Here’s a situation I’ve encountered a few dozen times:
A nonprofit staff member comes to a realization…
Their org’s website needs help.
However…
The executive staff / ED / board doesn’t recognize the issue.
To them, the website is live and online, which means it checks all the boxes.
So the staff member asks me, “How can I convince [group] that we need to redesign our website?”
The answer is surprisingly simple:
Highlight the opportunity (what your website can accomplish) vs the current reality (how things stand now).
Here’s how I’d make the case as an internal staff member (in order from easiest to hardest):
🧐 Subjective audit – Visit your nonprofit’s site on your computer. Forget everything you know about your org – try to see everything with fresh eyes. Actually read your content and look at the images.
➡️ Is your mission clear? Does your messaging feel compelling? How well does your site build trust? Do you outline next steps in an obvious way? Is your site easy for visitors to scan? Does it come across as approachable, empathetic, professional, or any other adjective you’d like your community to describe you as?
📱 Mobile experience – Pull up your org’s website on your phone. Scroll through all the major pages from top to bottom.
➡️ How easy is the site to use on a mobile device? Does everything display well? Is it easy to scan with the reduced screen size? Do major features work as expected?
🚀 Speed – Put your home page URL into a website speed test (link in the comments below). Look at the breakdown for how quickly / slowly the page loads.
➡️ Does your site load in 1 second or less (excellent), 1 to 2 seconds (good), 2 to 3 (okay), or longer? What’s causing the slowdown? How could that speed impact your visitor’s experience?
🤝 Similar orgs – Create a short list of one to three orgs that operate in your focus area. Look at five (or more) pages of their websites.
➡️ What do you notice about their sites? Are they doing anything particularly well that you feel your org should also do? From a holistic perspective, what does their website make you think and feel? Do they seem like an org that’s a responsible steward of funds?
♥️ Accessibility – Run your org’s site through an accessibility scanner (link in the comments below). Look through all the suggestions and read through anything you’re not familiar with.
➡️ What accessibility issues does your site have? How many are “small” vs “large” problems? Is your site difficult to navigate for visitors with certain browsing needs?
🎯 Actions – Check outputs for any major interactions you’d like to have on the site. Get clear on the one, two, or three things you wish visitors would do before exiting.
➡️ Are participants signing up for your programs? How are your website donation numbers? What about the number of new newsletter subscribers? How well does your website drive action-taking?
📊 Analytics – Gather some data points for your site. Look at the numbers for the bounce rate, average time on page, number of visitors, new vs returning users, pages per session, and any exit pages.
➡️ How have these numbers changed over time? Are any pages serving as a bottleneck? Does anything stick out as particularly negative in terms of engagement?
📢 Community feedback – Sit down with a program participant, donor, volunteer, or some other non-staff member. Have them visit your org’s website and try to accomplish a task. Give them the prompt, but don’t provide any suggestions on what to do. Ask them to narrate their thinking as they navigate around.
➡️ How easy was it for them to use your org’s site? Where did they become tripped up? Were they eventually able to accomplish the requested goal? What surprised you about the way they used the site?
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Truthfully, making someone problem-aware takes time.
It often requires multiple conversations.
But if you approach the discussion constructively, you’ll plant seeds for the decision-makers to reflect upon.
And that drastically speeds up the conversation next month, quarter, or year, when you open the discussion the next time.