Is Your Web Site Ineffective?

Having just gone through some recommendations on designing an effective web site with my students, today I found a great guide at Nonprofit Tips (via Creating Passionate Users). “Is my Website Ineffective?,” by Vincent Flanders, is looooong, but very much worth your time. He provides a number of online tools to test your site for broken links, browser incompatibility, readability, and more, plus a tough-love checklist to help you identify unnecessary and problem components of your site. Coincidentally, the first two items on the Ineffective checklist are the same key items I hope I drove home to my students on Monday: “We’ve designed our site to meet our organization’s needs (more sales/contributions) rather than meeting the needs of our visitors,” and “Our site tries to tell you how wonderful we are as an organization, but not how we’re going to solve your problems.”

Take the test!