Website promotion methods
Accepting payments through your website. Known as e-commerce this does not have to be an expensive or sophisticated function or process. It is simply a tool that makes it easier for members, clients and users of your site to donate money or pay you for a service.
eParticipation is a broad term used to cover online consultations, online conference activities and eDemocracy. Greater participatory opportunities online can provide an important extra dimension to communicating with your stakeholders, clients, members and supporters.
Surveys are useful tools to elicit everything from snapshots of opinions to considered evaluation feedback. Online surveys can be designed to be interactive as well as easy to use, saving costs with mail and paper. A general or special sample of people can be invited by email or on a website to complete the survey.
E-consultations involve asking for comment on a particular issue and allowing people to provide their responses via an online form. The call for comment can be open to the public, or by invitation only providing a password to access the consultation site. Background information about the consultation will usually be provided.
Discussion forums include simple email groups, web-based discussion forums and hybrid web-email forums. Most discussion forums are moderated. That means that all contributions to the forum are vetted by one or more forum moderators before being made available to everyone else.
A webcast is a live video or audio broadcast over the internet. A user can receive a webcast without any specialist software but effective reception will generally require a broadband connection.
Blogs are online personal journals that are frequently updated and intended for general public consumption. The essential characteristics of the blog are its journal form which typically includes a new entry sitting at the top each day, and its informal style. Blogs represent one way of creating an online community allowing constituents to voice their opinions, make suggestions and communicate with other supporters. The access to ideas and opinions on the site gives each supporter a sense of being part of the organisation and part of a community.
RSS is a simple way of sharing content. RSS feeds mean that your supporters can bring into their desktop the headlines of stories from your website. RSS is a way to send breaking and up-to-date information from your website to a supporter group.
Micro-sites for specific issues and campaigns If you are running a special campaign you may want to consider directing people to a special page on your site set up specifically for a particular issue or appeal.
These special pages operate a bit like a mini website and can be set-up and removed relatively easily at short notice. Interested people are directed to the micro-site from mailings, e-newsletters, media stories or advertisements. A micro-site provides an offer or call-to-action on a specific issue through a concise focused presentation.
Advertising on a search engine Also known as ‘targeted keyword advertising’ or ‘adwords’, this type of promotion has been used effectively by many nonprofits. Its success is tied to identifying the right keywords that will connect search engine users with your ads.
Getting listed in directories and portals is an important way of letting people know about you and your campaigns and getting them to go to your website.