Several years ago, I wanted to take my daughter to see The Frick, a museum in New York City. I used to live in Manhattan and I wanted to share my passion for art and museums with her. Before our trip, I visited the museum’s website. The front page included a date stamped list of four or five upcoming events, including a link to the details highlighting an exhibit I knew she’d love.
Fresh, updated content like that is what gives websites for nonprofits vitality, the fifth required element of a viable nonprofit website.
Simply put, vitality is the perception of fresh content. This means that, when people come to our website, they get the sense our website is constantly evolving—that it’s always being updated. Fortunately we know what the silver bullet for vitality is:
It’s posting content (with a date) on our website’s homepage a minimum of once per week.
Did you know that the average person will decide in less than five seconds if they’re going to click past your homepage and/or bookmark your site? This decision is based almost entirely upon the end user’s perception of the site’s freshness of content. Our brains tell us subconsciously whether or not a website is worth revisiting.
