Your nonprofit website is live. Or your re-designed website is now launched. So now what?
Of course, the usual and obvious stuff have to be done. Updating your social media followers about your new website or rebranding. Optimizing for search engines. And probably sending an update to your email subscribers.
But these are just the immediate activities you need to undertake as a nonprofit once you launch your site. What then do you do 1 month, 3 months, 6 months or one year after launch? A lot.
In this guide, we take you through medium-term strategies that you can implement after launching your nonprofit website. These strategies, apart from helping you maintain a good site, also helps you grow following, produce fresh content, and more.
Analytics and Search Engine Optimization
Immediately after launching your site, you would also usually set up SEO and analytics. However, some things take time: like knowing the number of your site’s visitors and their search intent. This is why it’s crucial to check 1 or 2 months in to make sure your site is on track.
With your SEO and analytics tools already there, you need to allow for one or two months to measure the data. Use your visitor statistics to understand what they need. You’ll also get to see their movement from one page to another on your site. How often they visit. And which pages keep them for long.
Thing is, SEO and analytics are life-long activities for your website. But taking stock of your analytics and SEO data a few weeks after a new website is a great way to readjust early and to know what works and what doesn’t even before your site gets more visitors.
User research and testing
What is the reaction of your users when they visit your new or redesigned website? You could take cues from your Google Analytics data. But that doesn’t represent all.
The best way to get to know how your users feel about your website is to hear from them. That’s by doing a user research. Maybe you may have done it at the redesign or designing face. But after a few months of use, it’s not bad to get ideas from visitors.
This, you should do, to get insights into your visitors’ paint points. What they’re finding exciting. Are there any navigation issues they’re facing. This step helps you take care of some of the issues that can’t be tracked by data analytics or SEO software.
To do user research and testing, there are different ways. You can use A/B testing tools, conduct interviews, send out forms, and even ask your email subscribers directly.
Revisit new features and functionalities
Usually when organizations are building a website, it’s not everything that gets added instantly. Sometimes as a result of budget, nonprofits may only include the most important features. But as time goes on, you get to encounter new problems and new user needs.
After launching your site, you need to revisit some of these features and functionalities. Some may including adding social media photos on the footer of the site, newsletter popup, instant chat feature on the site, or adding a search button.
And luckily by this time (if you conducted the user research and got analytics and SEO data), you would understand the features to add. Now, you can revisit these features and functionalities one by one. Add them at regular intervals to make sure they don’t weigh-down your budget.
Revisiting accessibility
Accessibility should be part of every nonprofit’s website design process. However, usually as a result of budget constraints, many nonprofits only add a few in the initial design stage. But after launch, you need to revisit your accessibility features.
Make sure you outline all the accessibility features and see what you’ve already implemented. Then prioritize your next features – making sure you add feature after feature based on your nonprofit budget.
Conclusion
A website isn’t done after launch. To make sure that you continue to have a robust website, you need to keep it maintained. And in doing so, you need to make sure that after a month, two or three months of launch, there are checks and balances on what works, what doesn’t, and what could be added to make things better.
Reach out and let’s get you a nonprofit website and also help you keep it up to date.