The Ultimate Guide to Great Nonprofit Web Design

I recently published the last post in my series about the nonprofit web design process and thought it would be helpful to have a final summary for the entire series. Enjoy!

1. Stakeholder Discovery: How we structure stakeholder meetings, what topics we discuss and some tips for leading discovery conversations
2. User Research
   • Analytics data as User Research: Timeframe for which to review analytics data and some specific research questions to drive data analysis
   • Surveys and Interviews: Which research technique to choose, how to recruit participants and what questions to ask
   • Card Sorts: What type of card sorts to conduct, how to recruit participants and how to decide what cards to use
   • Usability Tests: Types of usability tests you can conduct, participant recruiting, task definition and creating a prototype
   • Personas: Process for developing personas, what information to include and some example personas
3. Content Strategy: How the content inventory and audit serve as the foundation for the content strategy and a description of other deliverables that we might produce during this phase
4. Information Architecture
   • Site maps: How we create research-based site maps and special considerations for nonprofits when developing site maps
   • Wireframes: Deciding which wireframes to create, positioning of global elements and tools that are useful in creating wireframes
5. Visual Design: How we articulate the creative vision for the site and combine the aesthetic with the solid foundation of User Research and Information Architecture
6. Solution Design: Defining the technical configuration details of the site in preparation for build

I hope this series has been useful to you! I have enjoyed writing it and know I’ll be referencing individual posts often when describing different phases of our process to clients and prospective clients.

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Lacey Kruger

Lacey Kruger, principal information architect for Blackbaud, designs online properties for nonprofits that delight and inspire. Whether a full scale website, a campaign site or a peer to peer fundraising site, Lacey guides clients through a research-based and user-centered approach to design. In her 12+ years at Blackbaud, she has developed a deep understanding of nonprofit web presences. That knowledge, along with her years of experience in information design, have established her as an industry expert.

Lacey has written a Blackbaud eBook, “A Guide to the Nonprofit Web Design Process” and her article, “Designing Nonprofit Experiences: Building a UX Toolkit” was published in User Experience magazine. She has presented at industry conferences including bbcon, IA Summit and BIG Design.