Wondering how to redesign your nonprofit website? Whether you’ve only just begun to consider a redesign, or you’ve already gotten started, here are 6 steps to ensure a successful launch.
1. Analyze
In order to know what needs improvement, it’s important to measure and analyze your current efforts. If you’ve never before used Google Analytics, I would recommend first installing this on your current site to get an idea of your traffic flow. Google Analytics will allow you to see where users drop off, how long they stay on the site, which pages they land on, their path through the site, and much more. By analyzing your current site’s stats, you’ll be able to get a feel for the problem areas.
Installing Google Analytics will not only clue you in on the problem areas on your current site, but it will provide you with a baseline from which to compare the new site’s analytics. It may be a bit of a stretch to expect an overnight boost in traffic, but you should definitely begin to see a change in user behavior once you’ve launched the new site.
2. Ask Questions
Once you have a firm grasp on the problem areas as well as a basic understanding of your current traffic and user behavior, the next step is to ask yourself what you hope to achieve with a redesign. What are your goals? What are your users NOT doing right now, that they should be doing when you launch a redesign? How will you drive them toward that action? Oftentimes, when people hear the word “redesign,” they think of only the cosmetic changes. In reality, a redesign requires not only a change in look, but oftentimes a restructuring of content and a repositioning of or creation of calls to action.
3. Strategize for SEO
With data in hand regarding your current site’s analytics, you can now see which content is most popular and determine where to grow your content and where to make changes. Consider which keywords are your best performers and be sure to optimize effectively for these keywords on your new site. You’ll also want to consider your URL structure to be sure your URLs effectively communicate the content of your pages. But before creating an entirely new link structure for existing pages, be sure you’re aware of all your inbound links using a tool like Moz’s Open Site Explorer tool. If a host of other sites are linking to particular content on your site, it would be best to keep that link alive, rather than sending people to a 404 error because the link has changed.
4. Take a Look Around
Now that you have a firm grasp on your current site’s performance and your goals for your new site, be sure to take a look around at some other nonprofits with a similar mission. Research nonprofits in other parts of the country who may be serving the same population you aim to serve. What are they doing on their site that is effective? What is facilitating two-way communication with their audience? Are they posting videos of volunteer projects? Are they raising funds in a unique way on their website? Are they creating content from a different perspective. Think through the positives. Find out what’s working and how you might be able to implement similar features to better engage your audience.
5. Create a Content Strategy
It’s never too early to define your content and your overall content strategy. In fact, it’s important to have this in place before the redesign is complete so there are no unnecessary delays prior to your launch. When you’re in the process of mocking up a wireframe of the site, you’ll begin to see where these specific content items will fit. Once your core content is complete, it’s time to think through your overall strategy of creating new content over time. When you have a plan in place, you no longer have to worry about what to write when your deadline rolls around. You just need to take a quick look at your editorial calendar and start writing.
6. Test, test, and test again!
Testing your site is a critical step to assure a quality experience for all users. Once you’ve worked out any bugs internally, consider offering access to a focus group, or a group of volunteers who could offer feedback. Getting insights from members of your target audience will help you understand what’s working and what could still use some tweaking. Once you’ve gathered the collective feedback and made your final adjustments, it’s time to launch!