Nonprofit Expressions

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

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.

Learn about how we decided on our criteria, and get a more complete definition the 4 categories.

Website: http://www.NewChurches.com

1. First Impressions

The look & feel of this website doesn’t need a lot of work. In fact, I don’t think it needs any at all. Upon first glance I am stunned by its beauty! The natural colors, web 2.0 feel and images draw me in to want more.

Upon a closer look, I find an equally attractive interior. It consistently brands the “for new churches” logo, uses repetition in colors and layout, as well as menu bar.

Pleasing to the eye: A +
Proximity: A
Alignment: A +
Repetition: A +
Contrast: A -
Reflection of branding and purpose: A +

GRADE: A
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2. Usability

The usability is fairly simple. The main menu stays consistent and is conventional with modern website formats. The home page includes a second menu on the top left that gives users another opportunity to engage themselves in the content of the site.

The purpose of the site is obvious by its name (”for new churches”), however, when looking for an “About Us” page I noted that this page either does not exist, or is too difficult to find. The closest thing I found was the “Getting Started” page which includes a video from one of its founders that gives you a quick overview of the purpose and navigation of the tools on the site. This is helpful, but not all users are going to have the capability or desire to watch this video.

The site is chock full of free resources, downloads, blogs and directories that are all very helpful. When I searched for some sort of newsletter subscription or contact us form, I found neither. I had to do some digging to find a place to subscribe to “Ed’s picks.”

User’s ability to understand, comprehend and interact with the website: A
User’s frustration or anxiety associated with the website: B
User’s ability to find the site’s main purpose upon first glance: A -
Consistent Navigation: A +
Easy Navigation: A +
Navigation visibility: A +
Website accomplishes functional goals: A -
Use of applications: A
Newsletter Signup: C

GRADE: B
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3. Search Engine Optimization

Although initially the layout of this site appears to be non-search engine friendly, with its lack of text, the first thing we noticed was its 4/10 page rank. This is excellent considering most websites only rank 2/10 - are rarely get over a 6! Then when we popped the hood and looked at the code we mostly liked what we saw. The menu’s are unordered lists with heavy styling (a great way to go for SEO). The only initial problem we saw was the lack of h1 tags near the top of the pages. The title tags have many keywords to be desired, but are not set to default.

The Meta tags are outright missing. This is kind of a sad mistake because they are so easy to include, and they do help when the search engines want a description of the page. The clean URL strings are beautiful though. Its quite impressive to see no file names at the end of the URL strings. This tells us they are probably using Ruby on Rails for the site development. (I love it!)

Title tags: C
Meta tags: F
Clean URLs: A +
Semantic information design: A
Descriptive anchor tags: A
Google’s Page Rank: B

GRADE: C +
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4. Technical Standards

The first thing to notice about the code under the hood is the Doctype. XHTML 1.0 Strict. This alone points toward good coding practices. Once we ran it through the valiator at: http://validator.w3.org/check?verbose=1&uri=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.newchurches.com%2F we find there are 14 errors. This is alarming at first but almost every error relates to the use of an ‘&’ symbol. This is not perfect, but forgivable. We have to remember most sites do not live up to these standards.

When we ran an accessibility check we found no problems. My only complaint is that the code is very hard to read. It has comments, but it looks like it was generated by a program and placed together as opposed to hand written.

Doc type declaration: A +
HTML or XHTML standards compliant: B
CSS standards compliant: B
Accessibility standards compliant: A
Well formed code: B +

GRADE: B +
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FINAL GRADE: Passing (This site is definitely not stuck in the 90’s, and is living on the edge of cutting).
For a free report card on your website, please contact info@nonprofit-expressions.com

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