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4 User Experience Mistakes to Avoid on Your Website

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A guest post by Anne Stefanyk of Kanopi Studios

When it comes to your nonprofit website, first impressions are everything. Studies show that 88% of website visitors won’t return to a site after having a negative user experience (UX). Your website’s UX is the way visitors interact with your website and how they feel when using it.

To communicate with your audience and design a positive user experience, your website should get supporters involved with your mission. User-friendly nonprofit web design can turn even the most casual visitors into passionate supporters.

Let’s explore four common user-experience mistakes and how to avoid them on your website:

1. Failing to follow accessibility guidelines

Web accessibility is the process of making your website usable and readable for all audiences, regardless of any disabilities they may have. The Americans with Disabilities Act states that websites that offer public accommodations must be accessible to people with disabilities.

Failing to meet accessibility standards can create a negative user experience for many visitors. To cover your accessibility bases, follow these steps:

    • Reference the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines. Regulations include ensuring that all images have alternative text, videos and audio clips have captions, and text has sufficient color contrast.
    • Use accessibility testing tools. We recommend using accessibility tools such as Lighthouse or Siteimprove. Thesetools help automatically identify accessibility issues on your website. They provide a good starting point.
  • Manually test your website for accessibility. Just relying on accessibility tools might cause you to miss issues. Manually test your website by navigating the site with your keyboard or using screen reader software. See what the user experience is like from the perspective of someone using assistive technology.

Following accessibility guidelines improves both accessibility and user experience for all visitors, no matter their varying abilities or devices.

2. Designing your website without consulting audience research.

Creating a positive user experience starts with understanding your audience. Ensure you have a clear picture of online visitors’ interests, behaviors, and motivations.

Get to know your audience members, including donors, volunteers, and other supporters, using these techniques:

    • Use a tool like HotJar to track user behavior. HotJar can generate website heat maps that show you how visitors interact with your web pages. You can also collect direct audience input using feedback widgets that track your visitors’ feelings about your website elements.
  • Carry out A/B testing to assess design elements. A/B testing is the process of creating two different versions of the same website element and assessing which version is more engaging. For example, you can create two different event landing pages. Then, track registrations for each page to determine which one is more successful.

According to AccuData’s marketing analytics guide, you can use the data from these sources to understand the messaging and design elements that will resonate with your audience. This allows you to make research-backed decisions that increase website engagement.

3. Not creating a content strategy.

Your website’s content—whether your written copy, imagery, or videos—is the heart of your user engagement strategy. Compelling content gives audience members a reason to engage more deeply with your website and browse for longer.

Plus, there’s nothing more discouraging than arriving on a website that looks like it hasn’t been updated for a while. If your content is out of date, visitors will get the impression that your organization is not very active.

Create a clearly defined content strategy to ensure your content stays relevant and fresh. Ensure your strategy includes the following components:

  • A blog posting schedule
  • Reminders to create event calendar updates
  • Instructions for updating highly visible imagery, such as the photos on your homepage or donation page

Keeping these elements updated shows current and potential supporters that your organization is energetically working to achieve its mission through different initiatives and events.

Increase website traffic by promoting your fresh content across your digital marketing platforms. Share your event listings in your monthly email newsletter and include links to your blog updates in your social media posts.

4. Having unclear user pathways.

User pathways are the actions an audience member takes on your website based on their motivations and interests. For example, the user pathway for someone who arrives on your website looking for volunteer opportunities will be different than for someone who wants to donate or listen to your podcast.

Unclear user pathways can lead to lower audience engagement and ultimately underperforming fundraisers, volunteer opportunities, and events. Create streamlined user journeys by doing the following on your nonprofit website:

 

    • Offer clear calls to action. Calls to action (CTAs) are buttons or links that lead visitors to different sections of your website. For example, you might include buttons on your homepage that point visitors to your volunteer registration page or online giving form. These buttons help users find what they’re looking for quickly, improving their browsing experience.
    • Provide simple navigation tools. Offer an easy-to-use search function and a simplified menu to make researching different topics on your website easier.
  • Created tailored content for each user group. Create valuable landing pages for different users, including your constituents, volunteers, donors, advocates, and other community members. Ensure these pages include the information and forms supporters need to get more involved, like a donation form or volunteer sign-up page.

 

For example, take a look at how the Habitat for Humanity website has organized its navigation and user pathways:

This top-level header offers links for volunteers, advocates, and those looking for housing assistance. There is also a clearly-labeled search function alongside buttons for different social media pages and Habitat’s online donation form.

This clearly-organized navigation setup makes it easy for visitors to choose their own path and get more involved with Habitat’s mission.

 

As you improve your website’s user experience, review Kanopi’s roundup of the top nonprofit websites for inspiration. Note each website’s approach to developing streamlined user journeys and incorporating audience research and accessibility guidelines. Use these examples (along with the help of a web design firm when needed) to avoid common UX mistakes and create a user-friendly website that stands the test of time.

Anne Stefanyk head shotAs Founder and CEO of Kanopi Studios, Anne helps create clarity around project needs, and turns client conversations into actionable outcomes. She enjoys helping clients identify their problems, and then empowering the Kanopi team to execute great solutions.

Anne is an advocate for open source and co-organizes the Bay Area Drupal Camp. When she’s not contributing to the community or running her thoughtful web agency, she enjoys yoga, meditation, treehouses, dharma, cycling, paddle boarding, kayaking, and hanging with her nephew.

https://twitter.com/Anne_Kanopi

https://www.drupal.org/u/annabella

https://www.linkedin.com/in/annestefanyk/

Fundraising Tuesday: Mike Pence Shows What NOT to Do

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Pence mailing

When you're raising money, you must know your audience. Click To Tweet Mike Pence, the former Vice President, didn’t know me at all.

Okay, I’ll admit he knew me well enough to know that I’m an inveterate reader, with close to 2000 reviews on Goodreads. (Or maybe, he just got lucky.)

But when Pence sent me a letter in the mail and the envelope said, “I signed a copy of my new book just for you!”, he lost me. Why?

I’m the kind of voter who hardly ever voted Republican before Trump, and never since.

I thought Pence was a nonentity before becoming Veep and a bootlicker during his term of office.

The only good thing Pence did as Vice President–refusing to collaborate with the seditious conspiracy to eliminate rule by the people in the U.S. and install an unelected President–was his simple duty. Anything else would been a crime.

You don’t have to agree with me (although I hope you do!). What you should see is that sending this mailing to me showed me:

  1. He didn’t know me.
  2. He lied when he implied he did.
  3. He was wasting money by targeting an audience he was never going to reach.

Is Your Nonprofit Making Mike Pence’s Marketing Mistakes?

You may have many mailing addresses in your database or CRM. Great! But what do you know about the people at those addresses?

  • Are you calling them by the right name?
  • Are you writing to them about something that would interest them, not your Board or your program staff?
  • Have you segmented your list so that different groups hear about different topics?
  • Are you adding names only with permission? When people ask to be removed from your list, do you comply?

Please don’t make the Mike Pence mistakes. Yes, I do mean “Don’t support Trump” or the movement to end democracy in this country–I’m not going to lie!

But even if you and I completely disagree on politics, we can agree that wasting your nonprofit’s money on mailings to the wrong people is a mistake, a bad idea, a step in the wrong direction. If you believe your organization is doing good work, ruining your reputation like this is a sin.

So Help Me God.

 

Fundraising Tuesday: “Tell Us about YOU”

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“You” is the magic word in fundraising, and T’ruah charmed me by using it.

Not only did they send me email with the Subject line “Dennis, Tell Us about YOU.” That would have been enough to make me open the email. (That is a nonprofit’s first objective any time you send email!)

They went beyond the Subject line to talk to me personally and express how much they care about me throughout the content of the email.

Here’s what the message said:

Hi Dennis,

If you have 5 minutes to spare, I’d really appreciate it if you can fill out this quick survey from T’ruah. You’ll be helping out an organization you love AND you’ll be entered for a chance to win a $150 gift card from Bookshop.org.

Take our survey!
We’re interested in learning more about the needs of the changing Jewish community to better develop resources and programming. We are looking for respondents who can tell us about their media habits and how that intersects with their Jewish values and community engagement.

Will you consider taking the survey? Feel free to pass it along to Jewish family and friends!

I look forward to hearing from you. Thank you so much!

Warmly,

Shira Danan
Chief Communications Officer
she/her

Please notice what T’ruah did here.

  • They called me by my name, not “Dear Friend.”
  • They led with appreciation and closed with thanks.
  • They used “you” three times in the opening paragraph, as opposed to “I” once–and that “I” was to make the appreciation more personal!
  • They said “you” and “your” more often than “we” and “our” through the email.
  • They reaffirmed the closeness of the relationship with phrases like “an organization you love,” “family and friends,” and the closing, “Warmly.” Even the phrase “Jewish values” reaffirms that T’ruah and I are on the same team and the same page.

All that would have been great with any ask. But T’ruah used warm, personal, “tell us about you” language to actively find out more about me, the donor, and what I care about.

Sending a survey because you want to know how to manipulate someone better is one thing. Sending it in the key of “tell us about YOU, because we care who you are and what you want to hear about” is quite another. Which message is your nonprofit sending to donors?

Yes, I’d like weekly email from Communicate!

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