John S. Wolfe

Non-profit organizations often have a greater challenge when it comes to website engagement: fewer resources, “fuzzier” intentions and potential privacy concerns.

But that doesn’t mean they should ignore the Web altogether.

The July 13 meeting of AZIMA – the Arizona Interactive Marketing Association – featured a second panel of Internet marketing consultants, who looked at the site of a Phoenix-based non-profit group. WingstoFly.info promotes building self-esteem in young women ages 12 to 17, primarily through one-week educational camp in the summer.

The panel analyzed the site based on usability, search engine optimization and social media links.

Panel 2: From left, David Wallace of SearchRank, Ward Andrews of Drawbackwards and design.org, and Matt O’Brien of Mint Social

Usability, by Ward Andrews of Drawbackwards and founder of design.org:

•           To dream, inspire and empower are all good parts of the story. Take that image area and also have a call to action there, to tell the story and also have the visitor take action toward a goal.

•           “Hover over” navigation no longer works. This has more importance as users adopt devices like touch interfaces like on the iPad.

•           Instead of photos of the girls at the camp, show a video of them having fun camp. Embed the video from your YouTube channel. This builds a social outpost off-site and upgrades the quality of storytelling on-site.

•           On the home page, instead of describing “quick links,” describe what the list is about. If the list is about sponsors and donors, who you are recruiting as well as highlighting, list them with their logos. “It’s a sales tool,” he said.

•           One of the site sections is for after-school programs, there is nothing listed. I recommend you not include links until the content is there, he said.

SEO, by David Wallace of SearchRank:

• Many non-profits haven’t done much with search engine optimization but it’s crucial, he said.
• First, use a keyword search to determine the words and phrases people are using when doing a search.
• Next, employ keyword mapping to assign specific words to specific pages, the ones best suited to match searches.
• Each page should have unique title tags, with keywords and the brand name.
• Don’t forget a meta tag, the description of the organization and its mission, with keywords, for the website.
• You need to use header tags, and footer tags.
• If you use cascading style sheets for design, you made need to adjust them to include keywords.
• Use of p tags will make pages load faster.
• Include a link in images in order to show up on Google’s Image search.
• The site has nice incoming links from KNIX and KNXV-Channel 15. The group may want to pursue more of these, as part of a strategy to build the site as an authority in this domain.
• .info is a bit out of the mainstream. “It would be great if you could get the .com or .org domain,” he said.

Social media, by Matt O’Brien of Mint Social:

• WingstoFly does have a Twitter account but it doesn’t seem to be your audience. You have the girls attending the camp and the parents who would like to send their daughters to camp.
• The group does have an interesting Facebook page. But there isn’t a prominent tie-in to the page from the website.
• What are your content strategies? If the girls are “cold turkey” on gadgets during the camp, could volunteers capture the cool things going on?
• The Wing Story is buried on the home page and difficult to find. This is your biggest asset, so find a way to tell it on video or using Flickr. “Your audience is out on social networks,” O’Brien said. “You need to go there to engage them.”
• The group’s blog is also hard to find. This needs to be a part of the website, with a domain of www.wingstofly.info/blog.
• Pare down the site to tell WingstoFly’s story. Celebrate your big fund-raisers and donors.
• Is there a contest that you can introduce, perhaps for scholarships?
• In the off-season, can the girls participate by talking about their experiences at camp?
• The kids will be viral so you need to make the parents aware of the camp.
• You may also want a listening strategy. Perhaps there are parents looking for answers to some problems with their daughters. If you find forums or follow tweets where these discussions are taking place, you can participate and bring up WingstoFly, the website and the camp.