web content best practices for nonprofits
DESCRIPTION
TRANSCRIPT
Linda Kolker Best Practices for Web Content
AGENDA
9:00-9:15 Orientation & Introduction
9:15-9:45 Part 1 – Foundations
9:45-10:30 Part 2 – Content Format
10:30-10:40 BREAK
10:45-11:45 Part 3 – Content SEO for Google
11:45-noon Evaluations
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Web user research on
Non-profit websites
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What donors look for
Causes that share their ideals and values.
How the organization proposes to help
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What’s most important to donors
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Mission Goals Objectives Work
Presence in reader’s own community
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What kills donations on sites
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Majority of problems are content-related
Content problems53%
Navigation,transactions, etc.47%
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? Donate
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17%
Nowhere to click to donate!!!
What kills donations on sites
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Credibility
Engagement
Ability to deliver
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Best Practices for Website Content
Part 1
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Laying the foundation:
BEFORE you create content
Define goals
Know audiences
Who you are
What sets you apart from competitors
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Know your website goals
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Specific Measurable
Examples of specific and measurable goals: • Increase donations from small donors by 10%
• _____________________________________
• _____________________________________
Linda Kolker Best Practices for Web Content
Know your audiences
Audience segments
Age
Gender
Income
Lifestyle
Opinions & Values
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Practice: audience profile
For ONE audience:
Age _____
Income ________
Gender ________
Lifestyle ____________________________
Opinions & Values______________________________
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Know who you are
A statement that sets you apart from competitors
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Examples of taglines
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How well does your site
Reflect your goals? Reflect your audience(s)? Scale of 1-5 (5=best rating) Is your tagline at top of home page? Every page?
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Practice: laying the foundation
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Best Practices for Website Content
Part 2
Linda Kolker Best Practices for Web Content
Overview
Brief, specific content written from the perspective of your readers’ interests, desires and background.
Content that is formatted to make it easy to find what they’re looking for on the page.
Headlines, subheads and content that are oriented to their interests and goals.
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Site visitor behavior
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Site visitor behavior
Users read about 20% of text 20
20%
Linda Kolker Best Practices for Web Content
What’s here?
How can I find what I’m looking for?
Short articles
Skim highlights
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Site visitor behavior
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Ruthless about abandoning sites
Site visitor behavior
Linda Kolker Best Practices for Web Content
How people scan a
website page
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Skimming content
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Inverted pyramid
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Use subheads
Tell the story on their own
Capture essence of paragraph
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Make paragraphs short
6 lines MAXIMUM
3-4 where possible
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Make paragraphs short
6 lines MAXIMUM
3-4 where possible
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Make sentences short
Linda Kolker Best Practices for Web Content
Make paragraphs short
6 lines MAXIMUM
3-4 where possible
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Make sentences short
Use bullets & numbers
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Use boldface and italics
NEVER underline text unless it’s a LINK
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Credibility
Grammar
Spelling
Punctuation
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Pair up and review sites
First, take a couple of minutes to review your partner’s site
Home page:
What does this organization do?
What’s special about it?
Is that clear at a glance?
Review lower-level pages:
Can you scan and know what the page is about?
Is the most important information at the top?
What could be shortened, and how would you do it?
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Best Practices for Website Content
Part 3
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Help people find you
Optimize your content for Google organic search (SEO) results
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What’s good for copy
is good for SEO
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SEO for content
• Identify keywords (search terms)
• Make a list of 5-6
• Select one or two per page for optimization
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What’s a keyword?
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Select keywords
Know your audience
What words are they likely to use?
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Identify keywords
One of your audiences?
____________________________
Two or three phrases they might search for? ____________________________
____________________________
____________________________
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Research competition for keywords
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Using your keywords
Make a list
Narrow down to 5-6
Assign 1-2 keywords to each page
Use no more than 1-2 per page
Front-load in page titles and heads
Top-load keywords – at top of page
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Top-down content
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Use keywords in page titles
“Selecting the first 2 words for your
page titles is probably the highest-impact ROI-boosting decision you
make in a Web project.”
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Where to add Page Title to a web page you’re creating
Headings (levels & tags)
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Where to format headings
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Image captions & <alt> tags
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Caption text
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Copy text from page on your website, paste into text editor (Word, Notepad, etc.) SAVE this document! • Revise the page title, main headline (Most important
words at beginning of each) • Shorten a paragraph • Underline something you could link to another page
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Review
Lay the foundation: audiences, goals, your identity,
competitive differences
Make content easy to find on your site and read on the page
Make it easier for people to find you via Google: optimize site content
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Resources
Letting Go of the Words—Writing Web Content That Works by Janice (Ginny) Redish
Herschell Gordon Lewis on the Art of Writing Copy by Herschell Gordon Lewis
Don’t Make Me Think, by Steve Krug
Almost anything by Jakob Nielsen. Books. Web site = useit.com
Usability.gov
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