Nonprofit Expressions

Is your organization planning for the future with regards to your current web development?Good web development requires careful planning, as well as vast investments of time, energy and often, money. In order to get the most return on these investments a good understanding of the internet’s future is important.The Internet is in a constant state of flux and growth. Hundreds of millions of websites exist on the vast data network we call the Internet. Change is inevitable because technology is always improving. The Internet has undergone periods wherein the methods used for web development change.The element of the Internet that is key to understand is which browsers everyone uses to view the Web. In the late 1990’s Internet Explorer and Netscape navigator were the two most widely known and used browsers available. Most people had a preference for one or the other usually based on the one they were introduced to. As time passed Internet Explorer (IE) became the standard because it comes already installed in Microsoft Windows. It has become the default browser used to view the Internet. As Netscape declined in use other browsers became popular, particularly among those who are not fans of IE or Microsoft. For instance, Safari is the preferred browser for people who use Apple Mac computers. Mac’s Safari browser just released a windows compatible version with the launch of its new iPhone. Just as Mac users love Safari, web developers and computer engineers prefer FireFox. Our company uses FireFox exclusively because it is one of the only fully standards-compliant browsers on the market. It is not only a better application than IE, it is also more stable.Because different people like to use different software to view the Internet, for a short period from the late 1990’s up until 2003 it was common for websites to have two versions, one built for IE and one for Netscape. Among the changes caused by the dot-com crash was the realization that there needs to be one standard way of developing websites. This allows all browsers to understand and display content the same way.The creator of the world wide web, Tim Berners-Lee, founded the W3C (World Wide Web Consortium) in 1994. The organization consists of members from around the globe who make recommendations that will help bring the web to its full potential. This organization brainstorms and debates over the best way to make the behind-the-scenes aspects of the Internet work. They are constantly releasing new technologies and frameworks for developers to use as standard when creating web browsers and websites.Web technologies come and go with time. Animated .gif files, for instance, were hugely popular at one point but are not seen often on the web today. Countless other technologies have disappeared into the past which is why standards are so important.If your site is built using today’s standards it will look acceptable to people using old computers (and thus old browsers), as well as people using the Internet today and far into tomorrow.The movement to build websites based on standards has always existed in some form, but it was not until 2003 that it really began to pickup steam in the web design community. The proof is in the pudding, because standards-based websites designed in 2003 still look nice and display well in today’s newest browsers.As time passes, the browsers people use will continue to change, and browsers will get better at adhering to standards put in place by the W3C.So what are these mythical standards?Today, July 2007, the standards are xhtml 1.0, html 4.1, CSS 1.0 and Section 508. These are the basics that all sites should be based on. Even when using advanced applications that rely on ASP or PHP (advanced web technologies), the need for standards-compliant xhtml and css remains.XHTML 1.0 is the newest version of html. This is the markup language that all sites use to communicate with browsers. This code tells the browser how to understand the information presented in a web page.CSS 1.0 is the standard for giving sites the look, feel, and layout of the page. While the xhtml might tell the browser that a paragraph is a paragraph, the css tells the browser where it should be displayed on the page, what font to use, and other information about how it should look.Section 508 is the set of government regulations regarding the construction of federal websites. The law requires that government websites must be accessible to people with disabilities. These guidelines are good for all websites.So how do I know if my site follows standards? The easiest method to finding this out is validation. The W3C has created code validation tools that will inform you of your sites adherence to standards. Here is a list of validation tools you might find helpful:

• HTML Validation
• CSS Validation
• Section 580 Validation

How to use these toolsYou can simply put the address of your website into the validation pages and they will tell you if your site passed or failed. If your site returns “passed”, then good job for having a head start over most of the web. If you failed, however, you will receive a list of errors and technical reasons for the failures. It is not a big deal if you have a few errors, but more than ten or so could be an issue. It is not uncommon to see websites with 50 or more errors. In that case, it would be wise to consider fixing these problems in an upcoming site update.What if my site is in the planning stages? If your site is not yet up and running you should ask your developers if they build standards-compliant websites. If they seem unsure of what this means, they are not operating at a level that is considered professional for today’s design teams. This does not make them a bad designer, but you should request they start creating standards-compliant sites, beginning with yours. If they are not willing to do so, you should take your business elsewhere.Websites should be viewed as a long-term investment. Most websites will exist as long as the organization or business exists. That does not mean that it will not need updating in the future, but if your site will not look professional and function well for at least five years, you are making a poor investment. Every site can use updates and expansions, but you should not have to completely overhaul a site annually, if you paid good money for it initially. Only an Internet-based business would be able to justify that cost on a yearly basis.If your website is based on standards, it will be easier to update, and easier for others to edit down the road, should your original developers move on or cease to exist. If you should need a complete overhaul, a standards-based website built on the most current technology could save you up to 70% of the cost and time spent on a re-design.Please feel free to contact us with your questions.

Take a close look at your website. How do you know your website is a success? Is your mission extended and accomplished in your website? Do you have a method of tracking the effectiveness of your website?

These are healthy questions for every website owner to occasionally ask. Because web design projects are often an exercise in writing, structuring, and sharing information, it is easy to lose focus in the never ending sea of updates, corrections, and expansions. It is wise to return to these questions often in order to track success and better plan for the future.

Website success is best tracked by calculating conversion rates. What is a conversion rate? This is the concrete number that tells you when your website has achieved one of your goals and how effective your pages have been in achieving those goals.

Conversion rates are a factor of web publishing that is never addressed enough. Just as your print publishing must constantly justify itself to warrant its creation, so should your web publishing projects. Your organization might publish a paper letter to generate interest in you current projects, ask for donations, or keep interested parties informed. Every page of your website must also have a goal and a reason to exist.

A good way of discovering your site’s strengths and weaknesses is to create a list of your organizations goals.

• List your goals under broad topics like “Become a household name”, or “inform the public.”
• Once you have a broad list refine your list and define the topics based on what you believe a website could help to accomplish.
• “Inform the public” might become “Distribute information package.”
• Now check your specific goals against the pages in your website. Is every goal accomplished on a page? For our sample goal this page might be download_information_package.html.

This list is invaluable because you now have accomplished two things: you have a road map for the future, and you know what pages in your site are most important to visitors. You should be developing pages and technology that can help your organization accomplish its specific goals. In the mean time you can restructure and re-organize your pages to make sure visitors can easily find the pages that accomplish specific goals.

Organizing information correctly means priority first. Sure your “mission statement” page may be important to visitors, but does it need to rank high in relation to a page that sells a product? The answer is a no-brainer.

Once you have a list of pages where the “conversions / accomplished goals” takes place, the information becomes really insightful to your future success. How many people had the opportunity to download your information file? This information can be found in your site statistics called analytics. With this software you can divide the number of people who had the opportunity to download the file by those who successfully did. You now have a conversion rate! You can refine your pages and improve them. Each time you make a major change you should monitor your conversion rates. These rates may change depending on season, and even day of the week. Look for trends over a year’s time. Each year if you are doing a good job on your website your conversion rates should improve.

Without a method of monitoring your success your website is doomed never to be as useful as it could be. It can only be as effective as you can monitor, change, and improve its content and ease of use.

Every page should have a mission to accomplish your goals. If the goal cannot be accomplished on that page it should be doing a good job of directing visitors to pages that can.

Your mission by owning a website should be to turn every visitor into a conversion. A good monthly statistic to look at is the number of unique visitors compared to the number of conversions. This is your universal conversion rate. This is also the professional method of tracking your website’s success.

A new web site owner will brag about the number of unique visitors to his website. A seasoned pro will brag about his number of conversions because he knows it is better to have a 90% conversion rate with 10 visitors than to have an 8% conversion rate with 100 visitors.

You cannot have a truly successful site until you know how to properly define your success.