Deja Vu All Over Again
Why Do All Nonprofit Websites Look the Same, and What Can You Do to Stand Out?
How can you take your website from this:
To this?
Back in the early days of the web, websites exhibited a cornucopia of visual styles. Rules were few and far between. Being a “web designer” meant having the ability to string together some coherent HTML tables, and terms like “usability” didn’t mean much. The informality and looseness of the early web meant a lack of standardization, which in turn resulted in what could be an ugly, yet often interesting, visual experience. You might not have been comfortable giving anyone your credit card number, but the visual rawness led to what often felt like a strangely “human” browsing experience. The DIY aesthetic of this time period meant that almost every website seemed totally unique, with a distinct voice all its own.
Fast-forwarding to today, the design and development of websites now involves an array of specialized talent, from UX and visual designers to content strategists, from CSS wizards to full-stack developers. Entire careers are centered around ensuring the modern web is usable and accessible by all. An ever-expanding list of “best practices” fuels a cottage industry of thought leaders, TED Talks, conferences, tech “evangelists,” and consultants. And while most changes to the web have been welcome ones, bringing openness, inclusivity, and a baseline of security, there’s been one unwanted side effect: the rough edges of the early internet have been chipped away and sanded down so that many websites look almost identical to one another.
Detecting a Pattern
If you’ve visited more than a handful of websites in your life, you’re guaranteed to be familiar with the following setup:
- A big hero image, with smiling people or a tasteful product shot, takes up the top chunk of your browser window (bonus points if there’s a lens flare)
- There’s probably some sort of color overlay on the image, with a big headline on top (almost certainly in white)
- A bit of smaller text below the headline explains what the site’s all about
- A big button! You should definitely click that, since you’ve been asked nicely
- Underneath the hero, there’s a column of text that explains what the site’s really about
- Next, some tasteful icons that illustrate all the different ways the organization achieves impact
Don’t believe me?
It’s not that there’s anything inherently wrong with this UX pattern; after all, website designers have been famously exhorted to not make people think. However, if every organization’s users have different needs (they do), and websites should be organized around “user-first” principles (they should), then the pattern outlined above can’t possibly be the best way to serve the interests of the users of every single website.
Nonprofits aren’t exempt from falling prey to this pattern. In fact, in some ways, the conditions faced by many nonprofits make it even more likely that their website will look just like everyone else’s.
How Did We Get Here?
So how do we build a site that lets an organization accomplish its goals while standing out in a crowded space? First, let’s look at some reasons many websites in general, and nonprofit sites in particular, end up looking the same:
Budget Constraints
- Nonprofits often have limited budget flexibility, and when it comes to websites, that means they need to be sure to get the most bang for their buck. This frequently leads to a nonprofit trying to shoehorn a big project into a medium (or small) budget. When this happens, the end result is almost always that creative visual solutions get short shrift, forcing the designer(s) to fall back on “standard” design approaches.
- The irony behind trying to stretch a website design budget too thin is that all too often, initial budget shortcuts lead to much greater expenditures down the road, as a hastily-assembled website inevitably falls short of its mark, necessitating quick fixes, additional tweaks, or even a full-scale redesign much sooner than intended.
Content as an Afterthought
Unfortunately, too many organizations think of their content as a blob of “stuff” to be dropped into a web design’s waiting shell. Tight timelines, lack of governance, and poor planning quickly lead many teams to take a “just get it all up on the site!” approach when it comes to content.
Additionally, nonprofits with long histories often have years worth of research, tools, and resources on their websites. People work hard on creating those pieces, and are understandably attached to them — they want to make sure that everyone who wants access to those tools can get to them. A downside to this approach is that we often see nonprofit websites becoming a “dumping ground” for thousands of PDF’s that rarely if ever actually get read. A smart organization will spend as much time thinking about what not to put on their new site as they do about what they do want to see on there. It might mean having some hard conversations and making tough choices about what needs to stay and what needs to go — but going through that process can result in a site that’s clean, crisp, easy to navigate — and might even look a little bit different from all the other sites out there.
Internal Assumptions Driving the Process
By the time a nonprofit is ready to embark on a website redesign, they’ve already put a lot of thought into it. Someone has had to get frustrated enough with the current site to see a need for a redesign, make the case for the investment, put together requirements, expectations and success metrics, and develop an RFP. At this point, they’re pretty convinced of the problems they want a new site to solve. No need to talk to anyone else — just build the new site, already!
The problem with this approach is that it requires making a lot of assumptions about the way people interact with your organization online. The fact that the head of marketing or fundraising thinks people want to see things work a specific way on your site doesn’t necessarily make it so. Using internal assumptions to drive a website redesign means that standard nonprofit challenges and leadership assumptions will be baked into the process — resulting in a formulaic-feeling final product.
So How Can You Stand Out?
Luckily, there are some straightforward steps organizations can take to make sure the site they build stands out from the crowd.
Figure out what your end goals are. Before you jump into a redesign, it’s important to be really specific about your goals for your new site. After all, a site with the ultimate goal of driving a specific type of action (whether it be making a donation, signing a petition, joining an online community, or something else) should have a very different structure and visual approach compared to one with the ultimate goal of positioning an organization as a thought leader in its space. You shouldn’t make any decisions about a new website until your organization has achieved consensus around the top priorities for the site. From there, every subsequent decision you make about the site needs to be driven by, and in service of, those priorities.
Talk with your website users. Your supporters (and potential supporters) are the reason you have a public-facing website in the first place. It’s worth spending a little bit of time talking to them about what they want to do on your site. What is it about your work and your brand that appeals to them? What do they use your website to accomplish? Why you, instead of all the other organizations out there that do similar work? Do they come back to a certain section or tool over and over? It doesn’t need to take much. Even some basic online surveys and brief interviews with regular website visitors can help you glean important insights — and sometimes they can give you data that disproves some of those deeply-held internal assumptions.
Having those conversations with the people who use your website can help you pinpoint what it is that makes you stand out among your peer organizations. Incorporating that user feedback into the redesign process can enable you to think outside of the nonprofit box when it comes to features, tools, and interactions that will set your site apart.
Think about content strategy and presentation upfront. Your content shouldn’t be an afterthought. Before embarking on a redesign, conduct an audit of your existing site. Does everything on there really need to move over to a new site? Use Google Analytics to figure out which content people are engaging with, and think about archiving what’s not useful or visited very infrequently. Do you have a strategic plan for where you want to be in a few years? Does your content strategy and new website architecture support that strategy? Is there a way to think about repurposing some of those PDF’s into engaging infographics or explainer videos?
Once you have consensus on what content you want to present on the new site, the critical next step is determining how you want to present it. This requires revisiting those priorities we mentioned above. Is the goal of the site to drive engagement around a specific moment or campaign? If so, that might influence the voice and tone your headlines are written in. Is your top priority driving donations? If yes, you’ll want to think very carefully about how to tell your story of impact, choosing images and language that add an emotional element to that story. Is providing issue awareness and education a top goal? In that case, you might want to think about featuring an animated infographic or an explainer video that helps make a complex issue feel approachable. The way you present your content is entirely dependent on your organization’s website goals — and those differ vastly across nonprofits. Narrowing in on your goals, target audiences, and desired outcomes will help you figure out which content presentation style makes most sense for your specific organization.
Even a small up-front investment in content strategy can result in websites that enhance your content’s effectiveness and help make your site look and feel different from all the rest, rather than just serving as a PDF/resource library. Your content is the reason people are visiting your site — so it’s worth taking some time to be strategic about that content to make sure what you’re offering is useful and in the format that’s most accessible and engaging.
Use your budget wisely. Nonprofits will likely always be working within some tight budget constraints. This doesn’t mean you can’t have an awesome website — but it does mean you might need to get strategic about how you spend your money. Do you really need a vendor to conduct user research, or can it become a project that an intern takes on? Smart organizations with limited budgets might choose to do the research and content planning internally. That leaves them with the flexibility to invest in the visual bells and whistles that make their sites stand out.
Look outside your comfort zone for inspiration. Most of the nonprofits we work with share samples of other websites they like — and those websites are almost always other nonprofit sites. They tend to neglect the fact that there’s a whole other world out there on the web to explore. Check out some of the subtle animations on corporate sites. Or the way e-commerce sites use imagery to make their products look compelling. Or the way publication sites incorporate multimedia storytelling. And don’t forget about non-digital sources! Nonprofits can derive inspiration from print pieces, editorial design, photography, event signage, and more. Don’t limit yourself to a narrow sample size when seeking inspiration.
Trust the experts. Teal Media has been working with nonprofits for almost a decade — when we say we’ve seen it all, we mean it. And that’s true for most designers in the nonprofit space. If you’ve chosen to invest in a design agency to guide your redesign process, you should lean on their expertise. Chances are if they’re making a recommendation, it’s because they have years of experience in being able to identify not only what works and doesn’t work, but also what’s been done before and where there might be opportunity to innovate. Every designer relishes the opportunity to get a little “crazy” with their work. And if you give them enough leeway to test out their creativity, you just might end up with a site that brings back a bit of the unique visual touch that made the early days of the web so special.
Jeff Grieve is a Sr. Designer at Teal Media, a full-service creative agency with a conscience. We pour every ounce of our passion and skill toward your success, because we, too want the world to be a better place. We believe purposeful design can transform organizations, inspire action, and enable progress.
Learn more at TealMedia.com and find us on Facebook and Twitter.
