When we created the web site for the Upstate Alliance for Nonprofit Excellence last year, we did exactly what Deb suggested here. As a result, we came up with a simple and straightforward design that people seem to love. We mostly went to sites of other groups around the country that were doing what we wanted to do for Upstate New York, so we had a specific pool of candidates, and between them they offered almost everything we hoped to offer, at least initially. We created a simple rating form and asked our group of reviewers to use it when getting feedback to us. Folks were very responsive, seemed to have a good time participating in this effort, and we ended up with a very usable, user-friendly, content-rich site. Our web designer seemed to value this type of input highly - and one site, that of Community Resource Exchange in New York City, was the preferred site of many folks, so he used that as his core design from which to work. Basically - the entire process was a rewarding one, and our site debuted on-time and way under budget! (Of course it did help that we have a terrific web developer who is affordable, easy to work with, and continues to help us as we enhance our site!!)

Many thanks to jellen for this first hand account; I hope that others will feel very free to add theirs.

I should also say that in this article (and in other web-related activities) I draw a lot of inspiration from Philip Greenspun's book, Philip and Alex's Guide to Web Publishing. I have a 1999 edition of the "dead trees" version, and even though a lot of the very specific technical advice may no longer apply, it's still a book worth reading from cover to cover. (There are lots of great photos of Alex, as well.)

One of the most useful realizations that I derived from reading Philip's book (and also attending one of his web design workshops) boils down to something like this:

The vast majority of first-time visitors to your organization's web site will be looking for either 1) how to contact you offline or 2) an immediate answer to a very specific question, or both. If the information they're seeking is not on your web site's home page (or if it's not completely obvious where they need to click to find the information) then your web site is failing to nurture your relationships with current and potential stakeholders.

As Philip might say, this would make a good article for Duh magazine.

Of all the things mentioned, I'd add that most designers seem still to design for broadband. I know the bulk of the users of the site I've just lost responsibility for, are using dial-up, and usually, do not have a separate phone line for internet access. For that reason, I have kept the design spare to the extreme. Sadly, this isn't under consideration now.

Focus groups are great, but they are looking at how it looks, not how it will act when they get home to their (maybe) 52K modem and (maybe) Pentium, or Pentium II machine with a cheap graphics card. If it takes 5 minutes to display the home page, you've lost them already.

I've seen some sites that take this into account, and default to text-only (or nearly so) and allow a user to choose a higher-bandwidth option. I've also seen sites that default to high-, but offer low-. Unfortunately, it takes forever for the option for low- to display.

When we talk tech, it seems to me the greatest error we can make is assuming everyone has our firepower. I guess, my lesson for the 00's is that some people are still in the 90's. (And my consumer base is rural Iowa, parts of which are not that far along, either.)

Many thanks to Shelley Rivers for these important points! Worries about the "firepower" (or "bandwidth") available to small nonprofits and their stakeholders are very legitimate. One of my chronic anxieties is that email that is rich in HTML (exotic fonts, multiple columns on the page, elaborate click-through links, graphics of any kind) will cause the recipients (or the systems of the recipients) to melt down. This is not conducive to building relationships.

Excellent points. I'd just like to point out something important. In many areas, it is now fairly safe to assume that if your intended audience is nonprofits, they will have broadband. The reality is that too many funding sources require too much to be done on line, so that broadband access has become a REQUIREMENT, not a "luxury".

But, if you are talking individuals, it's a whole different ballgame, especially if you're talking about low income individuals / families. If they have home access, then even in an area with easily obtainable broadband, they're still paying for dial up because it's less expansive. If they go to someplace like a local library, then they have broadband, but a very limited time slot, in most cases.

So, how much to worry about dial-up has a lot to do with who you are trying to reach.

While one of our targets is non-profits, we are not talking about the national headquarters, but small offices in Iowa, throughout the state, parts of which did not have dial up until recently. Or small non-profits whose office is someone's living room. We also provide our data for the benefit of state and county agencies, some of which do not have internet access at all and call us for information, or have dial up that shares the voice and/or fax. And some people, even with dial up, are having to make a long-distance call. Maybe Iowa is unique in this way, but I had suspected not.

My thought is, the points still stand. I only wanted to add the caveat that it isn't just the appearance and content, but how they're delivered, that can impact a site's usability. My experience has been that focus groups and such tend to be in a conference room with broadband and a superfast computer, not at home dialing in through the old 486 at 22.8, even though that may be how they access the site when it's up.