What’s on your charity site?
A website is a great way of getting information to your supporters, service users and stakeholders. Your website may be the first point of contact for many people, so it’s important to make a good first impression.
You could put all the information you have on the website, but is it interesting? Good editorial is as important on a website as it is in print. Don’t have time to write or edit your content? We can sort that out too.
Navigation
Every site has its own unique structure, to present your essential information in a logical and accessible way. It’s important to get navigation right so that users can easily find the information they are looking for.
Key categories are accessed via global navigation available on all pages. From each key category, subsidiary pages are accessed via the submenu. The first stage in designing/redesigning a website is to thinking about grouping information into categories and giving them intuitive labels. Remember to avoid corporate speak and acronyms in your navigation; it may make sense to you, but will your supporters understand it?
Managing your content
Static sites are less expensive as long as they do not change very often. But if you need to update your content on a regular basis a Content Management System (CMS) may be more cost-effective.
If you choose a CMS you will have control of your content. You will be able to:
- Log in through your web browser
- Change the text on any page
- Add photographs and other images
- Add links to other web resources
This keeps management cost to the absolute minimum and it means you can update your site whenever you want, any time you have internet access.