Biggest nonprofit website mistakes

There is a great little post at “Zen and the Art of Nonprofit Technology” about the biggest mistakes that nonprofits can make on their websites. Its actually a collection of recommendations from a variety of different people.

My favorite advice comes from Kivi’s Nonprofit Communications Blog, where she suggests that the biggest mistake a nonprofit can make is to put a jargon-filled brochure online. She points out that the site is as much, if not more, about who’s using it and what they’re looking for. She points out some examples (such as KidsHealth.org) of sites that are very conscious to design for their audience.

I’ve been buried re-designing the Northwestern Center for Global Engagement suite of sites (the main CGE site plus a few other programs). Any of you who have been on theges.org or mycge.org lately know how necessary this update is!

We decided to start by asking ourselves who was using the site, and for what, and then exploring across our team what sort of design and organizational elements we tended to like best. Our priorities are to have a graphically appealing but high utility site that is, where appropriate, interactive. We’re trying to get away from having separate pages for “mission,” “vision,” “history,” etc and focus on clearly stating what we do and how the viewer can get involved.

Below is the slideshow I put together to help my team think go through the initial conceptual phases.

I would love to hear more about what other individuals’ “Best practices” for nonprofit web design! What are the biggest mistakes to avoid?