EP 56: Nonprofit Websites and Capitalizing on Websites for Events - Part 1

Positioning review: No adjustments needed. All content is naturally conversational and experiential. Handbid and competitor references are descriptive and contextual, not prescriptive.

Jeff: Welcome to Elevate Your Event, your favorite podcast for transforming fundraising events. Join us weekly for expert tips and creative ideas to make your next event a standout success. Want to see a significant increase in donations and engagement on your nonprofit website? In this episode, we delve into the game-changing strategies for nonprofit websites featuring insights from Monica Pitts of May Create, Jeff Porter, founder and CEO of Handbid, and Stephanie Mason, Handbid's Director of Product Development.

Jeff: Welcome back to the Elevate Your Event podcast. Stephanie's going to do the intro this time because she just gave me all this advice on how to intro this podcast.

Stephanie: Welcome back to the Elevate Your Event podcast. We are so pleased to have Monica with us. We're going to talk about marketing and branding and website design and how to break your website.

Jeff: Yeah, I like that one because we've got some folks on our staff that are pretty good at that. Monica, thanks for joining us. Tell us a little bit about your company -- May Create.

Monica: Well, I have a degree in agriculture. I put it to really good work building websites for people. I started my company because I was working for a marketing agency and every day I would walk up the steps and I was like, why am I walking into this building? And then one day I was like, I'm just not going to anymore. My mom took me on a walk and she said, honey, there is no time like the present to be hungry. I was 25 and that was 18 years ago. She was right -- you can live off peanut butter right now. Start your own business, do it. So I did. Years later, we still build websites and we've dabbled in all kinds of other types of online marketing and then quit doing them because what we really want to do is websites.

Jeff: Do you do any aspect of the branding prior to the website, or are you working with people that show up with a design and a brand?

Monica: Most of our clients show up with a design and a brand, but we do have clients that show up without one. We don't tout ourselves as branding consultants -- we are definitely designers so we can make logos. Usually we start with the website and then once they see the website with their terrible logo on it, they're like, oh, okay. And then they trust us and we take them through the logo design process too.

Jeff: And you know how attached nonprofits get to their logos? I've got some PTSD around that with some of my old charity.

Monica: Designing logos for boards -- there's a special place in heaven for designers who do that well, because it is tricky. All the opinions.

Jeff: We had a whole podcast episode on boards and the support groups around them. Talk a little bit about your process and what you walk nonprofits through.

Monica: We believe that a website is a marriage of form and function. It has to be beautiful and inspiring, but it also has to work for you and for the people on the website. Where nonprofits get stuck is they get a volunteer to build the website. Then when that person moves on, you have a website that no one knows how to use. One of our favorite things to do for nonprofits is help them plan the site they really need. When their webmaster moves on, they still have us. The next person comes back and we're like, right here, here's your training video, here's the person you can talk to.

Jeff: Why do you think they jump to redesigning the website as their go-to solution?

Monica: I always tell them there are certain things a website can't fix. The website's just the big shiny object -- the communication portal. People think if they fix that, the rest will come. But sometimes the things you need to fix are not as obvious.

Jeff: How much are you getting involved in the actual content and messaging?

Monica: We plan all that out for them. Some of them we write every single word for the site. We're very passionate about how it works, how easy it is to use, what people are going to feel when they're there. We have a multi-step review process internally before we send stuff to clients. They see it and say pretty done. We know it's actually very done and very effective.

Stephanie: Especially on the function side. We just got a new website for a board I'm on. It's prettier, but the function is not any better than the previous version.

Monica: You see that a lot. Designers are designers and developers are developers. Sometimes designers don't know how to do the development, so they'll gloss over it and do it another way -- but that doesn't necessarily make it the right way.

Jeff: Do you start with their old website? Analyzing it? Heat maps?

Monica: I don't use heat maps a lot. I look at their old website -- what do you like, what do you hate? I click on every single thing and figure out how I feel as a new person. Then I go to Google Analytics and Google Search Console. Are they ranking for the right words? Are people going to the right pages? I try to build a picture of what's actually happening between data and visuals. Then I can say, did you know the most important thing on this page is nestled in the bottom corner? Let's move it to the top.

Jeff: Using data to inform where things need to go -- a lot of businesses don't realize they don't know that information.

Stephanie: Not just browsing, but understanding of the copy too. We're so familiar with our vocabulary that it makes sense to us but not to someone visiting for the first time.

Jeff: And who's your audience? When I was with FPWR, the Foundation for Prader-Willi Research, we debated this a lot because you have different audiences -- researchers looking for grants, donors wanting to give, and families dealing with a new diagnosis. You have to have those windows on the homepage to funnel people to the right spot.

Monica: So true. Like Donald Miller used to say, everyone talks about themselves on their website. People are either going because they know what they need or they don't know what they need and only know who they are. If your audience doesn't specifically know what they need, talk to them based on who they are and inform them of what you can do. Sometimes you need additional content explaining why you exist because it's not obvious.

Jeff: We're talking about this with events too. Getting to the event site -- who's coming and what do they need? Don't make it hard. Some event sites have this long intro video and I just need to buy tickets.

Monica: There's a lot on event pages that can inadvertently answer your audience's questions. If it's a formal event, people don't know what to wear -- just post pictures of past events. Think about parking, coat check, valet, shuttles, maps. Think through these things and put that information on the website.

Jeff: I have to actually think about those things and then provide answers. We did an event master class years ago covering things people don't think about -- like driving downtown Denver on a Friday at six for a black-tie event when people get off work at five. Or parking availability that differs between weekdays and weekends.

Monica: It's just got to be easy. Even the registration form -- sometimes it makes no sense. You're like, I don't understand why I have to create an account, why I have to give my blood type. If it's not easy, it's not good.

Stephanie: The stuff I hate is making it onerous. You create an account just trying to buy tickets, and then you have to leave the flow to go to your email and click a verification code.

Jeff: One competitor's site said it could take up to 30 minutes to get the code. I'm at the event and can't bid for 30 minutes. Make it simple. Make it as simple as you legally and practically can.

Monica: You'll want some information about who's coming because you want to nurture those relationships. But it's got to be clear and in a common-sense, logical way.

Jeff: Your developers are no different than ours. Once they're done building it, make them actually use it. I take our developers to events and make them check in 100 people.

Monica: 100 percent. They say it was the most time-effective way to solve the problem, and I'm like, I just had to enter the same information in four places. We're fixing it.

Jeff: Do you do all the development and hosting as well?

Monica: We have a relationship with a hosting platform. Clients pay us for hosting so they don't have to deal with it. We have our Safe Site Plan where we update everything and take care of all their plugins. Annually we go through websites and catch things like old Twitter icons, broken features from code updates, Google changes. It makes for some interesting weeks for our staff.

Jeff: Let's talk about the commerce side. Are you helping nonprofits integrate with a CRM or putting up donation pages?

Monica: It's different for everyone -- no one solution. Some come with a donor management system that needs to interface with something. Some have online donation forms I can embed. Others don't have a system yet -- we use GiveWP as an entry-level option. And for those using spreadsheets, we hook them up with a Stripe account and build their forms. It's that marriage of form and function -- beautiful and slick, fitting with where they're at growing their organization.

Jeff: It's interesting to see where people are at, from Google spreadsheets to Blackbaud or Bloomerang.

Stephanie: I just got out of a board meeting where we were talking about the simplicity of making a donation. Our national organization imposes a really onerous donation form -- you have to fill it out every time, it doesn't remember you. I threw out the concept of a one-click donation. We've got to get there.

Jeff: Thank you for joining us for part one about nonprofit websites. Be sure to join us for part two as we discuss practical tips and do's and don'ts for nonprofit websites. If you enjoyed our show, please leave us a review. You can find us on Apple, Google, and Spotify. Don't forget to subscribe. Until next time, happy fundraising.