Nonprofit Expressions

Here is a simple definition of web 2.0 that I found surfing the blogosphere earlier today:

Defining Web 2.0 at three different levels

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The mass hysteria of blogging has left many of us asking “what am I supposed to do with this thing”? Blogs are a new concept in society, but with thousands of them popping up daily learning how to use them has become considered almost a requirement for today’s website owners.

One way to improve the quality and interactivity of your blog is to add widgets. If you don’t know what a widget is you are bound to hear the term sooner or later. If you have ever really dug into the settings in your wordpress, typepad, or movable type installation you have seen at least something about them.

Think of widgets like blog gadgets, or mini applications that tie into all kinds of websites. Facebook.com for instance is full of widgets. If you have a blockbuster.com account it will tell your facebook widget what movies you want to rent and then show them to all your facebook.com friends (scary, I know!). There is even a facebook widget to take a small picture of your website and put it on your facebook page to show it off to your friends.

Widgets connect a website service to another location.

The newest widget I decided to add to this blog is BlogRush. Blog Rush is a website that offers a service to help drive traffic to your blog. You put the sleek little widget on your blog and it shows headlines from blogs with similar content to your visitors. Meanwhile the same thing is happening all over the web and your blog is getting shown all over the blogosphere.

Where to find Widgets?
You can find them all over, but a great place to look is on the website for your blogging engine. The wordpress plugin directory, or the movable type plugins are a great place to start.

In the next post we will discuss adding extras to your blog, plugins, plugins…. plugins.

Website Report Cards
(for website owners)

Have you ever gone to a website and said “I wish my website looked like this!”

What is it about a website that either draws you in, or makes want to click the “back” button? There are no black and white rules of web design. Everyone has a different opinion on style, a different method of navigating, and a different level of web experience.

But the fact is that there is some criteria that the majority of the World Wide Web can agree makes a website “bad” or “good.”

In our experience doing website re-designs (taking an old site and making it better) it is important that you (as a website owner) know what to look for in your website, and know what to ask your web designer! We have decided that a report card method would be the most helpful.

How we decided on the criteria:

1. First Impressions
Is the website pleasing the the eye? While this is the most subjective of the four criteria, based on our own experience and expertise, there IS such a thing as bad design,

In design school they teach us that there are four basic principals of good design. They include: proximity, alignment, repetition and contrast.

Another question to ask is: Do the colors and images reflect the organization’s branding and purpose?

2. Usability
In grading usability, we follow the concepts set out by people like Steve Krug (web usability consultant whose clients include Apple, AOL, Netscape and many others). Usability is the visitor’s ability to understand, comprehend and interact with the website without frustration or anxiety.

Can you tell what the site’s main purpose is upon first glances? Most websites only have 3 seconds to introduce themselves to a visitor before they click the “back” button.

Is the navigation consistent, easy to understand and highly visible? Is the information flow in such a way that you can find what you are looking for without having to think about it? Does the website accomplish its goal in a functional way? Do the applications work? Is there a newsletter, and is it easy to sign up for?

3. Search Engine Optimization
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the process of increasing the amount of traffic a website gets from search engines by using targeted key words.

Does the site have title tags, meta tags, and clean URLs? Does it have semantic information design (such as an h2 tag following an h1 tag)? Does it have descriptive anchor tags?

Although there are only a handful of questions here, SEO is actually a very complex topic that we could talk about for hours. These, however, are the criteria that we are placing in our report cards.

4. Technical Standards
The technical standards are not subjective criteria. These are critical elements used by software engineers in the technical community even beyond the scope of web design.

Does the website have doc type declaration? Is it HTML or XHTML standards compliant? CSS standards compliant? Accessibility standards compliant?

And last, does it have well formed code?
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Now that you understanding our criteria, let me explain our grading methods. First, each of the four criteria will be a separate grade in of itself - like a report card from grade school! Each subject gets its own grade.

Second, we will give the website a pass or failing overall grade. This will tell you if it is still stuck in kindergarten, or has graduated to go to college! (Is it stuck in code from the 90s, or is it up to Web 2.0 standards).

So stay tuned for our Website Report Cards. Our first grade will be given to NewChurches.com.

For a free report card on your website, please contact info@nonprofit-expressions.com

By Jennifer

Forget the lead paragraph, watch our ‘Elf Yourself’ video. (A Christmas treat from Nonprofit Expressions).

Office Max gives internet consumers the “miraculous ability to turn themselves into elfs,” according to the www.elfyourself.com website. The program lets you upload up to four pictures of your friend’s faces. The result? A hilarious video of your friends, coworkers, boss or family members that you can share with them!

So let’s get to the point: what makes it a viral ad, and why is it so effective?

Wikipedia defines viral marketing and viral advertising as “marketing techniques that use pre-existing social networks to produce increases in brand awareness, through self-replicating viral processes, analogous to the spread of pathological and computer viruses. It can be word-of-mouth delivered or enhanced by the network effects of the Internet. Viral marketing is a marketing phenomenon that facilitates and encourages people to pass along a marketing message voluntarily.”

According to George Silverman in ‘The Secrets of Word of Mouth Marketing,’ a satisfied customer may tell an average of three people about a product/service that they like, but ELEVEN people about a product or service which they didn’t like. In the case of Elf Yourself, however, people may tell 4 ore more people every time they make a video - multiply that by the number of videos each person makes (I made 5 versions for family and friends).

Other well-known viral ad campaigns include the Aqua Teen Hunger Force campaign which caused a bomb scare in Boston. Although this was not an internet campaign, it obviously created a lot of brand awareness. Other types of viral promotions include funny video clips, interactive online games called “advergames” or text messages, for a few examples.

Viral Marketing as Cause Marketing

Let’s think about viral marketing in nonprofit terms. We don’t necessarily have a product or service, but we do have a cause. If a viral ad for a specific cause is self-replicating, that means that a user is feeling connected to a cause or purpose. They start to have a feeling of ownership with the cause. TheNewJew blog talks more about maximizing social networking tools.

For more information contact the author.