Content Audit Archives - Nonprofit WP

Lazy Friday Tasks that Make Your Website Better

Between new projects that improve your site and the critical weekly work to maintain a healthy website, it takes just as much work to support a website as it does to build it in the first place!

Nonprofit staff often wear two or three hats in their organization, so it can be challenging to find time for website work. Luckily, maintaining your site doesn’t have to be hard work. It can even be fun and a good break from other work.

Along with the new year’s tasks and spring cleaning tasks for your website, here are 6 more simple tasks you can do on a Friday afternoon that make your website better. When you’re out of steam but can’t go home yet, these tasks give you the best of both worlds:

You can usually do them without thinking too hard, so getting interrupted by your Executive Director won’t totally derail your work. (Some thinking required. Batteries not included.)
They will demonstrably make your website better over time.

Just like a new habit. Something that only takes a short bit of time, when repeated, can lead to huge results for your organization in the long term!

Review Analytics

Once a month, sit down and fire up your analytics software. See if you can find one valuable insight or ask a question of your data that can inform your work.

What can you learn about your stakeholders? Examples include:

Did the people who read our most recent blog post stay on the site after they arrived? (Look at Bounce Rate, Time on Site, and Exit Percentage.)
Did visitors to our annual gala page come primarily from social media, search, or directly to the site from a link? (Look at Referral Sources.)
What are the top 3 landing pages for the site. Do I know why these three are the top? (Look at Landing Pages.)
For visitors to our “Donate” page, what’s the last page they looked at before their arrival? Does that page prepare people to make a meaningful donation? (In Google Analytics, check out the Site Flow tool.)
Make up more questions to learn and improve your site slowly! Ask your E.D. and board if there are questions they’d like answered too.

Schedule Social Media Posts

Hopefully you’re using a tool like Tweetdeck, Hootsuite, Buffer, or even just Facebook to schedule your social media posts. Write five tweets or three Facebook posts and schedule them to go out next week! Your future self gives you a high-five!

Draft a Blog Post

If you’re anything like me, blog posts are best when they’ve marinated for a while, so Work on a blog post that you don’t need to post immediately. Do as little or as much as you can stomach:

Write three draft posts with catchy titles and brief bulleted outlines you can fill in later.
Start writing about the thing you worked hardest on this week. It’ll be easier to write about since it’s on your find.
What’s the big news in your mission area right now? Find three good articles and write a post linking to them while discussing how you’re contributing on that issue.
Pull in social media posts from your followers to show the amazing work done by your supporters!

These are the kinds of posts that don’t have to be published right away, but will be there when you need to fill in an empty week or month on your content calendar.

Audit ONE Page

Copy and paste the contents of a page from your website into Word or Google Doc.

At the very top of your page in bold, all-caps, red text, write out:

PRIMARY AUDIENCE:
REASON FOR COMING TO THIS PAGE:
NEXT STEP:

Fill these in with the primary who (e.g. “Parents of preschools”), why (“Determine the entry age and requirements for signing up”), and next step (“Fill out interest form”) for that page.

With that information in hand:

Make the page as short as possible
Include the most important details at the top of the page
Using headings and bullets to break up information and call out important details
Prominently link to the next step

Voila! You’ve almost certainly made your website better, likely in less than an hour. Repeat this a few weeks in a row and you’ll really start to see results.

Audit Your Users

Once every few months, head on over to “Users” in your dashboard. From there, make sure that every user:

Is still an active site editor who actually needs an account.
Actually needs the level of access they have. (Could some Admins be made into Editors?)

Delete or demote users as needed.

Important note: Make sure to attribute content to a new user when deleting an existing user! Otherwise, anything they wrote will be deleted.

Look for Broken Links

Use the W3C link validator to test one or more pages of your site for broken links. Focus on your most heavily trafficked pages first and go to your analytics (see above!) if you don’t know what those are! If you don’t find any broken links, good job! If you do, get those fixed!

There you have it! These are simple tasks that are bite-sized but will still demonstrably improve your site if you keep at this week after week. So go carve out a bit of time this Friday, and see what you can do!

Photo Credit: Damian Zaleski on Unsplash

6 Achievable Nonprofit Website Tasks for the New Year (Start With One!)

The new year is a great time to evaluate the state of your website and figure out how to make it better. But we all know that plenty of resolutions don’t get the followup they need. So instead of a New Year’s website resolution, pick one or two of these tasks and get started right now!

Since the goal is to get you moving forward on a concrete task, you don’t even need to read this whole post! Just pick the task that sounds the most interesting or useful and get to work!

Do a Content Audit

A content audit is the process of reviewing your entire site and assessing each piece of content individually to make sure it still serves your site visitors. It’s common to combine a content audit with a website redesign, but I think they work better separately. More-frequent content audits mean future website redesigns go more smoothly and your website will be consistently higher-quality for your visitors!

Whether it’s in a custom spreadsheet you set up or with a plugin like Content Audit, this is one of the best tasks you can do on your site.

Here’s how to do it:

Go through your site’s Pages one by one.
For each page, mark or list it as a meaningful status you can act on. I like to use the statuses Good, Minor Revisions, Major Revisions, Archive, and Merge with…. Then I’ll make a short note for each page about what should change.
If more than one person writes content for the site, also assign the Page to the person who will work on any revisions.

Once you’ve gone through the entire site, you will have learned a lot about the state of your site. Schedule the time to work on these pages throughout January and finish before February.

Quick Audit

If this sounds like too much, use your Jetpack Statistics or Google Analytics to identify your top 5, 10, or 20 pages. Then follow the steps above for that more limited set of pages.

Similarly, if you’ve managed to audit your whole site but aren’t sure where to start, let the site visitor stats determine which small part of the revision process to start on. Improving one high-traffic page is much more valuable that improving multiple low-traffic ones.

Clean Up Your Plugins & Themes

This one’s a little bit faster than the content audit.

Plugin Cleanup

While there’s no such thing as too many plugins, you never want to have plugins or themes that you’re not using installed on your site. These can slow down your site, clutter the admin, leave open a security hole, or force you to make unnecessary updates.

First, go to the Plugins page of the admin, and review each one. Do you know what it’s used for? Do you still need it? You may need to do a bit of research and contact your web developer or other staff, but figure out which plugins you don’t need and remove them from the site.

Once done, you’ll get a good reminder of how your site works and you’ll probably get some ideas for future projects (see below!).

[Fun fact: I just did this for NonprofitWP.org. With a bit of work to tweak a few things with my theme, I removed three plugins!]

Theme Cleanup

For themes, you really only need the theme your site is using. Delete all other themes from the Appearance > Themes screen in the admin. That’s it! 🙂

EXCEPTION: Child Themes

If your site is built using a “child theme”, then you’ll need two themes on your site, the active child theme and it’s parent theme. You can tell if you have a child theme by opening up your active theme details in Appearance > Themes and then looking for this:

Notice: "This is a child theme of Twenty Fifteen." — The notice in the Theme Details panel saying whether it is a child theme of a parent.

If you see that notice, delete all themes except the active [child] theme and its parent theme.

Streamline Your Forms

Do you want more people to fill in forms on your site? Do you want to get better information from them? Streamlining your forms will probably lead to both outcomes over time!

If you’re using one of our recommended WordPress forms plugins, you’ll be able to easily improve the forms used to collect information from visitors.

Here’s what to do for each form:

Review your 5 most recent submissions and ask yourself these questions:
1. What questions don’t receive enough or accurate information?
  1. Do certain optional fields get consistently skipped?
2. Most important: Can I tell someone how I use every piece of information I collect?
Once you’re more familiar with the reality of your form submissions, do the following for the form:
1. Make as few fields required as possible. These are the fields you couldn’t do without. An easy example: The email field for an email newsletter form. It won’t work without it!
2. Remove as many optional fields as possible. For example: Do you really need that person’s ZIP code?
3. Remove as many options from checkboxes, radio buttons, and select menus as possible.
4. Clarify each field name and, if needed, description. If you’re not getting good data, you’re probably mis-labeling your field or not being specific enough. Consider providing an example answer or sentence starter for free-form questions.
5. Rearrange form fields to increase commitment to finishing. For example: If working on a donation form, have people select their donation amount first. This builds momentum and gets questions that require active thinking out of the way earlier, letting users finish a form more or less on autopilot.

A streamlined form will be less-confusing for visitors and faster to fill out. That will increase the likelihood of people filling out your form and of you getting good data when they do!

Further reading on streamlining form design: Design Better Forms
Further reading with real-life example: KISSing Your Web Forms

Establish a Relationship with a Consultant

Even if you didn’t use a consultant to build your site, it’s good to know who you’ll turn to when—not if—you face a website emergency or project outside your own technical abilities. A few phone calls, a visit to a meetup, or a strategic referral from a colleague is usually all it takes.

Once you’ve found someone willing to work with you, find a way to bring them on board with a small project. Maybe that’s signing up for their annual maintenance plan, doing a small project together (see below!), or having them performing a site audit with strategic recommendations for future improvements.

When your donation form or email newsletter signup form isn’t working, you don’t want to panic and working with the first person you can find. (“Well our Development Director’s nephew is great with an iPad!”)

Even if you have a consultant already, you need to make sure they’ll make time to help you when you need it most. Take a moment to get back in touch and thank them for their support.

Put in a bit of time and money now, and you will feel immense relief at the moment you need it most!

Do a Small Project

Too often, website work is an all-or-nothing endeavor for organizations. You get your budget together, you sink a huge amount of effort into planning, and then you make one big push to get the new site live.

But if your site is a year old or more, I bet there’s a pain point you’ve identified or a “Phase II” project that’s yet to happen. If we’re being honest, there was probably something not quite right immediately after launch too.

Take some time to think about one incremental improvement to your site that will make it better. A smart project here and there can extend the life of your site and make it more useful to your visitors.

With the year starting, plan now for a great new addition to your site and figure out what it will take—time-, budget-, and planning-wise—to get it up and running.

Make a Blogging Content Calendar for the Year

Content calendars are a great may to make sure your blog stays updated all year. They’re usually built around major events, donation drives, programmatic campaigns, and unscheduled important news as it arises. (If you don’t have many obvious events, maybe you work in some blogging seasons too!)

There are lots of great templates out there, or you can get fancy and use a plugin like Edit Flow to manage it right in your WordPress dashboard. Find a good format for you—I think it’s hard to beat a good spreadsheet!—and get to planning!

Start by making a list of key events and dates you’ll need to post on and leading up to.
Then make a list of less time-sensitive topics you can blog about to fill in the gaps. One easy idea: Do a fun social media roundup with the best posts about your cause from you and your supporters!
Finally, get these all down into a spreadsheet with due dates, staff writing assignments, and any other notes you’ll need to start writing immediately when a blog post deadline looms.

Now you’re ready to blog up a storm in 2017! 📝🌩☺

Content calendars help you think ahead leading to better-written posts and an easier time getting usable web content from your colleagues!

Remember Why You Picked WordPress. Incremental Changes to Your Website Are Good!

The whole point of using WordPress is to allow you and fellow staff members or volunteers to easily update your website. If you’ve already done the work to get a site up, take full advantage of that flexibility and control! This month, focus on a single task like the ones suggested here and just get it done. You should feel good about giving your visitors a better experience and simultaneously supporting your organization’s work more.

I always tell my clients that websites are never done. They’re more like a garden that needs tending. So put your digital green thumb to use, and make your site even better to support your organization and achieve your mission!

Looking for More

If you want more ideas, check out similar suggestions from our Spring Cleaning and Spring Cleaning Followup!

Let me know what task you chose and how it went!

More Suggestions for Website Spring Cleaning

I asked the amazing WordPress Community of Practice (CoP) at NTEN (Nonprofit Technology Network) what I missed in my last post about Spring Cleaning Your Website and got some great suggestions!

In the original post, I recommended you do the following at least once a year:

Prune plugins and themes
Check that your scheduled backups are running and can be restored
Test your forms (particularly if they get you money!)
Audit your content

Here are some other things to do or check on.

Data Pulled Into Your Website

Lots of websites grab information from Facebook, Twitter, CRMs, calendars, and more to provide valuable information to their visitors. But sometimes things can go awry. Gordon shared the following story:

We have a lovely one that pulls from our google calendar of public events and loads it into a web page for events of the day. This page shows up on monitors throughout our facility. Imagine my surprise when one of our custodial crew inquired if we were really going to have lunches all day long? He showed me the monitor which was indeed showing the next upcoming event as a whole screen full of lunches.

If you’ve got data coming into your website, don’t just assume it’s working as you’d expect!

“Dedupe” your Media Library

Jason had the great suggestion to review your Media Library and remove duplicate images. This gives you multiple benefits:

That can keep the overall backup size of the website down, and just makes it easier to manage.

If you do delete images, make sure that you check your site for broken images and fix any that you removed.

…And don’t let it happen again!

I’ve seen lots of sites with 5 versions of a logo or two copies of every single portfolio item. This often happens because people don’t accurately give their images Titles so they can’t search for images! Every time you upload a photo, give it a useful descriptive title (that future you would search for) and appropriate alternative text for people and computers that can’t see the image.

Password Check

Jason was on a roll and also made another great suggestion: confirm that you know who your web host and domain registrar and can log in to each account. You rarely need these until you really need these, so find the information when you’re not in a panic.

Seriously, Audit Your Content

And the most popular suggestion? Really make sure to audit your content!

I loved how Dan framed this with excellent examples:

We all do our best to keep our plugins, core, etc. up to date, and that’s a good thing. But a good, healthy content audit can’t be beat as far as user experience goes.
How many times do you see a website that says (c) 2014…. Or something along those lines. Uhg.
How many times do we go to a ‘In the Press’ page and see the latest entry from 2012….
Content!

Peter followed up, pointing out the importance of broken links and how a content audit really requires a human touch:

If something technical goes wrong with your website, you can usually tell right away, but outdated content can be easily overlooked. And check all outgoing links! Broken links are even more easily overlooked, because you wouldn’t know they’re broken unless you check them.

Schedule the Next One

Peter earned the conclusion with the reminder of the importance of your content audit and website spring cleaning:

I know this is obvious, but it’s incredible how fast a year (or more) can go by, so add a reminder to your calendar and be religious about it.

That’s it. Now go do it! (And add it to your calendar for next year too!)

Spring Cleaning Your Website!

Just like you spring clean your house, every nonprofit website needs some attention every now and then to keep your site healthy. Given that it’s almost May, it’s time to get to it!

Plugins & Themes

If you’re a website administrator, head on over to Plugins > Installed Plugins and Appearance > Themes in your WordPress admin.

Read through the description of each plugin and make sure you still need it. Delete plugins that you don’t use and are deactivated, and see if you can deactivate any plugins you don’t need anymore.

For themes, delete all themes except the one you’re using. I used to leave one backup theme, but I don’t even do that anymore.

Why prune your plugins and themes? There are a few reasons:

Some security issues in plugins and themes can still be used even if the plugin or theme is not active!
While hosting space is cheap (usually “unlimited”), there’s no need to store extra files you won’t need and can easily download again. Worse yet, that extra code can bloat your backup files (see below!)
Fewer themes & plugins means fewer updates to manage!
You should know what powers your site and always aim to keep your site lean and efficient. Using fewer plugins might speed up your site, reduce clutter in your admin, and provide one less source for a potential problem in the future.

Check Your Backups

Assuming you have automated backups—you do have automated backups, right?—go to where they are stored and make sure that they are current and working as expected. If you have the technical ability, try to actually restore one on a test site to ensure these backups actually work! You get bonus points for saving a copy to your local hard drive as a backup-backup-backup.

Test Your Forms

Where I live in Seattle, GiveBig is coming up soon. No matter what, imagine your donation form hasn’t been working for who knows how long and you don’t know how many donations you’ve lost. That would be terrible! Try making a quick test donation on your site to ensure it works. (Feeling panicky? This post isn’t going anywhere.)

This is also always a good reminder to you of what your site visitors go through when trying to make a donation. Could it be better? Make sure you get automated receipts and thank you messages!

Besides your donation form, test your contact form, newsletter signup form and any other forms to make sure they work and create any notification emails you expect. If those forms are connected to other services or databases like MailChimp or Salesforce, make sure your test submissions accurately import into those as well.

Audit Your Content

A website is never “done.” If you haven’t reviewed your site in a while, it’s likely that something is out of date. Is your Staff page showing all current members with accurate emails? Has one of your programs shifted focus? Have you accomplished something major and not shared it with your website visitors yet?

Click through your site, edit what’s out of date, and make a list of what you need to add or significantly revise. Remember though that just because something isn’t current doesn’t mean you should delete it.

No Excuses!

I guarantee that an hour of reviewing your site will make it better! That’s something to take pride in! So close this window, log in to your website, and get clicking!

Update! It’s May 9, 2016 and I just posted a followup to this with some great recommendations from members of the Nonprofit Technology Network about even more spring cleaning tasks for your website. (And they really think you should do a content audit too!)