6 (plus!) Ways You Can Level Up Your Nonprofit Website Without Spending a Kazillion Bucks

Many of our nonprofit clients have physical locations that are the center of day to day activity: Schools, concert venues, sometimes just offices. But your website – that’s the billboard on the internet superhighway pointing folks who aren’t in your building (yet!) in your direction. It’s your 24/7/365 online presence.

And sometimes, just like a physical location, it needs some TLC. Fresh coat of paint, repairs, updates. And if you’re on a shoestring budget, you may not be keeping up with all of those pesky little to-dos, and when the to-do list gets longer and longer, it feels scarier and scarier. And expensiver. So you probably ignore it. Just like I ignore my house for too long and then realize I need to… well, let’s not go there. Not today, Home Depot. Not today.

Michelle, most days, and some nonprofit web teams who have ignored their to do list for too long.

But if your site is looking a little outdated or you feel like it’s not getting the care and feeding it needs, don’t worry. You don’t necessarily need a big budget to make big improvements. Here are some cost-effective ways to upgrade your site so it’s faster, more accessible, and better at engaging visitors.

1. Web Accessibility: Small updates with a big impact

I wrote a pretty lengthy post about website accessibility a while back with a lot of details (nobody has ever accused me of talking too little). Maybe it’s worth your time? The gist is that not everyone using your site has the same abilities and many rely on assistive technologies, and your site needs to be compatible with those.

Here’s the TL;DR on that:

• Test your site with a free accessibility checker (P.S. We offer a free website accessibility audit – no strings attached) so you know your baseline. Then make improvements. Common ones below!
• Use big text for body copy (16px is a good place to start).
• Use high-contrast text and backgrounds for readability.
• Add alt text to images so screen readers can describe them to visually impaired users.
• Make sure your site is navigable by keyboard alone.

2. Speed: Slow is the bounce-rate killer

Hey! What a surprise. I wrote a long post about the importance of page speed, too! It’s shorter than the accessibility one. Promise. Fun trivia: a one second delay can drop your conversion rates by 7%. That’s ridiculous. Or would have been to me circa 1998. But now, I too expect EVERYTHING on the internet to happen IMMEDIATELY and get irate when it doesn’t.  Don’t mock me. Get off my lawn.

Anyway – the top takes from that post:

• Run a site speed audit (Google’s PageSpeed Insights is free).
• Compress images so they load faster.
• Cache as aggressively as you can.
• Minimize unnecessary plugins and scripts that slow things down.
• Start with a lean theme, and custom is often better (if you can pop for it).
• Clean up your database – that gets junked up quicker than you care to know.
• Switch to a better website hosting provider (not all hosts are created equal).

3. Security: You know this one. Hacking is bad. Very bad.

Well looky here…. Yeah yeah, a blog post about how you can avoid getting hacked.

• Update your plugins daily. Plenty of hosting companies offer daily plugin updates for WordPress. We do. You should use them. Or us.
• Delete any unused plugins and all inactive users.
• Backup your site daily. As above, so here: plenty of hosting companies offer daily backups. We do. You should use them. Or us.
• Install an SSL certificate (Google ranks secure sites higher!). Another thing that’s included in our hosting packages as a matter of course.

4. CTAs: Dead-ends are bad.

Okay – so a real surprise here. I have not written a post about this, but I should! Dead-end roads are a pain in the a$$, and so are dead-end webpages. If you have your user’s attention, keep enticing them to explore more.

• Every page should have a call to action (CTA)- that’s a clear next step. Want them to donate? Read more? Sign up? Give them something to do, and make it obvious.
• Feature related content to keep users engaged. Use tools like categories and tags in your blog (you see those hashtags at the top of the page? They all link to more related content! Go explore, friends!).
• Use buttons and well formatted CTAs at breaks in content, not just links—they’re easier to spot and click.
• Speaking of CTAs, this template that we use for nonprofit website audits has a column for CTAs. Use it! And maybe while you’re at it, you can do a deeper dive on your site? Not a bad idea if I do say so myself.

5. Google Ad Grants: If You Build It, They Won’t Necessarily Come

And now for another surprise. I’m not promoting my own content here, I’m promoting Natalie’s instead! She wrote a post a while back about the value of Google Ad Grants for nonprofits. If your traffic is super low, this is a GREAT free tool for driving more eyeballs to your site. You can signup, build campaigns, etc. all by yourself, or you can find a great company that specializes in managing Google Ad Grants for nonprofits (no surprise, that’s us!).

The TL;DR for Google Ad Grants:

• Google Ad Grants can drive targeted traffic to your site.
• There are eligibility requirements – you can read about those here.
• You probably won’t get all $10k of value each month, even if you’re running a great campaign. If you have a very small audience or geographic region (e.g. maltipoo owners in Tupelo, MS), you’ll get less than if you have a broader audience (dog owners in Denver).
• A great strategy and regular maintenance will increase your chances of success.

6. Free Tools: Free like beer, not kittens

These tools aren’t necessarily on your website, but I thought I’d throw them in, anyway.

• Canva – A free tool with some great templates and other tools to make great social media posts and other graphics that may end up on your website (free tip: please don’t design images that have words in them for use on your website, please – see that accessibility post above!).
• Google Workspace for Nonprofits – Free email, cloud storage, and collaboration tools. We pay for it and couldn’t do our jobs as well without it. As a nonprofit you can probably get it for free. Get on that!
• Google Analytics – If you’re not tracking traffic on your site, how do you even know if you’re REALLY online?! Data is power.
• Loom – Record quick screencast videos to explain things to your team – like how to make some of the changes above!

6+: Ready to Make Some Upgrades?

You don’t need to spend truckload of cash to improve your nonprofit website – in fact, if you have time and access to your site’s backend, you can probably make some small but strategic changes that will give you some great ROI quickly. If you have some more time to invest, think about downloading our free website audit template for nonprofits, gathering a small team together, and working through it. Seriously, if you’ve read this far, you’re probably interested enough to take the dive – and your boss will LOVE you for it! Thank me later!