YVOD builds websites for individuals, nonprofits and small businesses. Sure, we can toss anything up on the web and make it stick. But our real value is that we T-H-I-N-K about what we are doing. We actually care about your site and want you to have the best one possible.
One of our excellent clients is People’s Grocery. We love these guys. They are actively out there changing the world.
Their home page has recently fallen by the wayside and become stale. It is not very exciting. Brahm and I have been having a discussion about this and I figured I would copy it to my blog to help folks understand YVOD’s approach to solving issues.
Note: YVOD developed three “visitor personas” for People’s Grocery a while back. One was a West Oakland mother looking for assistance in providing healthy food for her family. Another was a volunteer from a neighboring city who wants to “help”. Another is a possible funder who wants specific stats.
—
Brahm says:
But if you guys have any ideas about how to make the home page more engaging and better organized that would be great. Here is a homepage that I like:
I like this homepage because it has nice images, immediately provides the organization’s mission, has visually organized spaces for news, announcements, actions, and jobs. It would be nice to have our homepage organized in this way and provide this kind of information so that our staff can know exactly what parts of the page they want to edit or change. Can we do something like this?
—-
I reply:
This is an excellent front page for other food justice directors. It is not good for the casual visitor. None of the three personas would relate to this site. They might not leave, but they would feel overwhelmed and/or not taken care of. I know you are not asking for the exact same site but let’s go down this road just a bit…
Think about the three: The local mom would read a paragraph or two of “What’s New” and then start looking all around and get lost most of the time. The volunteer would read everything on the front page and get all happy. She would then click on Support Just Food only to get deflated because she wants to help… not just give money. Can you quickly tell me where they talk about things she can do for the organization? Nope. There is nothing anywhere for your funder.
Why do I say this? Because there are almost 50 links on the front page but your three main people can not click on any single one and get to the info they are looking for. In short, there are 50 less-than-helpful links. Sure, it looks like there is a lot of info there… but it is not organized in an easy to digest way so the data is of little value.
Lots of links are good for a blog where people are going for reference material and to learn how you think. The home page is not supposed to scare people…. it is supposed to make your visitors feel good and want to stay.
1) An old PG home page with few extra links
2) An old PG home page with even more links
Notice how the second one loses focus. Sure, the pix help, but ultimately, the user has too many options. The home page should be used to get an emotional bond to folks and lead each of your personas to a single place. At most, each persona should have three possible places to go. That means 9 links total.
Is that easy? No. But your visitors will thank you for it… even if it means they have to go deeper into your site to find specific info.
Why am I even doing this? You own your site and I will post anything you want and make sure you are happy. I am simply giving advice. If you want me to stop, just say so and I will execute your ideas. YVOD constantly gets compliments on how clear your site is and how easy it is to find stuff. I do not want to lose that.