Designing a Website for a Non-Profit Organization

Redesigning a Website for a non-Profit organization

In this brief document, the designing criteria for a non-profit web page are going to be discussed. The example chosen is http://www.keepbanderabeautiful.org/climatechange.html which is very complicated, difficult to browse and does not give a good sense of the aim of the site. The webpage is belonging to a climate change non-profit organization. Therefore, the target group should be very broad from students to elderly people, scientist to workers. In this context, the usability and functionality of the prospective web page will be described with examples.

Nowadays, as a result of rapid growing internet technology, the internet is reachable to everyone. The reasonable price, bundled services with cable TV and telephone brought the internet to almost every house. Most people use internet to deal with their daily errands from banking operations to reading news. The latter brings big responsibility and completion to the web designers to exhibit their products and idea. Hence, the question is "How can a webpage serve to everyone?."

Norman (1988) summarized the people's expectations from a product (e.g., door, microwave oven) as a balance between aesthetic beauty, reliability, safety, usability, cost and functionality. There should not be a need to scarify of these functions since the human being expects the reasonable cost product with aesthetics. In the example of webpage, the usability should not jeopardize the beauty or the beauty should not contradict with the functionality. Functionality of a webpage requires that all buttons of the site is active and all pictures or flashes serve for an aim. It is very important that users can use the webpage accurately, learn the details and satisfy their goals. The latter refers the usability. The usability can be measured by easy of learning, efficiency of use, memorability, error frequency and severity, and subjective satisfaction (http://www.usability.gov/). A good design for a webpage can be user centered design. It requires that the users visiting to webpage must satisfy their expectations regardless of the main idea behind the design. If the webpage meets the criteria of being usable by the users, the cost of designing will automatically cut because one round designing would serve for users' expectations. However, sometimes the expectations would widely vary as the target user group can be broad from students to the seniors or college educated people to people with no-formal education at all. For example, Craigslist is a webpage that has visitors all over the world where people trade in, find their prospective apartment while they are physically in another continent or meet their prospective significant others. The current design does not have a lot in it. The aesthetic components are weakly designed but what makes this webpage, designed in 1995, so popular. First of all, the design is easy to use after the first look around. Services are grouped under significant titles. However, it is not very easy for the first eyes, aesthetic, and up-to-date. Therefore, NY Times, SimpleScott, and Matt Willey came up with three deferent design proposals. The people had different ideas and perspectives; however, all agreed on simplicity and aesthetics.

Taking all together, the usability of a webpage is very important. Therefore, the first step of redesigning a webpage will clearly defining the goal, analyzing the problem of current site, and then making a suggestion to the public. The feedbacks would help to redesign a user-centered webpage and cut the costs of frequently redesigning. In this study, we will analyze a non- profit organizations webpage, http://www.keepbanderabeautiful.org/climatechange.html.

The Goals

The main goal is improving the usability of the current webpage while protecting the message of the webpage. The climate change is a problem that affects everybody. Hence, the audience is very broad from a child to a senior or from a geologist to a housewife. Therefore, the webpage should be very easy to follow and direct people to their interest area with easy button clicks. Visitors should trust the webpage and take it seriously to donate money.

What is wrong with Current Webpage?

First of all the current webpage is very long and lacking of aesthetics. Buttons and the pictures are randomly inserted, the context and the buttons are not easy to follow, it is very unprofessional; therefore, the visitors would not trust the seriousness of webpage in the matter. Some of the links are not active or broken. Although, there are several broken sentences referring the people of this webpage, it is very difficult to understand who the people are behind this move. The language buttons are very large and very complicated. None of them looks working properly. The donation button takes to the google payment page. Most people would know it is safe; however, the webpage does not provide a trustworthy image to donate. Most of the buttons take the visitors on the same page. It is not very easy to go back the main page unless one is able to understand and look at the left while scrolling down.

What is right with Current Webpage?

Although the orders and the looks of the images and context are extremely messy, the message of the news and webpage is very rich. The pages load quickly.

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