We recently posted an article listing the top Nonprofit Websites in DC. To build on top of that article we decided to build the “Ideal Non Profit Website”. We took the best elements from these awesome web designs and combined them to form a super nonprofit website.
1. Global Utility Navigation – www.nwf.org
Global Utility navigation houses those links which are not of primary concern of the website, however important. Global navigation will appear on all the website pages and user would be able to access it at any time.
2. Website Logo – www.audubon.org
Every website should have a prominent logo as it’s a brand identity of the organization. The top-left position is the best-suitable for a logo. Apart from creating brand awareness, logo will also act as the global-link to reach the home page of the website from all website pages.
3. Main Navigation – www.nwf.org
Main navigation will house the links to all the major sections of the website and will consistently appear on all the website pages.
4. Social Network Logos – www.audubon.org
A non-profit organization will highly require involvement of people and social awareness. Keeping links to organization’s social network profiles (Facebook, LinkedIn and YouTube) on home page would help promoting website in social networks.
5. Global Search Control – www.audubon.org
A global search control will improve the usability on the website, help users finding-in content which is not easily accessible though the main navigation and will be the part of all website pages.
6. Flash Banner – www.audubon.org
Apart from beautifying the main page of website organization, it gives a quick glimpse into the organization’s activities.
7. Flash Banner Controls – www.audubon.org
Flash banner controls helps users controlling the 4-5 items in the Flash banner. This control will also contain the links to their detailed sections respectively.
8. Quick Tabs – Donate, Adopt, Travel and Log-in – www.worldwildlife.org
Tabs are a very intuitive way of displaying lots of information in a neat and organized fashion.
9. Newsletter Sign-up – www.worldwildlife.org
A not-for profit organization website must have calls-for-action which entice users to donate and be a part of the organizational activities. A newsletter facility on the home page will help organization collecting the e-mail addresses of interested visitors who wants to be the part of organization’s activities.
10. Quick tabs – Latest News, Climate – www.worldwildlife.org
Home page should contain a brief list of latest news about the organization’s events and activities. This helps the organization to keep the interested audience updated of organizations events.
11. Quick Links – www.nwf.org
All those sections which are important and buried deep in the website navigation can be brought into viewer’s eye through quick links.
12. Quick Look to website’s major sections – www.worldwildlife.org
An NGO might have Photos and Videos of organization’s events and activities, some of which can be featured beautifully on the home page.
13. Major issues as sliding images – www.diabetes.org
Sliding images with short description and having a link to the detail page is an interactive way of highlighting dynamically changing events on the website. Also, this way we can accommodate more that screen-full of events.
14. Bottom Navigation – www.audubon.org
Detailed and categorized bottom navigation is very user for user and search engine point of view. This is essentially contains all the links of pull-down menus (main navigation) in the order they appear in main navigation.
15. Static pages and copyright information – www.aarp.org
The footer of the page can contain general content pages like privacy policy, legal notices and copyright information. These are independent of any hierarchy, not very important for every viewer to see and information only; do not require much images and user interaction.