by Eric Pudalov, Community Events Coordinator
Today, as I’ve been working on a project for GCSS’ Excitement Committee, a thought came to me about visual appeal in general.
For nonprofits, just as any other organization or individual who wants to promote their message, visual appeal on the Web, as well as ease of use, are almost as important as the actual substance of the website.
Nonprofit Tech 2.0: 10 Nonprofit Mobile Websites provides 10 great examples of nonprofit sites that have been successful thus far.
Among these are National Public Radio, Special Olympics Northern California, and World Wildlife Fund.
One thing that all these sites seem to have in common, at least visually, is their simplicity. NPR, for example, uses a basic blue, white, and gray color scheme, highlighting lists of top news stories, which are divided by topic or popularity.
Similarly, the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) has a basic front page, with a red header over a white background. Their first three links, easily visible, are About WWF, How You Can Help, and Download Wallpapers and Videos. Below that is a link to “take action,” followed by a list of news stories.
The WWF also has an intriguing blog called Wave Forward: Ocean Blog, which tells about their history, approach, and success stories, as well as educating others about their message.
Our main page, in a similar vein, states our mission and purpose upfront, has links to our programs and services, and directs visitors to our blog, Twitter, and Facebook pages.
Perhaps our site could still be more easily navigable, but as we continue to update it, we hope that it will be much simpler for visitors to use.
In the meantime, we hope to make more friends in the nonprofit community, and bounce ideas off one another to further our mission.
Creating Opportunities for Developmentally Disabled People
Our Facebook Page
VSA Arts of Georgia
Georgia Community Support and Solutions
The Fight Against Destructive Spin
Follow Us On Twitter
Georgia Community Support & Solutions 
There are so many different ways to do a Website. The most important aspect of a site is that it meets the needs of your customers. I spent some time at your site and given the amount of content it has, it looks pretty good.
The navigation is fine. The text is nice and large and there are no issues navigating to the sub menus. Multilevel tabs menus is possible option, but it may get to busy.
Here are just a few other quick review comments:
1. On the calendar page, rename “Agenda” to “List of events”
2. Provide links to your sponsor’s Websites. Open the links in a new tab/window.
3. Descriptions for “How is it funded?” are on the H.O.S.T page but not on the other pages.
4. Some of the menu selections under “How we can help” are not self-explanatory. I had to go through each menu selection to determine what those things are – and then I clicked on the Menu heading and realized that it is clickable! Not all of the top menu items are clickable. It would help if that were more consistent.
5.The close captioning on the homepage video is a bit small and difficult to read, but it could be because I have a large screen. I didn’t like the fact that the close captioning overwrote people’s titles. Perhaps that could be redone?
Hope this helps.
Cheers
Note: You could use a link on the right hand side of your blog to link back to the GCSS page. I had no idea what GCSS stood for until today. 😉
Thanks so much, Mr. Reiner! I forwarded your comment to our CEO, as well as my immediate supervisors and the IT department of our organization. We will definitely take your advice to heart, and will most likely implement some or all of it!