Spring Cleaning Edition

If it’s Thursday, it’s time for Three Things.  This week: Three spring cleaning shores for your online presence.

Every spring many folks try to clean out a room in the house, get their office organized and refresh for the summer. The same idea can certainly apply to your web site and email lists.  Ideally, many of these things happen on a recurring schedule throughout the year.  But, all non-profit professionals are overworked and get behind on the “non-urgent” things.  Sooo…. we have this week’s Three Things.

Three Things to review/clean/refresh for your online presence:

1) Web site action pages: Refresh your sign up pages, error pages, thank you pages, autoresponders, etc.  Chances are, you haven’t thought of what these pages say since they were first set up.  Does the thank you page or email still thank people for supporting the 2007 campaign?  Is it still signed by the former President of your organization?  While hopefully your pages aren’t this outdated, you should still take a look and update them.  Add new language, give people an update of recent developments in your organization, help your users feel like their latest contribution or action is something that’s noticed and helps the organization advance today’s goals, not yesteryears’ priorities.

2) Lists: You’ve established your routine of newsletters, action alerts and fundraising campaigns.  You hopefully evaluate regularly and constantly work to improve performance.  But there is still that 20% of your list that hasn’t clicked through in over a year.  Or that 10% of your list that hasn’t even opened a message in two years. Is there something special you can do to reach out to them? Get some feedback about their current level of interest?  Or is it time to consider cutting the number of communications you send to them?

On the flip side, are there folks who constantly respond to your requests by sending a letter to their representative, donating or some other action?  Can you tailor a special message to them acknowledging their attention and taking their engagement to the next level?

Take a little time to review your lists and give some extra attention where it’s needed.

3) Web site content and usage: Is there content that’s outdated on the site?  Is the most recently uploaded quarterly report from last spring?  Are there pages that never get used but occupy prominent space on the homepage that might be better suited for a higher priority?  Review the content and the analytics for your site and help your users find the content that’s most relevant to them and useful to you.

Do you have other spring cleaning online chores that have helped you?  Share them in the comments below.

And that’s the Three Things for this week! Do you have Three Things you’d like to get off your chest? Shoot us an email – we’d love to feature your ideas in this space!