What a non-profit’s website must answer in the first ten seconds

A parent opens a charity’s website to find out whether the after-school club has places this term. A volunteer wants to know where to sign up. A donor who saw a post wants to know whether the money reaches people, and a journalist is looking for a phone number or an email. Each of them arrives with one question and rarely says it out loud. If the first screen of a website for charities does not point each of them somewhere in a few seconds, most leave and do not come back to look harder.

The first answer on a charity’s home page is who you help and where, in one plain sentence that names the people, the place and the help. "We run evening classes and a food bank for families in the east of the city" tells a visitor at once whether they are in the right place. A mission statement and a long paragraph about values can come later, on the about page, for the people who want them.

The second answer is what a visitor can do now. A charity’s site usually has four doors: get help, give, volunteer, and come to an event. Each should be visible on the first screen under a plain word that names it. A visitor who came to give should not have to scroll past three news items to find the button, and a family looking for help should not land on a donation form.

The third answer is why they can trust you. Donors want to see where the money goes, and a short report with a photo of the work and a figure that matches it convinces them more than any adjective. Families look for a real address, opening hours and a contact that answers. The organization’s registration, when it has one, and the year it started say more than "trusted by the community".

Real photos and a current site

A photo of your own hall, your volunteers and last season’s food parcels tells a visitor that the organization exists and works. Stock images of smiling strangers say the opposite. Ask people before you photograph them, and say on the site how photos are chosen. Each photo needs a short caption saying what it shows and when it was taken.

Those first answers stay true only while the site is kept current. A programme that ended last spring tells a visitor that nobody is looking after the site, and so does an event dated last month or a phone number that changed. Most charities have a small team and no web developer, so programmes and events need to be updated from one simple page by the person who already organizes them. Changes sent by email to someone who edits the site once a month wait for that day.

Events deserve care of their own, because they are often the reason people visit. Each event needs a date, a time, a place and what to bring, and a way to add it to the visitor’s own phone calendar. An event that has passed should leave the list by itself, so the page never shows a gathering that already happened.

Reach every donor and every family

Online giving should be as short as possible, on one page with a few amounts and what each one does, the choice between a single gift and a monthly one, and a receipt by email. The payment itself goes through a payment provider the organization chooses, so card details never pass through the site. Where the law allows it and the project includes it, donors also receive their receipts for the year in one document.

Many organizations serve communities that live in more than one language, and their site often forgets it. A family that reads Arabic or French more easily than English should not have to guess what the site says. A site that offers each page in the languages of the people it serves, with Arabic laid out right to left, welcomes more of the people the charity exists for.

Many visitors arrive on an older phone with a weak connection. A first screen that loads quickly, with images sized for phones and no video starting by itself, reaches the families who most need the information.

Keep the tools small, then time it

Behind the site, a small back office helps more than a complicated one. It holds the list of members and volunteers, the groups they belong to, a rota for the next events and the requests people send through the site, in one place the team can open from a phone. The website then becomes the front of the work and stops being a separate task.

Test the site on a phone with a timer running. Ask someone who does not know the organization to find out who it helps, how to give and when the next event is. If any answer takes longer than ten seconds, the first screen needs work, and that work usually means removing things. Repeat the test in each language the site offers, on the slowest phone in the office.

We build this kind of site for charities, foundations and associations. It carries programmes, events and online giving in the languages of the people they serve, with simple tools around it for members, volunteers and receipts. The charities page describes the offer, and the websites page shows how a project runs.