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The
Looking-Glass and VeggieGlobal
Design and Presentation
Advice for small charities and groups running their own websites
Are you an animal, environmental or
humanitarian based charity or group administrating your own website
while also trying to run your mission?
Without professional design and web
programming experience, you may find that your site is turning your
visitors away, rather than inviting them to stay and explore your
good cause.
There are various reasons for this, ranging from upsetting pictures
unsuitably placed on your opening pages, to confusing navigation
and even general grammar issues.
Many people think like to think they are designers and artists when
they are not. Relatively speaking, before websites appeared, an
amateur's artistic efforts remained under more private wraps, but
now the internet means anyone with our without creative talent can
be seen or heard! In fact even web "designers" without
any former creative experience are selling their services via the
internet and local papers, so beware who you choose when looking
for web services. Look at their work first and see how it ranks
on search engines etc.
However, just because your website hasn't been "professionaly"
designed, it may not be all bad. In fact, some smaller websites
doing good-cause work can often attract a person's interest simply
because the website isn't flashy and overstated and may ooze charm
through its simplicity. But these types of sites are few and far
between and often good-cause sites are a real hit and miss affair.
If professional
help is unaffordable
to you, tips to help you make improvements to your site can be found
below. By following these examples you may find that you can dramatically
increase your number of site visitors and therefore donations and
volunteers.
12
Tips on Your Site Layout - The prime Directives
1. If you are
an animal welfare based site, never put disturbing pictures of
animals in distress on your opening page.
Many people can't stomach the sight of tortured or dead animals
and will simply turn away from your site before exploring any
further. Therefore, you are simply loosing their potential help.
Give your visitors the option to choose if they want to see distressing
pictures. Simply place a link on your front page leading to them,
and next to the link make sure you write "Caution, these
pictures may upset you".
2. Avoid heavy
graphics and too much clutter on your opening page. Don't make
it too wordy. Keep it simple and provide a clear, straight forward
menu for your visitors to quickly choose from. Design your website
with a bright and inviting hue - not dark and gloomy. Your site
should reflect hope and positiveness - to show that your mission
is there to help improve matters, not to dwell on the despair.
The information on your site will explain the plight of your mission
clearly enough. So make the graphical experience of your site
an aspiring environment that suggests that you are driving to
succeed with your cause.
3. If you are
not a natural artist, don't use your website as your testing-bed
to play with your hobby! Remember, people are coming to visit
your site to read about your mission and your needs - not to be
bombarded with tacky animations and messy layouts. Above all,
avoid all superfluous G**gle style streaming adverts, they will
only distract people from your cause. (see more on this at 9.)
4. Make sure
your donation link is always displayed at the same place on each
page. Your donation button is your lifeline, so make sure it is
clear to see and always above the "scroll-line" preferably
on top left or right. If you are using Paypal, then keep the donation
button graphic looking like it is part of Paypal (or simply use
their own buttons) This recognizable graphic reassures visitors
that their donation is being administered by a safe on-line payment
process.
5. Avoid using
"frames". That is unless you make sure that all menu
links are on your main page as well as your margin frame. This
is because its more likely that a site visitor has entered your
site from a search engine which has listed a link to your main
page outside the frame.
This means only the search engine listed page appears on the visitors
browser - and not the accompanying menu margin. So make sure you
always put a "home-page" link and a small menu (and
your donation link) on your main page - not just on the margin
pages when using frames. In fact, if your site uses frames you
are advised to redesign it as soon as possible and remove frames
completely. They are highly unaffective and can reduce your ranking
in search engines.
6. Avoid using
"Flash".
Flash presentations - particularly as a front page opener, are
extremely irritating for most web users. With charity websites,
Flash is particularly unnecessary to your cause and simply diverts
attention away from your appeals etc. It often causes problems
on opening web pages and can take far too long to download. If
you insist on using Flash, only very experienced web designers
should be contracted to provide you with flash designs. Otherwise
don't use Flash or even other Java based animation unless you
really have an understanding how to make it appealing to your
site visitors.
7. Text links
(apart from a common menu table) are far more reliable and effective
than graphic buttons. If you have to have graphic buttons make
sure they are small in file size so they download quickly - and
if possible provide a text link next to the button as well.
8. If you are
a charity web site in a non-English speaking country whose pages
are in the English language, make sure that the grammar is correct.
In many cases translated websites become quite garbled and hard
to understand - where grammatical mistakes can provide confusing
and even misleading information. This of course also goes for
English sites with translated pages into other languages.
9. Advertising
... One of the most popular advertising trends in the last few
years has been streaming "pay-per-click" ads provided
by major search engine companies. However, its become increasingly
obvious that web-masters are "vulgarizing" their web-sites
with far too many strips of these ad feeds. If a site visitor
has come to your site to find information about your charity etc.,
the last thing they want to be staring at is a collection of irrelevant
ads as soon as your page opens up. This approach cheapens the
look of your site and your cause - and gives your organization
an irreverent feel about it. If you have to display "pay
per click" ads on your site then use them subtly - in relation
to the cause and layout of your site / organization. You should
also be aware that even though the ads automatically displayed
on your site are supposed to be relevant to your site content,
they are often not ... particularly if you are an animal welfare
site (or vegetarian). For example, if your web page is describing
the fate of farm animals, the last thing you want on your page
is adverts selling farm animal implements. Or else if your vegetarian
page relates to organic vegetables, you don't want ads appearing
trying to sell your site visitors organic beef!
You are advised not to use this cheap and tacky type of advertising
and instead use the more directly relevant "affiliate"
advertising methods. To help bring in supplementary income to
your cause through advertising choose affiliated products that
you genuinely believe in yourself ... things that you feel your
site visitors will also appreciate. Instead of ads being displayed
on all your pages just have a link to your "shopping"
page and put the ads on there.
Keep advertising on your site proportional, simple ... but stylish.
10. Maintain
your links page properly. Reciprocal links help you to reach higher
search engine rankings. Make sure your links page is accessible
from each page on your site, and don't make them hard for your
visitors to find them. The sites you are linked to appreciate
the etiquette of respecting each other's links exposure, as you
are helping each other with similar missions. When you set up
links to other sites remember to set the html to "_blank"
so that your reciprocating site opens up a seperate window. This
way your site will remain open and won't be overwritten.
11. If you receive
donations from sponsors, such as companies etc. make sure you
keep a separate and clearly linked page for them. On the page,
list your sponsors (with a small graphic of their logo if passable)
and make sure you keep in touch with your sponsor to point out
that they are being well publicized on your site. Companies like
to feel involved with showing compassion or philanthropic support
for charities and will often repeat their donation annually, as
long as you look after their company promotional interests as
well!
12. Finally ...
keep it simple and keep all your files small. Remember, most web
users around the planet are still using slow modem connections
to download web pages. If you are using high speed internet connections
you are still one of the few rather than the majority - in the
global sense. To most people, your pages will take a while to
download onto their screens, so make sure the important information
loads first and is therefore seen before anything less important
Again, keep it simple ... but stylish.
Advice About
Newsletters and Attachments.
Because spam creates
increased difficulty in determining a genuine e-mail from an unsolicited
one, you are advised to only write the name of your organization
in the email subject area when sending out newsletters. If you
write anything else in the "subject" space your newsletter
may be trashed by mistake. So, for example if your organization
is called "Save the Tigers" then make sure the subject
of your email simply states "Save The Tigers Newsletter"
rather than creating a name for your newsletter like "Tiger
Tales". Your subscribers will recognise "Save The Tiger",
but will rarely associate a flashy magazine style name with your
organization. Obviously, it's fine to title your newsletter "Tiger
Tales" in the main email text area itself, but keep the subject
title the name of your organization.
Avoid mailing out your
newsletters with oversized pictures.
If you have to send pictures you must first learn how to optimize
a picture's file size, using a picture editor program. This is
so you can make the file size small enough to be easily received
by your subscribers in their e-mail.
Unless specifically requested by your subscribers, it is bad etiquette
to send a huge picture file with an e-mail. This is because the
receiver of the picture will have to wait perhaps up to half an
hour for the file to download into their e-mail box! Such practices
can block a users e-mail box - and if they (as many people still
are) on a slow dial-up modem, their service provider might "time-out"
a connection before such a large file can be downloaded to the
subscriber's computer. This means that your subscriber's mail
box is made unusable. Besides really winding people up, misuse
of file sending certainly doesn't give your charity or group a
good impression. Any picture file over 20 kilobytes is unacceptable.
And if you have to send pictures, don't attach more than
one or two at time. As mentioned before, it's far more practical
- for everybody's sake - if you simply post the pictures on a
web page on your site and then add a link to the pictures on your
newsletter.
Further help
for small to medium charities.
If you would like Looking-Glass
and VeggieGlobal to provide your charity with personalized advice
on optimizing your web-site - plus grammatical improvement tips
and help on search engine placement - then a one day (six hour)
master-class at your headquarters can be provided in return for
a minimum donation of 150 US Dollars (aprox 93 UK pounds) plus
expenses.
This help is initially available in the Southern UK. However,
trips to charities outside the UK will also be considered. If
you think this personal service may prove useful for you please
email Looking-Glass and VeggieGlobal: info@looking-glass.co.uk
Please provide details of your animal, environmental or humanitarian
charity and its location etc. Please also include information
about which web design program you are using.
Note: This service is also available for larger charities but
the donation pricing is graduated.
If you require a professional web
site please visit Looking-Glass
Web Renaissance
The Looking-Glass and VeggieGlobal
philosophy on charities, philanthropic website beneficiaries and
other aspects of charitable web promotion click
here
Directories
and Related Paths to Explore
*The
Global Charities Directory
*The
Global Animal, Vegetarian, Environmental and Conservation Groups
Directory.
*Crisis
SOS International
*Back
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