5 Signs You Need to Rebuild Your Nonprofit Website Today

With over 3.5 billion online users, having a website is an absolute must for any organization looking to stay competitive and grow its community. In order to build trust and brand awareness, your community needs to be able to locate you online. But it is not as simple as setting up a website and walking away. A successful website requires a significant amount of time and resources to keep it performing well. A website requires maintenance – it needs regular updates, tweaks, and, occasionally, total makeovers where you need to rebuild your nonprofit website.

Website maintenance can be difficult to keep up with, so when you’re not sure whether to rebuild your site or not, here are some tips to help you get on the right track:

• It Isn’t Clear What You Do On Your Website

To avoid a high bounce rate, it is a high priority that your website match the overall style and feel of your brand. For example, a website of a day spa should invoke a calm, restorative feeling to its audience, the website must not be composed of loud colors and flashy graphics which may remind the viewers of a dance club. This would lead to confusion and send the average person on to the next site.

Your content should also convey what your company is all about.

• Focus on relevant and concise information in an easy-to-digest format, like a bulleted list or an infographic.
• Headlines and taglines are great ways to give readers just enough information to make them want to keep reading.
• An About Us page is the perfect place to let people know who you are and what you do.

If your website isn’t following these guidelines, it is time for an overhaul where you rebuild your nonprofit website.

2. Your Website Is Outdated

Although this is good business 101, Google now makes it a requirement to keep your site fresh and updated on a regular basis. This means that website creators and developers need to add new and original content regularly and always keep their coding up-to-date. If not, organizations risk falling in the search engine rankings, and that is a big way to lose potential customers. An outdated website means that it is definitely time to rebuild your nonprofit website.

3. Your Website Has No SEO Value

Much like fresh content, there are powers that made it necessary for all sites to be Search Engine Optimized (SEO). This includes H tags, meta tags, alt tags, page titles, keyword-rich content, and more. To keep your site relevant and productive in results, you will want to invest some time into keeping it optimized.

4. Your Website Is Difficult to Navigate

Along with changing times comes shorter attention spans. People now have an attention span of about eight seconds, which means that our websites must be user-friendly and properly functional in order to make an impression. Information must be clear and easy to find – all links must work and images must load properly. If a user has to search through large chunks of content or click through multiple pages to find an organization’s contact information, that user will move on to your competition. Check your site regularly to make sure everything is working as it should. If not, dedicate some time to making repairs.

5. Your Website Is Not Mobile-Friendly

It’s a mobile world out there, and that means your site must be responsive (works the same on a smartphone as it does on a desktop). Otherwise, you risk losing an obscene amount of web traffic. Keeping a responsive design will mean that your customers can find you and your products easily from any number of devices. Plus, you avoid another “ding” from Google.

Do any of the above describe your website? If you answered yes, then we would love to help you dig in and rebuild your nonprofit website.