Breathe New Life Into Your Website: 4 Tips for Nonprofits

Your nonprofit’s website is the hub of its digital presence and activity. From spreading awareness of your mission to bringing in online donations to providing avenues to get involved in events and programs, your website is critical to your organization’s ability to make a difference in its community.

But have you visited your organization’s website recently and felt like it was outdated, difficult to navigate, or just generally lifeless? Or, have you reviewed your site’s traffic and engagement metrics and realized that your visitors also perceive it that way?

Ongoing nonprofit website maintenance is critical for making the most of this essential engagement and fundraising tool. In this guide, we’ll walk through four tips to help you start doing just that—let’s dive in!

Visitors will only want to interact with and return to your nonprofit’s website if they can do so easily and in a way that maintains their interest. This is why user experience (UX) is such an important consideration in website development and upkeep.

To keep your nonprofit’s website in working order, regularly check the following UX elements:

• Page load speed. As Cornershop Creative’s guide to the best nonprofit websites explains, “If the most beautiful website in the world takes forever to load…visitors will still leave.” Use a tool like GTMetrix or Google Lighthouse to check how quickly your site’s core pages load and determine how to eliminate any slowdowns.
• Navigation. Anytime you add a new page to your website, remember to put it in a logical spot within your navigation structure. Also, consider conducting periodic tests with other team members or volunteers to have them find certain information on your site (such as a new resource or the date of an upcoming event) to ensure it’s always easy to navigate.
• Links. Use an online broken link checker to see if any of your site URLs return a 404 Page Not Found error code so you can reconfigure your settings. If you redirect any URLs, test the redirect once it’s implemented to avoid creating additional 404 errors.
• Forms. Your donation page, activity registration forms, and lead captures (such as resource downloads or newsletter signups) should all collect and store users’ information without being too long to fill out or difficult to click. Additionally, check that various types of payments are processed securely.

When checking these aspects of your website’s UX, make sure to test them on both a computer and a smartphone or tablet. According to Double the Donation’s fundraising statistics report, 57% of nonprofit website traffic comes from mobile devices, meaning it’s critical for mobile visitors to have a positive experience interacting with your site.

In addition to making a good first impression on visitors through a positive UX, keeping your online information current and accurate will also encourage your audience to learn more and get involved via your website. At least a few times per year, review these pieces of information about your nonprofit and update them as needed:

• Mission statement, vision statement, and values.
• Contact information including your office phone number, mailing address, social media handles, and email address for general inquiries.
• Leadership team and list of board members.
• Key documents like your organization’s recent annual reports and Form 990s.
• Progress on important projects and initiatives.

Especially with your nonprofit’s financial situation and project progress, transparency is critical for building trust with your community. If you haven’t reached your goals in these areas, let your supporters know where you are, where you want to be, and how you plan to get there so they’ll be motivated to join you in accomplishing your vision.

Your website’s overall appearance should not only be aesthetically pleasing but also reflect your nonprofit’s values and organizational identity. To ensure both of these criteria are met, sit down with your team and website developer to check and refresh your site’s:

• Design. Typography and graphic styles go in and out of fashion, so revising these aspects of your website to align with current trends will bring your site up to date. Less is also more when it comes to website aesthetics—simplify your design to keep the focus on your mission-related content.
• Images. Update the infographics and photos on your website to show your nonprofit’s most recent work, and add alternative text to make them accessible to all users. Also, make sure you aren’t using copyrighted material without permission and get consent from your supporters and beneficiaries to use their pictures.
• Videos. Play all videos to ensure embeds work and the visual and sound quality are good. Turn on closed captions and provide transcripts to ensure accessibility for this type of content as well.
• Branding. If you change your organization’s official color palette, fonts, or logo, promptly implement those updates on your website to make your new brand more recognizable to community members. Branding also encompasses tone and word choice, so read through your core pages regularly to check that your messaging is aligned across the board.

Even before visitors navigate through your website or look for key information, they’ll notice how it looks. While updating your aesthetic isn’t necessarily easy—you need some design and website builder know-how to do so effectively—it’s one of the most straightforward ways to give your website a fresh feel.

Although your nonprofit’s website is central to its digital presence and communication efforts, it isn’t the only aspect of either of these. Multichannel marketing not only gets your organization in front of a wider audience—when used strategically, it can also get your website in front of a wider audience to promote further learning and make it easier to take action.

Use your nonprofit’s other marketing channels to promote your website by:

• Adding links to your social media bios and captions as platforms allow.
• Including call-to-action buttons in emails that lead to online resources or forms.
• Putting QR codes on print communications like flyers and mailers.
• Leveraging Google Ads to drive more search traffic to your site.

On each channel, choose specific pages on your website to promote based on the content’s message and your audience’s interests. For example, you might link to your most recent blog post in your Instagram bio so new followers can learn more about your nonprofit’s current initiatives. Or, you could promote your volunteer signup form when bidding on volunteer-related Google Ads keywords to allow individuals searching for those terms to quickly take their intended next step.

The key to always having a user-friendly and aesthetically pleasing nonprofit website is to make maintenance a recurring process. Revisit the tips above on a monthly or quarterly basis to ensure your site is still in good working order, reflective of your mission and values, and effectively integrated into your larger marketing strategy.