NGO's Website

Website is a tool for organization to communicate with public. It is a type of media that the organization is paying for conveying messages to the public. And I dare say website is getting more important in our daily nowadays. If you still haven't notice Internet Media has become another tool for politician to influence the surfers for their supports. A very good example is last year's election, Internet has played a great role in it.

Today, I'm not going to talk about Politic Parties Website or Politician's blogs. Instead I would like to point out how you can make your organization's website more powerful and influence more people to join in your organization.

First key, is keep your website up to date. As the technology keep changing and and more advanced, we even can receive notice about updates and changes of content in our website. Ask yourself, do you like to visit a website that is always the same for months? For example, a very good example the Malaysia's UNDP website, last update was January of 2009. When I see this website static and has no update, my first thought is, "ALAMAK" is this organization really exist? Then I will think, are those people inside there really working on the cause they are serving? To make sure you can have your reader, supporter and surfer keep coming back to your website, make sure you update your website frequently.

A website will not be attractive without a good layout design. Don't you agree that we all like to see beautiful things? A colorful page, compare with a very dull and square pages, I doubt the latter will have any visitors keep coming back for more except if it is very informative and useful website to certain specific group of people. And those website are not for drawing public's attention. Do not concern about saving money for design, value for money is the key. If you are only willing to pay student price, get student to design. I am sure student can also deliver good job on the design.

Other than layout design, if you have multi-lingual website, you have to make sure you standardize your design. A standardized website tells me that I am in the same website, only different language. For example, one of the NGO's that I'm involved in has a website. First of all, the webiste's has got English and Chinese version. However, it doesn't really is a good Internationalized website. The Chinese version and the English version has different design, and my first impression on surfing through is that, am I still in the same website or not?

Lastly, and also most importantly, is what is your website's objective? A clearly defined objective will make sure your website has the right structure, and deliver the message you want to convey to the public. For example, Air Asia's website is to sell ticket online, they make it clear cut that buying online is easy and safe. On the other hand, another Airline's website was originally for "schedule checking only". I tried on that Airline (International Awards Winner Airline), and I realized I have to provide exactly the flight's date to find the availability and price of tickets. I felt so inconvenient, and seems very difficult. How would I know the time and flight number as well as the date of the flight? I would have been the ticketing agent if I know that. Knowing what you want to do with your website, is the most important thing you want to do. Please don't setup a website because it is an "In" thing to have for your organization.

Getting a good and effective website done doesn't really need to invest a lot and put a hole in your pocket. It is a matter of what kind of message you want to convey, and how you want to convey it. If you own a website, it is time for you to review whether it serves its purpose or not. Else, it is time for you to revisit the above's points.