Michelle Robin  9:24  
Hello and welcome to generosity exchange. We are thrilled to welcome Nat Rosasco: Nat is a digital marketing entrepreneur and founder of Olive Street Design, Olive and Ash design, and Ballot Ballot Box Digital online digital marketing companies with proven records in devising marketing strategies delivering branded digital experiences for clients and brands, building and designing websites forging strategic partnerships, driving revenue and increasing profits in competitive markets. That has a deep understanding of the sales The marketing sectors with proven expertise in business operations and team building. Today he's going to go over how you can create a nonprofit website that converts using design clicks to call contact forms, web chat, ADA compliance, all in the right places. After the Nat's presentation, we'll be welcoming Chris Howe and Maggie Olsen to answer a few questions about their experiences, implementing websites for them. And I'll do their full introductions a bit later. So we hope you enjoy this session. And as always used to chat and q&a to be part of the exchange. Net, it's all yours.

Nat Rosasco  10:39  
I hope I can live up to that, Michelle, Wow. Okay, well, I'm very excited to talk about crafting a nonprofit website that truly connects. There's a lot of people, just the things you don't know. And misinformation out there. And I want to clear some things up that are simple to do. If you pick the right partner, the right software, then you can do something and you can you can achieve your goals as a nonprofit, getting more donations connecting more and more people to join your cause volunteer things like that. So we can get started here. There we go. That's me. All right. 11 strategies to create a website that truly connects, you want to ask yourself, who's your audience? What are their goals, and what are the key calls to action. And the last one is really important, because a lot of websites just miss this. And you want this to be you want to direct people to drive them to do what you want them to do, and the right people on your site. And their goals, you want to make sure that you're really keeping, you're talking about your client, not yourself. So we can go to the next slide of the show. Okay, number one, everybody is pretty much aware of this mobile friendly, make sure your website looks good on any device. This is the software that we use. And you can see that it's scaled. This is a client Jesko, Japan American society. And you can see that it looks perfect on a desktop, a tablet, and mobile. So the software that we use automatically does that we make some adjustments to it. But it looks great on every device, and it scales to it and and optimizes to it. So if you don't have this, you see the red button on that. See at the top right, you'll see a little click to call button, you'll see a red button in there. Those are things we want people to do, especially on a phone. Okay, we'll go to next. All right, mobile tips. I don't know if everybody knows that 60% of internet traffic is mobile. Some sites, it can be 70 to 75%. So if your website doesn't have the clicks to call our volunteer here, or contact us with a phone number button on it, you're losing it. So in fact, something that we had heard i summon I get into Google a couple times a year, they did a study and they said that if people have a desktop, in a room, and their phone 70% will still go on their phone, while they've got a big desktop in the in the room I go to the biggest thing there is because I can't read real well. But just an odd fact. ensure consistent design between desktop, tablet and mobile. Again, the software that we use it neon one, it does this automatically. So everything is going to be very consistent across all platforms. Use responsive designed optimized images and buttons. Again, this is responsive means it will scale it to the device automatically. Again, the software that we use it a lot of WordPress websites when you do this, when you do a tablet, and you'll do a mobile version, you have to go and Photoshop your images, get them the right sizes and do a lot of work. This does it automatically. So it's pretty cool. And sure clickable elements are large and bright enough especially in mobile. Again on the example we saw on the previous slide those red buttons stand out we always like to use a very simple, beautiful layout blacks, grays, whites, a lot of white space, and then use a button orange red, the vibrant green, neon one uses two below look. We want your eyes to go where you want to take them. Keep important buttons near the top on mobile to drive donations are engaged in volunteering. Again, this should be that near the Top, you want to tell people what you want them to do. And by showing it on the top, putting it in the color, people know that's what you want them to do you make it very simple for people. All right. Next slide. Okay, clear and concise branding. You must take great care and your website design is complete is consistent with your brand image. Again, here is the Japan American Society of Central Ohio. They use we got fonts choices for them colors that we did, we looked at the logo, they've got the blue and the red in there, we incorporated that into the rest of their website. We also want to make make sure that if you have any print pieces, if you have business cards, postcards and mail out, tri folds that you have, keep everything the same, keep the fonts the same, keep the colors the same, keep everything consistent here with Japan America. Their their deal is they do a lot of of all caps. So we put the navigation and El caps to match their brand name and picked up the red from everything. So we want a concise clear. Next slide. Here's some branding tips. Use consistent fonts, colors and images. And this is something to and a lot of people don't do they'll they'll have a business card or, or a print piece or poster that they do use images use the same images if you can across a number of things. We just lost our slides here. The shell hell okay, it's I can't do website. Now. Keep the website more subdued. A lot of people like to put everything that they've ever said on a website. That's not a that's not a best practice. You want to have whitespace, you want a breathing space? You want to have less words, but more important words on there. So keep it keep it subdued, keep it clean looking. Again, we lost it again.

Michelle Robin  17:15  
I still see it net. So is it? I

Nat Rosasco  17:19  
don't I have it off to the side here. Yeah, there it is. content should be concise, relevant, and well written, don't write for SEO or load keywords. Right naturally, in our before this this webinar that we have. I got a something from Google. And they're talking about that if you put words on there that are not relevant or helpful, there, it's going to hurt your SEO. Whereas 10 years ago, people would want to load up all kinds of content because content is king. We've all heard that. Now they're saying strip it down to the most important thing and just don't write words to write words. So and a lot of times to is people think I need to be sound very professional when I write, write like you talk. And that's what's resonating with people. And again, keep in mind websites, not about you. It's about your constituents, and donors communicate that it's not telling me it's me, me, me, here's what we're about. And here's what we're trying to do have a clear and defined message. Establish your purpose, clearly drive donation, increase volunteers, whatever you want to do, do it. Put it a couple times on the homepage a couple times on other pages, don't think once is enough, don't think putting into the footer is good enough. You got to have it on top and right in front of you. And don't be embarrassed about that people understand that's why you're on their site to donate. Don't be afraid to ask. All right. Next one. Simple navigation, allow your constituents to find what they need quickly and easily. Here's a good example the Illinois green Alliance. This is clever, in that you've got two levels of navigation here in the top navigation has an email top left. But here in their green color, that is their color that they love. Remember, login calendar and get involved are on the top. So I'm looking there. I'm not cluttered up with the other stuff to who we are initiatives, resources, those are great. But the real big things that they want people to do are on that top line. And then the next line, it's very clear. Can we try to keep five or six pieces in the navigation is Google thought they said people like it and fives why they did a stay steady everything. It's that's how many fingers you have in your hands. People think in terms of fives, which is another Google fact that they studied. But so we try and keep it to that but this two level navigation. It allows for us to to look where we want to go and what we want them to do. And then that next level they can dive into the site. All right. Next core webbed vitals. I don't know if if everybody has heard about this, but this is something that Google is driving websites to do. And this is how they're engaged. This is what they're looking at to see the success of your site. And says critical not so obvious factor. Using the right software ensures this. You don't know what this is. We barely under we understand it. But there are three websites to score you This is user experience on one page, how quickly it loads. A webpage can respond respond to input, and how unstable the content is. It loads in the browser's. It's just this formula that they have. This is very interesting, because I'm positive all of you know WordPress. And everybody says, I want to I want to Wordpress site. Well, actually, what they really want is a software that you can easily modify. You look at WordPress, it's the worst now over the last couple of years. And this is through October 21. This is updated through 2023. We didn't have time to get it in there. It actually the Nan one software is higher than this now and WordPress is lower. So when people say Oh, WordPress is that, no, you know what, according to Google and core web vitals, it's actually the worst out there. You've got Drupal, Joomla Wix, Squarespace you most people have heard of Wix? Squarespace they do well, but the software that we use is by far the best. And this is important for SEO, and driving people to your website. Next up

we have Okay, CRM integration. This is important and a big part of what Nan Nan one offers embed forms to capture donors. I mean, this is you want you want to list an email list is gold for you. And we can easily embed the form to capture your donors, which is great. So you can remark it to those people. Events content pushed to your website does it automatically with the CRM integration, tailored widget to post job openings, which is a great tool that's available in membership connection to provide gated content to members only there's a lot of a lot of you that don't want everybody to see everything that's on the website. So with the software comes a gated content members only can log in and get in there and view the content behind the curtain. Number six. This is really important highlight credibility, enhance validation. And this is something that that's in the last couple of years has become more and more important. Put your credibility in the forefront. It will increase the number of donors volunteers and event participants. You have to we we urge every single client we have if you have great people that you do business with, like and this is the Japan America society. On the right side, there's Honda PNC Bank, Fujita, plant, Moran, PNC Bank, these these are putting them in a category now that you don't know who they are. But you know, these powerful powerful companies stand behind them too. And then they don't really need to figure out are these people we should be working with donating to participating with it says it all. And we'd love to come up with metrics and you all have you can come up with something. They don't want our green Alliance. Great job here to combat climate change. It's time we made Net Zero buildings, feasible. 73 programs 2000 Plus volunteer hours 3600 program attendees. It's showing they're not some fly by night organization, but an established organization that's doing something great out there. So don't be afraid but really think about it. You can all come up with some type of metrics, or you have some key clients. Don't be afraid to put that on the homepage front and center. People are looking for this. Next one. Validation tips these are just things you should think about constituent or beneficiary testimonials are great. If you've got two or three you can put some scrolling testimonials on the homepage. Put three or four of them on there. If you can come up with a constituents or beneficiary testimonial page. That's great too. And if you've got 40 of them, honestly I put all 40 on there. People just scroll and scroll. Sorry. You know what a lot of people like this farm, they should be on my radar. Case studies are fabulous. Something you've done important. People love to read these Words of certifications, put those in the footer, or its own section, any associations, you're a part of put the logo on there, they're going to appreciate it. Any press and media, put it on their thought leadership, do some blogging posts and things out there. If you have partners, put their logos on there and any statistics which we went through on the previous slide. Next what are the key CTAs calls to action, navigate visitors where you want them to go and what you want them to go to. And again, the Japan America, society does a great job of this, you look at this site on this page, okay? Your eyes, whoever's looking at this, your eyes are definitely going to join now and donate to jafco. Those are the two major things they want them to do. Because you scroll down the page, they've got to get involved join us. And there are three boxes there programs, membership volunteers, there's five places that you can click on to take you to do something. And that's what they want you to do. And they make it very clear and obvious. So think about where you want to take them what pages you want to take them to make that easy to figure out and guide them there. Okay, tracking and metrics, this is available with the software too. And this is this is gold for you. Track visits, bounce rate pages per visit average time on the site. Signups here, as you can see this in I think this is this is this is seven days, okay, and this website, there were 22 clicks to email. So there are 22 people contacting this, this website, for more information form submitted three clicks a call, and again, this is a click to call that someone hit the little phone icon on the website on their phone, and click the call. But as you go deeper into this page, number one, that forward slash, that's the homepage. It's Eric's time and time on the page, two and a half minutes, bounce rate for a 6% average time on a page. If you're a minute. Actually, for a whole website. If it's a minute and a half, it's really good. If your bounce rate is 50%, it's really good. 66% is decent. On this one, the time on the site to 11 is great. That every page on here other than the program's page, which is only 30 seconds, people are sticking on that page for over two minutes each. Some are three minutes. That's fabulous. They want to be there. They're sticking in there. They're reading it in it's great. So this just gives you a lot of information. Let's say the program's was important to them. And they're only on their 30 seconds, I would go back and look at that page and say what are we what are we missing here that we're that people to get people to stick on the page a little longer evaluated, and adjust the page. So and again, this comes with the software. This is invaluable. All right, nine great content or how to lower your bounce rate and increase time on the site. High quality content is still king use great content, images and videos. Create pages for each type of visitor personalize their journey. This good giving challenge this is great. You got an about an FA Q's. But what they did is just to put FAQ have an FAQ page which would have been great. They did it by visitor nonprofit FA FAQ is giving FAQs and fundraiser FAQs. This is brilliant. This is an example of carving this up and slicing it up for the people that you know what if I'm just on a fundraiser, I really don't want to read the other stuff. That's white noise to me. I'm gonna get annoyed and leave. But the habit for each type of visitor and they exactly put it on there. So that was great. Okay, social media integration. A lot of people ignore this. Google is looking for social media integration they're looking for. If you're not connecting with people outside of your website, they don't want to connect. They don't want to give you good traction in searching on Google. If they feel you're not connecting with people on a lot of different levels of Facebook, Facebook, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, a real I'm sorry, LinkedIn are very important to have put it up there. Make it easy for people to get there. And you want to keep driving people to bounce back between your Facebook, your Instagram, LinkedIn, who are these people the website, so completes the picture of who you are. They have the phone number, email location. Everything is there that you'd wanted to get a hold of them. Don't Don't ignore that. Great design, don't underestimate the power of great visual design, clean and simple. Again, here, instead of just lots of whitespace, visually engaging, typography is really important. In its, I get a little thing here, visual hierarchy of information. Here, you can see that in the hero banner, which is that big picture. There, you can easily read that. But then underneath that a lot of times people just put our mission in there. And I'll just be, you know, black content on a white background here, put it out there in the orange. So now your eyes go to this, and they'll tend to read it. So now I'm reading the headline. And I'm also reading the mission. And I'm telling you, if admission, were just under there is copy on the white background, you wouldn't read it as much. So this is really good. Social media is up there. And again, don't clutter things up, keep them simple, and whitespace. So people can breathe. CTA is on the homepage, three to five as best we make sure that we'll put Donate now a couple times volunteer now Contact us now and put it on there multiple times people. So I've had it on there once. Now Google says you need to have it three to five times. So that's what we do. Bonus tip, we would suggest refreshing your website every two years at a minimum. So many things change so many things to technology. And the software that we use, what people are looking for every two years just keeps you up to speed. Once you start looking dated, your constituents are going to look to find people that look a little more up to speed and 2024. So that's your bonus tip.

Michelle Robin  31:52  
All right. Well, thank you, Nat. Before we jump over to Maggie and Chris, there was a couple of questions that came in. So I thought we'd take a minute to answer those before we jump over into talking to Maggie and Chris about their personal experiences with nonprofit websites. So Jonathan asked for the user experience comparison between CMS platforms, how is user experience measured? He said in our experience, WordPress performs better than Joomla, Drupal, Wix, etc. What are your thoughts about that?

Nat Rosasco  32:29  
WordPress is at the bottom of that, it just is the software, it gets its most hacked software in the world. 83% of all websites hacked are on WordPress, it's unstable, it's slower. There's a lot of open source plugins that are on there. So from the user experience, you can make any of those look great. So you know, from that standpoint, you can make any of them look good. But what you want is a stable software. And it's secure that that's that you don't have to go in and update themes and plugins and things like that all the time. They stay up all the time. The on one, websites are all on AWS servers, most stable servers in the world, if your website goes down, Google and Amazon are down to so they just they just don't go down. That's what I said. Most people think this WordPress is the thing out there. And it just isn't anymore.

Michelle Robin  33:29  
Thank you. Good to know. We have another question from Julia, who was asked what's the best practice for using images? Do you recommend using actual photos from nonprofit events? Or do you need permission for those or from those in our images to use on your website?

Nat Rosasco  33:48  
That is a great question. Images are can be the bane of our existence normally what Google is sent out I keep talking about them because we get into they tell us stuff and if they tell us stuff this is from the best thing from the Vatican if you're Catholic, it's people are resonating more with real pictures if you take pictures at the events I can't I can't answer that legally with you know about people giving you their their you know approval to put it on the site most people do. I'm not saying that you just shouldn't do that. But most people do that. If you have an event you know just let people know this might be go on our website. Most people are flattered. I'm not saying you couldn't open yourself up to something but real pictures are the best and you can tell people they don't need a professional photographer. You know we're gonna put our bios on the website I Tony some some college kid or high school kid with with an iPhone or a Samsung will take as good a picture that looks real. Don't stage To have it look natural and real.

Michelle Robin  35:04  
Yeah, so thank you. Thank you for sharing all this net. Please stick around. I want to bring you back for we'll do a more open q&a Once we finish up with the panels so people can ask both Chris and Maggie who I'm about to introduce. And before that, I realized I didn't introduce myself. My name is Michelle Robin. I'm the Director of Product Marketing here at NEON one. And I'm just so pleased to be hosting this session with all of you today. And next I would like to introduce our panelists. First is Christina how Chris is a coach, advisor and creative problem solver with more than a decade solving challenges with the nonprofit sector. Combining her philanthropic spirit and more than 25 years of experience in senior leadership roles with prominent tech companies, she has showcased remarkable strategic acumen and planning, development and execution. Known for her outcome driven approach. Chris is constantly focusing on achieving impactful end results and creating lasting value. Her extensive expertise coupled with a passion for fostering growth and making a difference, solidifies her reputation as a forward thinking transformative advisor for organizations both big and small. And Chris, I'll invite you to turn on your camera and unmute. And we'll get going in just a second. Thank you, Michelle. The other panelist is Maggie Olson. Maggie is a jack of all trades nonprofit professional currently working in the communications and Development Manager at Illinois green Alliance. Nat shared one of those screens earlier. The Illinois green Alliance is a Chicago nonprofit focused on advancing sustainable buildings for all. Maggie oversees social media, newsletters, the website and fundraising campaigns. Her work at Illinois includes overseeing website management on raising campaigns, campaign management, sponsorship and sponsoring, or sorry, supporting young professionals board. She is passionate about the intersection of sustainability and communication and promoting solutions to build resilient communities. So welcome, Maggie. Thank you, Michelle. Let me do a new poll, so everyone can see. So I guess, reflecting on what Matt has just said, Maggie, and Chris, are there any tips that you would offer to enhance your website that you want to add on to what nats shared earlier?

Chris Howe  37:49  
Yes, I do. Remember who's using the website and you talk about creating a persona. And persona is basically like a fictitional character, we often are outward thinking, so who's coming to our website, we forget, internal, and sometimes the bane of our existence with website, Maggie being an exception, where she's in charge of so there's somebody internally who's doing that. A lot of organizations depend on outside help. And that's why selecting or going about building your website, consider all the personas, who is using it, who's responsible for maintaining it, as well as who's serving?

Maggie Olson  38:39  
think that's a really important factor and maybe gets a little bit into one of the later questions. But I really found Neon to be helpful, because I even though I run our website, we have five other staff who will also do things on the website. And it was really easy for them to understand how to edit it on the back end, so that I don't have to do everything, when our old website was very annoying and tricky. I definitely grew that. And along with the persona, I can't recommend just user testing. And this doesn't have to be big focus groups. I've taken it. I manage our young professionals board at a meeting, I just showed them a mock up of a new website and got feedback, you know, over drinks you pulled up on my phone, hey, we have this launching in a couple of months. What do you think of it? I think that can be really valuable just to sit down with folks one on one who you know, will be using it and ask for feedback and actually take that feedback into consideration and not just to hear compliments about how good it looks.

Chris Howe  39:36  
Absolutely concur.

Michelle Robin  39:38  
Great. Those are all great, great tips and great insight from real world experience. So why why do you think organizations fear or dread doing a website overhaul? I mean, I know. I know. It's a big project when an organization decides to revamp the or website or even build a website for the first time. And there's a lot of, you know, fears that probably go into that. So why do you think that is? And What recommendations would you have to overcome those fears?

Speaker 4  40:15  
I can speak to my experience, this was one of the first projects I did at Illinois green, I had been advocating for a website overhaul for over a year before we started the process. And a lot of it is think people think it's going to take more time than it does, even though it does take a lot of time. And that in that period of while you're thinking about the new website, designing it selecting consultant, all the pieces that go along with that, it's, you're worried about the ROI the whole time about is this really going to make my business better? Is this really going to increase memberships or donations? Or is it just and I think from the design side, you have to advocate that you can't ignore that it looking like it's from 2020 to 2023 makes a difference. And now pointed this out. Our old website looked like it was from 2010, because it was so people didn't know that we were still doing things people didn't know that, you know, we were as active and as modern as we were and it was catching up to the website had to catch up to the sophistication that our organization did. So I think it can take a lot of time. And it's, you don't see the payoff until you actually go live. So

Nat Rosasco  41:31  
Michelle, I would say, from my standpoint, and I bet everybody here would agree to this. Most agencies make it such a heavy lift, they don't want to take it on. It just you know, we're building sites, we make it seamless, we do the heavy lift, we take care of everything. And I'm not patting ourselves on the back, I just know that everyone we talked to that. They said, Oh my gosh, this was a great experience. And maybe we got one out of 1000 It isn't but it just, they just don't make it simple. So they're like, You know what, I just don't want to go down this road, because it's just, it's going to be an enormous time sock.

Chris Howe  42:10  
And from I'll add on to that, and having sat on both sides of the fence where I've had to be responsible for huge implementations, again, from choosing the technology to the design and implementation, working in selecting an agency and now being the consultant on the other end. You know, design is great. And that's the whole thing we see our website is designed forward. Well, if you think of art, everybody has an opinion, what you view is beautiful, I may say is hideous. And so you're dealing with a lot of stakeholders, internally, everybody has an opinion of what is beautiful art representative of your brand. So again, the clearer that you can be with respects to brand identity, visual identity, you know, our audience, things like that. And also considering that it is a while this tends to be under marketing. It's used by development, marketing, you know, all parts of the organization. So you do need to get some stakeholder buy in across the board, because everybody will have an opinion. And I have sat in a room endlessly where we argued about whether something should be pink or purple for hours, I mean hours. So your organization's may not be that. But I think that's why everybody sort of fears that because everybody feels that they have a stake in the final product.

Michelle Robin  43:50  
Yeah. And to that end, Chris, thank you for bringing that up. What are your suggestions to manage too many cooks in the kitchen, so to speak.

Chris Howe  44:02  
If you're you haven't involved either board or Executive Director again, define who I sort of go through the, you know, who has a say, who has an approval? Who has an opinion, identify who those people are ahead of time as part of your typical business analysis. And again, as you're showing people know that up front so that, you know, again, yeah, that person might be a little displeased, and if they have some good feedback, bubble that up, but no who again, who has the final sign off? And if you have some issues back to what Maggie had said, you can't test enough and you just keep testing, even when it's live. Looking at all your your KPIs, your analytics, that's kind of feedback with regards to your testing and then you go back and change. It's a living, breathing thing.

Michelle Robin  45:01  
Very good strategy. And net, I want to follow this up with a question from you as well, involving multiple stakeholders. And how important is it to, I guess, get buy in? Like, as as the design develops? And there's, you know, there's the first draft and you know, we don't want to go on forever, but what are your tips and strategies to get people to agree and move on?

Nat Rosasco  45:35  
We'd like to identify who the stakeholder is. You know, we did a website for the city of Chicago, and there's 40 people on the call. And we'll at the beginning, say, don't we, because we made every mistake there is. So we kind of know how to alleviate some of these things. We'll say please, can we just have it, you know, one person that that we're talking to, and whatever. But really, what we found is that if we do our work up front, when we send them something, it's what they thought they were going to get. We will spend an inordinate amount of time at the, at the front end of this, what websites do you like, show us things that you like, there's things we know that that work and are good, but we want to know what they think are good to, we get on a call, or if they can be in person here, we prefer that. But obviously, that you can't do that all the time. But if we can get everybody on a big zoom call and look at these things, and look and see what they like, why they like to typography, colors, pictures, etc. Keep talking through it, if we spent two hours up front, I tell it's 90% of the time, what they get back is with 85 to 90% of what they expected. They want to be heard all of them. And we listen to all of them. And we try and sum it up. And so a little bit of time upfront can alleviate a lot of that pressure on the back end. And then we're also very clear that we'll give you two rounds of edits. And a round of edits could be 30 edits, we could be 50. We don't care. Just don't send us 50 emails with one edit and try to one run the project for them. And usually they appreciate that.

Michelle Robin  47:15  
Thank you. Those are those are great tips. Maggie, when you were in the process of redesigning and updating your website to go live with neon websites? How did your team handle this? And in how much planning did you do up front?

Speaker 4  47:32  
We did a lot of planning upfront, we've actually done two websites with the on websites, we overhauled our main Illinois green website that that showed some that we launched a project this summer. That's its own separate website. It's a new website that we hadn't done before. But with both of the sites, we followed a very similar path where we went ahead and mapped out everything we wanted on the site before we even started the contract with neon. And we, you know, finalize the branding, finalize the name, all the new colors, all of that font choices, and I came that remembers, but I came to him with a mock up of the homepage already done. But you know, I know that that's not within everybody's skill set. But I found it really important to get on the same page with my team before we talk to Nat so that NAT also isn't having to manage my team's different opinions. We've all gotten on the same page, then we're talking to the developer, and we're all communicating that same idea, the same goal, the same calls to action ahead of time. So the prep work that neon website sends is really valuable. And we just went through that. It's like a website worksheet where it asks you what are websites you like? What are your goals that you want users to accomplish through the site? And we talked about those as a team before we met with the staff. So we definitely spent several hours in a couple sets of meanings going through that, but it definitely made the process smoother, I think both for Nat and ourselves so that we were

Nat Rosasco  49:04  
looking at Maggie's on the 1%. Okay. She was awesome.

Michelle Robin  49:11  
Yeah, I would assume that that not everyone can do that much upfront work. But that's that's why you have an expertise. So that's why you know, you you have a program that that has some guidance for you. So what what are some of the benefits of of neon websites? And any of you can can chime in with the product that you've seen so far.

Speaker 4  49:42  
I can I can go but I there's two parts. I think the integration with the neon CRM system is so important. It makes it so easy on our main site to connect to those things like events and email audiences just directly into the site without having to do pull it from one place, put it in the other it just like you hit publish, and it goes. And I think the process of building a site with Neon is way smoother, like Matt was saying than other consultants, we did look at other consultants, and it felt expensive and long and not sure that we really going to get what we want. Neon is designed for nonprofits. It's designed to make the design process easy. And give you a product that you are able to edit ongoingly once they hand it off, so I think those three things really made it an easy yes, to go with the websites.

Nat Rosasco  50:44  
From our standpoint is what Maggie was talking about, is once the website is done, you know there's support for it. But given a minimal amount of training, any client can go in there and modify something in minutes where WordPress can be intimidating. It's it's it's harder, it's not ridiculously hard. But this is simple. You go in and make edits in a snap, and they're done. And from my sample from the clients we talked to it's peace of mind that they don't feel they're held hostage if if we built built some complex WordPress site for them, they can't go in and they got to call us. Every time something happens and hope to God we answer the phone and make the adjustment quickly. You don't have that within the on one website platform.

Chris Howe  51:35  
To add to that one now never saying about WordPress Yes, a lot of people end up hiring, you know a gun for hire to get their website going. They basically get it stood up and then they walk away. And WordPress being an open source. I've seen even in the corporate world where a lot of things have gone wrong, and it's down and it's who whose office do you need to stand in front of to, to get that back up and running. The beauty of having it at NEON to emphasize what Maggie had said, is got smooth integration with your CRM, so that you don't again need a lot of heavy lifting from software engineering side of the house, if it's upgrades are taken care of. So again, if I do something to a widget or again, Wordpress version, it doesn't break things that I already have installed. And for those who don't know where to start, you've got a very easy plethora of designs that can either be used out of the box and or modified to your, your organization and be up and running fairly fairly quickly. So

Michelle Robin  52:56  
yeah, and I'm glad you mentioned that, because that was going to be my next question to Maggie in particular, and maybe NAT can share with with some other clients. How long is the process from start to finish to say, alright, we're going to do a new website design. You know, how long did it take you, Maggie at your organization, to push the button to go live?

Speaker 4  53:22  
Maybe six, eight months, if you include like, developer call more be more like a year with the second website, when we already knew we wanted to use neon. It was about two months from when we signed a contract to when we went live. So that's really fast. I think I think Florida six months and longer than that. Depending on what state you're in and how much content you have to rewrite or throw I'm part of that is like what that saying if you're keeping up with your website updates regularly, an overhaul is more of a design thing than it is a content thing. So it's not so laborious. But yeah, definitely the first one took, I would say closer to a year. But when it was over, it was really nice.

Nat Rosasco  54:11  
So from our standpoint, Michelle, if we get all the content and pictures, it's two to three weeks.

Michelle Robin  54:20  
That's pretty fast.

Nat Rosasco  54:21  
I mean, that's that's how it can go. That's not normally how it goes. We have done some in two, but it's normally it's on the client said that holds it up more than then we will or it's a collaborative effort. And the more stakeholders longer it takes but you know, from our standpoint, I would say on average of the just talking about the day on one website, I probably say it's been three to four weeks.

Chris Howe  54:50  
Yeah say 90 90% of it is preparation. 10% is execution. And you know having gone through an exercise where you walked a client through on two neon websites, you know, going through the initial content inventory. Okay, what do you want to keep? What do you want to change? What do you want to get rid of? And interestingly enough, no, no, no, we want things just as is. And you know, as we got closer, it was like, wait, wait, we want to change this. So it is a lot about preparation, and then all of a sudden, we're having to like redo content, rewrite content, get rid of things. But the execution tends to go a lot quicker once those pieces are together.

Michelle Robin  55:37  
Yeah. And we did get a quick question from from Michelle Bible. And I like Michelle with two L's. That's how I spell my name, too. But yes, you can keep your current URL if you already have a URL registered. And we have another question that that just came in as well. Asking if our neon websites accessible, do do accessibility testing with a variety of platforms and or user testing? And do you advise on I'm not familiar with this acronym, WCAG, AAA or AAA compliance. So I know the website's does have accessibility. And that maybe you can speak to that a little bit more. I'll

Nat Rosasco  56:25  
speak to this I know, way more than, well, I have as much knowledge as I need to on this. Now they're not there. If you go to if you go to AudioEye, excessive b.com. They're their website, compliance software, Google uses them. American Express uses them. United Airlines uses them BMW is no websites out of box or ADA compliant. None. Zero. So and then if you think the crazy thing about it is last year, there 600,000 lawsuits. They were going after I know Domino's lost a huge lawsuit suing Harvard University, and they paid a lot of money. Lawyers are going after small people now. They're going after anybody, because the small people are afraid that to get a lawsuit. I mean, it costs them $10,000 Just to try and find it, but they're gonna lose. So nothing is we strongly urge AudioEye compliance, which neon one has available to it? And we we sent letters out to our clients and said, If you don't, if you don't want this, you have to tell us you don't want it. So you can't come back and sue us. So no notes no to ourselves. We should make that very clear to people. But third party software is out there available, and then one has it. And it's available. It's reasonable. It's a package put together that very good. And I would strongly urge anybody that's on this call to add it not worth the risk of a lawsuit.

Michelle Robin  58:15  
No, definitely not. All right. So Maggie, I was kind of curious, now that your new site has been up for a little bit. How has that helped your organization?

Speaker 4  58:31  
Can I have more stats from our old site that we launched with neon one as well, back in March of 2022. By the end of the year, we had seen a 40 40% increase in website visits alone. And as of this month, we've had a 33% increase in membership. So part of that's neon CRM, but also the way that the CRM integrates with the website as well. Every number went up drastically on all of our KPIs related to web and the CRM. So it's been really valuable. We've definitely we've had over 2000 website visits on our new website that's barely been live for a month. And then, you know, we're only seeing that grow up with newsletters signups on the site, so on and so forth. But the the transition, I think, between the old, the one that we recalled last year, is the biggest story, I think it went from, like 4000 page views to 10,000 page views. So even in certain months, it was drastically improved.

Michelle Robin  59:33  
Well, that's great. Congratulations on the hard work of your team because it's not all just a software I know that. So it's definitely the work of of your organization. Making the right promotions and, and driving people to that site. So congratulations on that. So if there's any other questions from the audience, feel free to put them into the The q&a or the chat, we have about 10 minutes left or so. So, with that being said, and we've alluded to this a little bit, but is there any piece of advice that you'd offer to an organization considering a website overhaul or even just getting a website up for the first time?

Chris Howe  1:00:25  
Yes, I would, um, nothing is permanent, be agile. And, you know, it continues to be a living breathing thing that can be revised. So going even back to the requirements of what needs to go in there, you know, you have your your must haves, your should haves and your nice to haves and making sure that when you go live, the first time, you're checking all those boxes, the must haves, and the rest of the things can go out. And in waves as again, the resources allow and or feedback on how your KPIs are performing. And then lastly, you know, the other piece of advice is like, website is just one part of the whole online ecosystem, and you want to connect the dots. So it's goes beyond just, you know, integrating the social icons on there. All of these things, whether you're doing Instagram, Facebook, whatever should be, again, trying to drive people to those CTAs that you defined are your key performance indicators. So have things pointing back, don't tell the whole story on Instagram, give them a snippet, you know, come back. And again, it's all one big ecosystem, and they should all be supporting themselves and your brand.

Speaker 4  1:01:51  
I definitely agree with that. And along with it, like what Christina was saying with, you know, throwing things out in waves, you can't just launch the website, and then six months later, see the metrics go down and say, Why are they going down, you need to be revisiting it, at least monthly, looking at the KPIs, making adjustments, making sure the content is accurate. But when it comes to just whether you want to do an overhaul or a new site, just I think you have to pull the trigger, start meeting with clients, or consultants like neon, one and other options, but and plan with your team to make sure that you're all on the same page about why you're doing it, and what your goals are on the outcome so that you can make the case with your board, with your staff about, you know why you're taking on an intense project like this.

Nat Rosasco  1:02:40  
And I Maggie, Christina was really good. And I would just add a teeny bit to that is, I know, the websites we've worked on, look really good. And they didn't before, but they do now. People have choices where the where they want to volunteer, where they want to spend their money, who they want to help. And I'm telling you, it's just your human nature, all of us if you want a website that looks really sharp and slick, and it tells a great story, that's going to be ahead of the things that look dated and out to it just you just do. So you either have to keep up with whoever's in your space, or surpass the ones that aren't in 10 out of 10 times, that's going to pay for itself.

Michelle Robin  1:03:25  
I would second that. Maggie, you mentioned KPIs and I know you mentioned some of the stats about visits and the other things that you're tracking as far as the 30% increase in membership, and things other KPIs do you think are important to track on on website? And in relation to that?

Speaker 4  1:03:52  
Yeah, not mentioned a couple of them. I track our bounce rate that went down drastically. I think our bounce rate used to be 80%, which is terrible. Went down to 60%, which is right in that good to decent zone. Bounce Rate is when someone enters do they leave immediately? And how quickly you know, I think if you leave within like five to 10 seconds, you've bounced. I track time on page. We're looking at we talked about 80 seconds to a minute and a half, two minutes is really awesome. pages per session. So how many pages does someone click through when they visit the site? And then I track our top visited pages each month. So what was number 123? What were our top viewed news posts 123 and keeping an eye on? It's interesting to watch over the year how those shifts and it's not just because one was updated. It's also our programming kind of runs on a yearly calendar. So there are certain programs that are number one for a few months when there's a volunteer position open, then something else rises up. So it's interesting to watch how people interact with the site throughout the year. And if there's a certain page, you want to be in that 123. And it's not, how do you make it work into that way?

Michelle Robin  1:05:07  
Thanks. Thanks for sharing the personal insights with that. I know that we're down to the last couple of minutes here. So I wanted to put the QR code. We'd love to get your feedback on this session. So please take the survey and give us your feedback. So we can, you know, improve and bring you more great sessions next year at generosity exchange as well. Are there any parting thoughts that any of you want to share before we move on to the next session?

Chris Howe  1:05:47  
Just do it, it's worth it. Try not to scare you just do it. It definitely is worthwhile.

Michelle Robin  1:06:00  
Laura will will get you the URL code. If you can't, if you don't have a phone handy. Alex, if you could do that, that'd be awesome. So with that, thank you again for all of your time and your insights Maggie and Chris and that I found this session to be really informative and makes me want to get off my WordPress site. So I definitely learned some things along the way as well. So thanks, everyone for attending, and we hope that you enjoy the rest of generosity exchange.

Chris Howe  1:06:44  
Thank you.

Nat Rosasco  1:06:47  
Thanks, Michelle. Maggie, Christina. Pleasure. Pleasure to meet you.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai