Best Practices for Better Engagement & Navigation on Nonprofit Websites

Evaluating and maintaining your nonprofit’s website is an ongoing process. A few times a year, an organization should review their website for any necessary changes, including any changes they need to make to their website’s SEO. In a past post, we discussed making your site donor-friendly, and today we’re going to explore best practices for improving engagement on your nonprofit website.

Website engagement is important because it is a key part of building an audience. Visitors should want to engage with your website, and if you follow our best practices, they’ll be able to do so easily.

Here are a few tips:

1. Make Good Use of Hyperlinks Hyperlinks are words, phrases or images that connect to another website or webpage. Linking between pages on your website is not only great for SEO but helps visitors reach their desired destination sooner. For example, if your nonprofit’s blog pulls in a significant amount of site traffic, hyperlinking to the blog (and clearly displaying the blog tab on your menu) on the homepage is a best practice. This is especially useful if certain campaigns or blog series are getting attention in your community. Link it on the homepage!
   

2. Organize Site Pages–Short & Simple After several years of serving a community, a nonprofit is likely to have large amounts of digital assets on their website, including several webpages. Some of these pages may still be useful to the organization, while others are redundant or outdated. If these webpages remain on the site, drop-down tabs from the menu become unnecessarily long, and visitors will be more likely to find themselves on the wrong page. Limiting the number of webpages on your site, organizing them into themes, and keeping your menu simple will keep donors on your site, and keep them engaged.
   

3. Feature Updates on Homepage The homepage acts as the hub of your website. Think of it as a traffic circle for your nonprofit’s site, providing visitors with directions to reach their desired destination. You can help visitors as they navigate your website by keeping the homepage updated with current campaigns, recent blog posts, and general community happenings. Hyperlinking text (see above) on the homepage is one way to keep the page updated. However, using a revolving photo gallery or featuring the most recent blog on the homepage is a way to quickly inform visitors what they’ve missed, and how they can easily find the answers they need.

Schedule a free consultation with Spark & Thrive to learn how we can help you achieve all your organizational goals. We look forward to seeing you thrive!

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