years for the country, online giving is still growing yearly.  There are lots of ways to get your site in fighting form for the upcoming prime fundraising season, but I’d suggest considering a round of user testing before you send out your first call to action email to your donor base.  It’s an easy (and, weirdly, fun) way to give your donation process a tune-up and you might be surprised the results.

Happy Fundraising!

AJ

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.

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.

Beth Kanter Freaking RULES

So, I feel I’ve been quite explicit about this matter: social networking is good, very good, for non-profits.  The Twittering, the Facebooking, the what-have-you. . . all these activities can be incredibly fortuitous for your organization, I think you should get on it, like, yesterday, blah blah blah.  You’ve heard this from me too many times already in the short life of this blog. . . however, today I thought I’d share my favorite resource for ideas on how to actually accomplish fundraising and mission-spreading goals using these tools: Beth Kanter’s blog.

Beth has worked in the non-profit sector for 30 years and she has a nearly endless knowledge base to draw from.  She is also a savvy user of newish social networking technology to further her own personal and professional goals and is a preeminent scholar of the social networking medium as a vehicle for change.  Her blog is incredibly comprehensive, compassionate, whip-smart, funny, and has a big heart proudly beating with social conscience.  She offers practical information on how to use technology in positive, communicative ways (which is what we’re all about), like here, here and here.  In short, we at DonationPay think Ms. Kanter keeps a pretty perfect blog and we can’t recommend her highly enough.

Observe how she spent her 53rd birthday this month, for instance.

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, 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.