March 3, 2016
At Webconnex, we get a front row seat of a variety of organizations. There is a common theme with organizations that succeed at fundraising. They all have a professional design.
It makes sense too. Recent studies point to 40% of people consider the professional design of a website prior to entering in their credit card. How good (or bad) your website and donation pages look may be affecting your sales.
But perhaps you have a small team and limited resources? How do you create million dollar impression with only a few bucks? Here are some tips in helping your web presence look good in no time without breaking the bank.
A good photo is the centerpiece to your professional design. Sadly, many organizations don’t have a photo that will help create the professional look. Don’t make the mistake of searching google for an image. You have a decent chance of getting a nasty legal letter in the mail. A free resource to consider is Pixabay. You can search thousands of photos that you can use for free without a license. If you can afford a dollar, try DollarPhotoClub to get a high quality image in a few minutes.
Don’t have a $1000 copy of photoshop installed on your computer? No problem. Pixlr is a free online image editor that has 99% of all the photoshop functions you would probably want to use. Use this to resize and crop photos to be a friendly web size. You can also add blurs, filters and other image effects.
90% of online shoppers say they find videos helpful in making their online transaction decisions. Consider a brief (but awesome) highlight video for your event. Or consider a 45 second video telling people about the organization and welcoming them to donate. Animoto is a favorite here to create rapid, fast and high quality videos without the work. Videolicious is a great iPhone app for quickly editing and producing videos.
Elevate your branding game with a organization logo. Stay clear of the clip art logos. Use a website like Fiverr where you can pay as little as $5 for a graphic designer to make you a logo. For $5, you can get a logo that far surpasses any logo you could make in Microsoft word. If you have a bit more to spend, you can try 99Designs.com and host a design contest for your logo. Expect to receive dozens of designers wooing you with their design comps of your logo.
Create a simple standalone website for your organization even if you have a website for your organization. This will help increase search engine traffic and give you a web address that you can promote directly. So instead of going to your main website and searching for the event, you can send people to MyAwesomeEventPage.com where they can get the exact event information immediately.
Don’t want to try and find an expensive web developer to create you a dedicated webpage for your event? We don’t blame you. Try SquareSpace which gives you many do-it-yourself tools to create a beautiful simple website. Wix is another provider which gives you a simple editor for making a website yourself. Pricing ranges from free to $10 a month.
Make sure your designs are consistent and look good across all your channels. You can do this easily by hosting a design contest for banner ads, t-shirts and flyers for your event on DesignCrowd.com. Post a quick brief of your design needs and get proofs and concepts the same day. Only pay when you are satisfied.
Between these resources, you will save hundreds (if not thousands) of dollars and have a fresh and professional brand to present to the world.
