Building your Non-Profit Website: Leveraging Lean Principles and Tech Industry Practices

Building a compelling and effective website is a critical part of ever non-profit organization's marketing strategy. Your website serves as the face of your organization - and it should your passion and mission to all your audiences - to help you scale your impact. In another post, I talk in detail about the most common issues I've seen with non-proft website, especially the small organization.

Websites of small non-profits are often built by one or two people with little to zero inputs from key stakeholders at the beginning of the design process.

Drawing from my experience in product management, marketing, and software engineering in Fortune 500 tech companies, I've found that applying lean principles, user research, competitor research, rapid prototyping, and testing can greatly enhance the development process for your website.

Here’s how you can integrate these techniques into every phase of developing your new non-profit website.

Phase 1: Planning and Discovery

1. Define Clear Objectives For What You Want Your Website To Achieve

• Purpose and Goals: When I've asked non-profits how they measure success of their website, most struggle to articulate how they do it. Start by identifying the primary purpose of your website based on both your evergreen/long term goals as well as the goals you have defined for this fiscal year. Is it to raise awareness, collect donations, drive signups to programs, recruit volunteers, or provide information? Setting clear objectives will guide the entire development process.

  
  

• Key Metrics: Determine how you will measure success for the website. This should go beyond website traffic and engagement rates to include metrics like # of online donors via website, total online donation via website, volunteer sign-ups, downloads of policy papers, online signups to your programs, online ticket sales.

  Many of these things may also happen outside your website through channels like email, paper, in-person. so it is important to measure how much your website is driving vs other channels.

2. User Research - Know Thy Audiences Better

• Identify Your Audience: Understand who your primary audiences are. For most non-profits, your website has the following: board members, volunteers, donors, beneficiaries, grant giving organizations, partners, press/other local influencers.

• But depending on your organizational maturity (e.g. too small to engage with press) and operating model (e.g. beneficiaries are disadvantaged children in a developed country), not all need audiences may be relevant at a certain time.

• Gather Insights: Talk to a few people in all of these audience groups. Talking may be in the form of Zoom calls, meeting at a coffee shop, focus groups at a free room at a local library. Ask them about their needs and preferences from your website, what challenges they experience with the current site and ideas based on what they have seen on other sites. Surveys are also useful and a simple Google Forms based survery will get you a lot of insights.

  
  

• Persona Development: A persona is a description of an average user of a particular target audience type. Create failry rich personas representing your key audience segments. These personas should include demographics, goals, pain points, and preferred online behaviors. Here is an example of two different personas for donor subtypes:

  • Young donors (ages 18 - 25) - digital and mobile savvy, usually donates small amounts like $5 - $10 a month. Prefers to pay through Venmo or Zelle. Acknowldgement is not important

  • Mature donors (ages 60+ ) - Primarily desktop user, donates in the range $1000 - $5000 a year in one go. Doesn't trust unknown online donor platforms to make large transactions. Prefers to pay via check and receive a paper trail for tax purposes. Wants to be acknowledged visibly.

With these insights and should a non-profit decide to cater to both of these subsegments of donors, then the design of the website needs to be very different.

3. Competitor Research - What Are They Doing Better Than You On Their Websites

Just because you are a non-profit does not mean you are competitor-free. Analyze websites of similar non-profits. Identify what works well and what doesn’t. Take note of design elements, functionalities, and content strategies that resonate with their audience.

Phase 2: Ideation and Prototyping

1. Brainstorming and Ideation

• Collaborative Workshops: Organize brainstorming sessions with your team and stakeholders to generate ideas for your website’s design and content.

2. Rapid Prototyping

• Wireframes and Mockups: You can use a whiteboard or PowerPoint to create rough (low-fidelity wireframes) mockups of key pages. And if you are buliding your website on easy-to-design platforms like Wix or SquareSpace you can also prototype (that is build lightweight working models) which should focus on layout, navigation, and user flow.

• Iterative Feedback: Share these prototypes with stakeholders and potential users to gather feedback. Iterate based on the feedback to refine the design.

  
  

Phase 3: Development and Testing

1. Lean Development

• MVP Approach: In software development, we first build the Minimum Viable Product (MVP) - that is the essential features that deliver the most value and can be launched quickly. This allows you to test and validate the core functionalities before investing in additional features.

• Agile Methodology: Use agile practices to manage the development process. Break down the project into sprints, set clear deliverables for each sprint, and hold regular stand-ups to track progress.

2. User Testing

• Usability Testing: Conduct usability tests with real users to identify any issues with navigation, content clarity, or functionality. Tools like UserTesting or Lookback can facilitate remote usability testing. Test for

  • Different devices: mobile (iOS and Android), Windows, Apple Macs, iPads etc

    
    
    
    

Phase 4: Launch and Optimization

1. Soft Launch

• Controlled Rollout: Consider a soft launch where the website is made live to a limited audience. This allows you to gather initial feedback and make necessary adjustments before the full launch.

• Monitoring and Analytics: Set up analytics tools (e.g., Google Analytics) to monitor website performance from day one. Track key metrics aligned with your goals to assess the website’s impact.

2. Continuous Improvement

• Feedback Loops: Establish regular feedback loops with users and stakeholders to gather ongoing input. Use this feedback to prioritize updates and improvements.

• Iterative Enhancements: Continue making iterative enhancements based on user feedback and performance data. This approach ensures your website remains relevant and effective over time.