Nonprofit Expressions

We have officially launched a new web 2.0 product for church websites.

Church-Box.com now offers an advanced pay as you go Content Management System. This is not just any CMS. It uses technology from one of our partner companies Agency Fusion.

This product has been a great fit with our new small-medium sized church packages. With this software we can make a website affordable to even a church planter by way of monthly rental and minimal setup fees.

The greatest strength of the Church Box CMS is the use of standards-compliant code. Because the templates the CMS uses are built on genuinely good coding practices, we can import nearly any design concept into the CMS. This allows us to use Cascading Style Sheets to layout our CMS based sites and finally delivers a CMS that breaks completely away from the table based layouts. This is the first CMS for less than $80,000 on the market that is truly search engine friendly. With content editing as powerful as RedDot systems and the use of other enterprise level systems, this product is jaw dropping in its functionality.

The other great feature is the light weight of the CMS. Most content management systems are database driven. While our application makes great use of databases in the editing phase of using the CMS, all the operational aspects of the CMS exist in a third location.

Without technical jargon: This new CMS delivers content faster and more accurately than any other CMS on the market. Period! The site that is delivered to the visitor is simple clean code. There is no heavy machinery creating pages on the fly. The site file structure looks just like a normal website. If a third party web designer examined the file structure on the back end, they would never know a content management system had been used. This is technology light years beyond what is currently in use by 99% of churches who have a content management system.

Our staff is very excited about his project. Not only is this product the best CMS we have ever seen, but Church Box is an affordable alternative to a full custom design solution that is out of reach for a small church or a tight budget.

When we approached the marketplace with this product we investigated the pricing structure of other sites trying to offer similar services. We found that not only did the other sites offer a far less impressive product to the consumer, they were also charging too much. In essence, we are now offering the best, most reasonably priced content management system for churches on the market!

Now we are looking at other markets we can port this product to, such as small business and the non-profit arena.

A new project called Yahoo Live just launched. The new service from Yahoo allows you to create a live video stream from your webcam and then embed the streaming video in your website or blog. The project has an API that will let programmers make applications using the streaming video from the site. This project could lead to some very interesting applications…

Chat rooms seem designed for teenagers and stay-at-home moms. For today’s website owner live chat technology can make a huge difference, but not through a chat room…

When someone even says the word “chat” images of AOL and Yahoo go through many people’s minds. But these free-for-all chat venues are a disappearing thing. Internet predators, virtual worlds and spammers have made sure of that. Today’s chatters go online to places like second life or onto the xbox live for live voice chat. Historically, adding a chat room to most websites is simply a loosing proposition because a chat room requires people to constantly be in the online “room.”

Chat can still be a vital component for your website. First, we must re-consider what we should expect from chat, and what it can offer us.

We must think of chat as another mechanism for communication with website visitors, and as a method of creating personalized interaction with the website. We are currently running live chat on three websites. Two of our own, and one of our clients.

The first consideration is commitment. Yes - you must be committed to being available online for chat on a regular basis. This doesn’t have to be as tough as one might think. You should erase images of being barraged with chat requests every 3 seconds, it’s just not going to happen. On occasion however you will have the opportunity to chat with one of your website visitors in real time, one-on-one.

This personal interaction is priceless. To date, I have only chatted with a few of our website visitors. After only the first time I knew this was a feature I should keep on my website forever.

In the process of having live chat (good live chat anyways) you will also have the opportunity to see who is coming onto your website, when, and from where. This is not just analytics mind you. This is real time data you receive every time a page with a “live chat” button is viewed.

When a visitor enters my website - if I am online - I can see their city of origin, what page they are looking at, and even send them a live invitation to join me for a conversation.

Another crucial element to live chat is the trust factor. When people visit a website and they see an active “chat with the website owner” button they are gaining yet another piece of trust for the website and its contents. It is the same principle as posting an 800 number and an email address all over a website to gain the visitor’s trust.

I have become such a live chat junkie that I added a link to my email signature. Now anyone with an email from me has an opportunity to chat with me!

If you do not have live chat on your website yet, you should consider it.

Click on this link and you can chat live with me right now, and if I am not online you can leave me a message. I will call you back ASAP!

Every once in a while in the course of designing websites - a designer will have altruistic motives, defined vision, and a great direction when he or she conceptualizes a website that is yet to be developed.

These moments of clarity are when designing actually becomes not a a job, but a cause. This is when work gets to be fun.

The hardest moments are when these website designs start so well, and end so… well… bad.

Last year when designing Revive-NewOrleans.org our team started out with some fantastic ideas. Working on a project that we all felt would be “more meaningful than the average project” it is easy to get inspired. Our client is actually doing stunning work in the area and changing peoples lives. We as artists like the idea of contributing to this with design and development work.

The project started well, in fact the printed materials and advertising we worked on for the project was literally tear jerking. The website also started with a rush of inspiration. As time wore on… and as the days passed while the project came closer to completion something strange happened.

Even though every piece of the project seemed right, every design concept seemed brilliant, the finished project was just not as moving as I had hoped.

Don’t get me wrong - the finished product was an attractive website. But there is a difference between an attractive website and something that says “YES YES THAT WAS WHAT I WANTED TO EXPRESS!!!”

I came to the realization that I was not satisfied with the finished product. In fact, because it did not meet my expectations I began to like it less and less, until I didn’t even like the website at all.

This often happens to designers and developers. The more you look at a design, or an image the less you are going to like it. In fact in design school they teach you to go with your first impressions and let it go after that. Like any art, too much examination will lead an artist to hate their own work.

This was not the case with this project. I did like the design when it launched, it was a nice looking website.

The problem is my expectations were: “this has to be the best design I create for the entire year” and it just didn’t happen.

So this is a great time in design (occasionally time permitting) to re-design or re-engineer the project. It was time to make some alterations, and some content changes, and so in my free-time I decided to bring the project back on track.

I began with some simple ideas, some advise from the organizations director, and now roughly 10 hours later… I have something that I believe says, “Yes, I am an important organization doing important work in a devastated part of the world, but there is hope!”

So today in the spirit of the beginning of the year I introduce a new face to an existing project:

Revive-NewOrleans.org

The long-term effects of consistent communications
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What’s the point of sending out email newsletters? It seems like a waste… having to write all the articles, paying someone to do the graphics design… making sure to follow all those laws… and for what?

We’ve come up with a few good reasons to conduct an email newsletter campaign, and a couple invaluable ones. First, let’s go over the logic:

1. Conducting Online Campaigns
The whole world is on the wide web. Why wouldn’t you do an online campaign? It is true that nothing replaces direct mail, personalized letters and Christmas cards… but when you get a 10 to 50 percent open rate on an email newsletter, versus an average 1 to 10 percent on a direct mail campaign, its kind of a no brainer.

2. Using Email Newsletters
If you are still reading, that means you have a brain. Of COURSE you do. You want to conduct and online campaign! You can ask your supporters to make donations online, volunteer, take action, forward information to friends, establish credibility, acknowledge partners, make announcements, and so on.

Email newsletters are the backbone of such a campaign. Why? Because consistency is critical. Potential supporters require contact with your organization at least 5 or 6 times before they recognize it. Give your organization top of mind awareness, keep current donors happy and grow your email list all at the same time!

3. Give Value to Your Supporters
Why should they donate to your organization? Your donors, volunteers and potential supporters need to know WHY. Tell your audiences about your endeavors, services, special needs, and provide advice and information that is valuable to them.

Now for the practical reasons:

1. Save Money
2. Save Time
3. Save Resources

Snail mail costs are rising. Printing costs are rising. Sure, you need someone who is computer literate to help you send out your email newsletter, but tell me that you won’t save money by not buying stamps? You can also reach your audience with almost no delay! You don’t have to wait for the printing turnaround or mailing cycle. PLUS your secretary will love you for not making her lick all those envelopes.

4. Greater flexibility
5. Better feedback
6. Detailed reporting and statistics

Today’s technology can tell you exactly WHO opened your emails and what links they clicked on. This data will help you understand their reader behavior so you know where to invest your time writing, creating tips and so on.

Email Newsletters and Churches
According to ChurchMarketingSucks.com, email newsletters may become a primary delivery vehicle for church announcements. This is a great way to cut down the clutter, save time and money, and engage church communities in online interaction (chats, forums, blog comments, etc).

Start Your Own Email Newsletter:
Nonprofit Expressions can create, write, send and analyze the consumer behavior around email newsletters. We can also do complete online campaigns! Contact us for details: info@nonprofit-expressions.com.

About Website Report Cards: Our report cards are for website owners who want to improve their sites. We look at websites and formulate our report cards by evaluating four main criteria: first impressions, usability, search engine optimization and technical standards.

Website: CrossroadsChristianRehab.com

1. First Impressions
Immediately after coming to this site I know that the site host and builder is Godaddy. Having experience with Godaddy ourselves, we know that by purchasing your domain name with them that you get free hosting as well. The site is obviously built with a website-tonight, what you see is what you get type of editor.

This is what we like to call an “online business card.”

While there is nothing wrong with having a website hosted by Godaddy, these types of websites do not get found by search engines and therefore only get site traffic through word of mouth communication and other forms of print advertising.

Questions that would immediately go through my mind as a web surfer or future donor are, “How much does this site matter to the organization? Is this nonprofit just getting started, or are have they been around for a while? Is this a professional organization?” It really comes down to trust. A website is one meter in which people can evaluate - for themselves - how much an organization is worth.

As a web design and PR company we would ask, “How is this website - if at all - meeting your brick and mortar goals?” If the answer is that its not, then it can become worse than a waste of money… it can be a hindrance to future donors or partners.

Pleasing to the eye: C

Proximity: B

Alignment: Irrelevant

Repetition: Irrelevant

Contrast: C

Reflection of branding and purpose: D

GRADE: C
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2. Usability
The usability is extremely simple. The main menu stays consistent and is conventional with modern website formats. Every page is functional, some which are more appealing than others, but has no broken links or missing information.

This simplicity is one huge benefit of having a “what you see is what you get” editor for your website when your funds are low. One deterrent, however, is the constant Godaddy ad on the top of the page. While this may irritate users, it also creates a way for them to leave your site. Once clicking on the ads, the browser automatically takes you away from the site and to the Godaddy landing page.

While the purpose of the site is clearly explained in the first paragraph of the homepage, a better place for this to appear is right underneath the name of Crossroads. You may want to replace the quote underneath the name with a quick mission or vision statement.

Another problem the site probably has encountered is its inability to collect consumer data. When you don’t know who is looking at your site or offer a method to collect such data, you lose many potential donors and what we like to call “warm leads.” Although you offer a clear way to contact Crossroads, this confines the user to sending an email or making a phone call rather than submitting their information.

User’s ability to understand, comprehend and interact with the website: A

User’s frustration or anxiety associated with the website: C

User’s ability to find the site’s main purpose upon first glance: C

Consistent Navigation: A +

Easy Navigation: A +

Navigation visibility: A +

Website accomplishes functional goals: C

Use of applications: C

Newsletter Signup: F

GRADE: C

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3. Search Engine Optimization
The site only has two pages indexed in google. The pages are constructed well with lots of text, which will actually help search engine results. The site however has no valuable links pointing toward it, this is hindering search engine traffic. Since half of the information on the page is Godaddy adds, which also hurts search ranking.

A couple quick things that would help search ranking for this site are a blog to post new content on a regular basis, and keyword research. The site has no page rank information which shows its lack of incoming links. This site could be fixed for search engines rather easily.

Title tags: C (they exist but without researched keywords)

Meta tags: C (they exist but with single word keyword phrases)

Clean URLs: A

Semantic information design: A

Descriptive anchor tags: C

Google’s Page Rank: F

GRADE: C

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4. Technical Standards
The first thing I noticed is that the code is not hand written because the only comments are program generated. The site uses a table based layout, which is an old way of laying out pages, and not preferred. Other than this the site does not use any current web technologies.

Doc type declaration: A

HTML or XHTML standards compliant: F (the site has over 20 validation errors. Thats one error every two lines of code)

CSS standards compliant: A

Accessibility standards compliant: A

Well formed code: D

GRADE: C

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FINAL GRADE: Room for a Re-Design
For a free report card on your website, please contact info@nonprofit-expressions.com