Have you significantly updated your nonprofit’s website in the past two years? If not, it may already be outdated—research shows that the average website lifespan for top marketing brands is just two years and one month.
Whether you’ve fallen behind on regular website maintenance or outgrown your original build, upgrading your nonprofit site is critical to increase online fundraising and improve donor engagement.
This guide walks through the essential steps of completing a nonprofit website optimization to ensure your website’s tech and online fundraising tools are functioning properly. By the end, you’ll have a solid foundation for carrying out a productive website overhaul and setting your site up for ongoing success. Let’s dive in!
- Conduct a nonprofit website audit.
- Complete a website SWOT analysis.
- Address strategic priorities.
- Take a continuous improvement approach.
- Partner with a website consultant.
1. Conduct a nonprofit website audit.
A website audit is an in-depth review of a website's performance. It can reveal gaps in your content strategy, technical approach, and storytelling efforts and help you generate ideas for improvement.
To conduct your nonprofit website audit, you will:
- Identify search engine optimization (SEO) opportunities. SEO is the process of improving your website to rank higher in search engine results for specific keywords. Getting Attention’s SEO for Nonprofits guide provides a thorough overview of key elements to look for when updating your website for SEO. Most importantly, your website needs “high-quality, comprehensive content that aligns with the keyword’s search intent, incorporates your target keywords, and addresses searchers’ needs.”
- Check for technical issues. If your website has broken links, forms, or files, prioritize fixing them as soon as possible to maintain high performance and SEO rankings.
- Eliminate duplicate content. Do you have more than one page for the same type of content? Is your About Us information repeated in multiple places? Remove unnecessary duplicate content to minimize repetition for users and avoid negative SEO consequences.
- Assess page speed. Experts recommend load speeds of under two seconds. Ensuring all essential website pages, such as your online donation form and About page, load quickly creates a better user experience, encouraging visitors to stay on your site longer.
- Ensure compliance with accessibility guidelines. An accessible website ensures all potential supporters can get value from your site and engage with your mission. Make sure your website follows the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG). Start by ensuring all images have alternative text, videos have captions, and colors have sufficient contrast.
There are a variety of free online tools that can help you take these auditing steps, including:
- Google Lighthouse - Assesses website performance load speed, SEO criteria, accessibility, and best practices.
- Moz - Allows you to evaluate SEO metrics such as keyword information, brand authority, and competitor research.
- SiteChecker - Provides SEO diagnostic tools and identifies opportunities to enhance performance.
- ScreamingFrog - SEO Spider - Crawls your website to identify common SEO issues, including broken links and redirect issues.
Your audit will reveal high-priority technical and SEO issues your organization should address ASAP. These improvements lay the groundwork for making effective, bigger-picture changes down the line, like adding new functionality or expanding your site to address new audiences and their needs.
2. Complete a website SWOT analysis.
Once you have your website audit results, you and your team should take the time to dig deeper into the current gaps in your website and areas for opportunities by conducting a SWOT analysis. This reviews your website’s strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats.
For example, a nonprofit organization might identify the following elements as part of its SWOT analysis:
Strengths: Successful website elements that should be maintained in an optimization project.
- High-quality, original imagery
- Streamlined user pathways
- High donation conversion rate
Weaknesses: Areas of the website that need improvement that should be fixed.
- Duplicate content
- Slow load speeds
- High bounce rate for important pages, like the About Us page
Opportunities: Website elements or strategies the nonprofit could take better advantage of.
- Adding new features, like a chatbot
- Better integration with other marketing platforms, especially social media
- Creating an online store to boost revenue
Threats: Internal or external circumstances that present challenges to the nonprofit’s website.
- Outdated security technology and training
- Changes to search algorithms, causing a decrease in SEO rankings
- Launch of similar/competitor sites
This activity enables your organization to move forward with a clear plan to maximize your strengths, take advantage of new opportunities, and mitigate negative impacts due to weaknesses or threats.
3. Address strategic priorities.
Once you have your list of current website gaps and opportunities, it’s time to develop your website optimization plan.
First, list the different action items by priority. Consider factors such as:
- Value and impact on your nonprofit: Will the change significantly improve your organization’s ability to further its mission?
- User impact: Will the update streamline the user experience and help users complete their intended actions?
- Resources needed: Will making the change require investments in website tools, plugins, or external development support?
- Staff support: How many staff members will you need to push each initiative forward?
- Timeline: How long will the task take to complete?
The highest-priority tasks are directly related to the value they can drive for your organization and the impact they will have on your website’s users. For example, let’s say you’re updating your healthcare nonprofit’s website. Your highest priority task may be creating clearer user pathways so people who urgently need access to healthcare information can find what they’re looking for more easily.
Once your team lays out your action items, start assigning staff members to each one. Consider the skills needed and assess whether contacting additional help, like a tech consultant, will help you achieve your goals.
4. Take a continuous improvement approach.
Major website overhaul projects are sometimes necessary to level up your website and ensure it supports your organization’s goals. However, we recommend adopting a continuous improvement approach to avoid having to regularly undertake these costly and time-consuming projects.
Continuous improvement is an ongoing process of making smaller, more frequent website updates that ensure your site stays relevant and updated over time.
Kanopi’s nonprofit website maintenance guide recommends the following strategies to maximize continuous improvement:
- Run website security updates as soon as they’re available.
- Ensure you’re using the latest version of your site’s CMS.
- Keep timely site elements updated, such as your blog and events calendar.
- Test forms to ensure data flows smoothly in your nonprofit’s constituent relationship management platform (CRM).
Use your nonprofit’s website analytics platform to track key performance indicators (KPIs) like your online donation page conversion and bounce rates. If you notice any dips in performance, it may be time to make minor updates to maintain the effectiveness of these pages.
With a continuous improvement strategy, you can turn your website into a scalable, flexible resource that you can adapt at any time to meet your goals more effectively.
5. Partner with a website consultant.
As mentioned, many nonprofit leaders turn to nonprofit website design and development consultants to manage their website optimization projects. If your initial review indicates a more hefty optimization project than you planned, partnering with expert professionals is your best bet.
Nonprofit web consultants offer services such as:
- Website audits
- User research
- Accessible design
- Content strategy
- User experience optimization
- Technical strategy and optimization
- Ongoing website support and continuous improvement
Your consultant should also take the time to research your nonprofit’s goals, audience, and mission. This way, you know that their advice and help will genuinely drive value for your organization.
By working with a consultant, you can create a reliable and flexible long-term website optimization strategy to ensure your website remains a timeless, effective resource for your audience.
A nonprofit website optimization project can significantly benefit your organization, especially if you discover your online fundraising results or engagement metrics are declining. With a more comprehensive look at your goals and an in-depth system rebuild, you can create a powerful nonprofit website that drives real value for your mission.
Post by Anne Stefanyk
As Founder and CEO of Kanopi Studios, Anne provides digital strategy to clients and organizations in the nonprofit, higher education, healthcare, and corporate sectors. She opened Kanopi in 2013, upon seeing the untapped opportunities in the market for iterative web design and development. Anne has spent her career at the intersection of business development, marketing, and technology. She specializes in building rapport with clients and converting conversations into tangible results.
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