The March 2011 meeting of Public Policy Communicators NYC focused on Website Impact Without Redesign – What are some of the most important functional elements you need to have on your website to drive traffic and increase audience interaction, but that don’t require an expensive, all-consuming site make-over?

Jai Sen led our discussion.  He is a digital communications consultant with deep experience in interactive media, website and application development, and user experience design. He has led a wide variety of projects in the commercial and nonprofit sectors, including the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation site redesign, and has most recently been an integral part of the team that relaunched the Atlantic Philanthropies website. He is currently working on the digital presence for the D5 coalition, an organization formed by grantmakers promoting diversity and inclusion in philanthropy.

Add-ons Not a Substitute for Design

Sen began by differentiating the elements we would be talking about from an actual redesign, saying that a redesign constitutes a total re-think of how you present and structure information online, it is usually time-consuming and budget-intensive and it addresses goals larger than simply driving traffic and increasing user interaction.

I have to admit that I thought the assembled participants would largely comprise communicators who simply didn’t have the money to do a redesign and were looking for some low-cost methods of sprucing sites up a bit.  But when Sen polled the room to ask how many had recently or were currently involved in total redesign, almost all hands went up.  So clearly folks interested in this topic aren’t looking to avoid a redesign, but are really looking for the latest tools and extra functionality to build upon existing sites.

Three Ways to Add Impact

Sen next listed three categories of add-ons that he would be helping the group to explore:

1. “Basics” that build on content already on a site or assets (like images) owned by an organization but not in use
2. Functional elements that can be “embedded” from outside sources
3. Plug-ins and APIs (Application Programming Interfaces, a way of bringing outside sites’ feature sets into one’s own site)

Before getting into the first area of add-ons, Sen made the case that it is important for nonprofits and foundations to have a clear understanding of who is currently coming to the site, what they are coming for and what types of elements appeal to them.  He strongly advocated using Google Analytics and other measurement tools available on Facebook and YouTube to get a snapshot of existing traffic and an accurate starting point to build your add-on plans and then to measure the results of your experiments in adding functionality.

In the “Basics” area, Sen focused on blog functionality, which he made clear is not necessarily about producing lots of editorial content, but really about serialized and timely presentation of content of many varieties. He said the blog function is “easy publishing with lots of impact.” Serialized publishing (blogs functions) are easily installed at little cost. They also vastly improve organizations’ abilities to optimize social networking capacity. Any timely content can be presented in blog format, from events to news, and users are familiar and comfortable with it.

Sen showed an example of the Japan Society, whose home page appears to be based on a serial publishing (blog) function.  He noted how the page, despite its unusually large number of navigation options, appears visually dynamic and always fresh.  He said it also nicely demonstrates the next area of “basics” that he intended to discuss: adding lots of big-impact pictures.

While he didn’t put forth the platitude that a picture tells a thousand words, he certainly demonstrated that this is an eternal truth as he showed examples of the Robert Wood Johnson home page that makes good use of pictures that show the implications of its work to help draw in visitors and navigate the vast array of information on the site. Sen discussed how the Robert Wood Johnson redesign project was about moving from a text-heavy, dry look and feel to one that made the foundation’s work and mission immediately clear and apparent through the use of compelling photos of the organization’s work.

Sen says that images are easy to manage and insert into online content and instantly enhance the “reading” experience.  You can use free services like Flickr and Picassa to host images, but such services can provide many other tools that he would discuss later. He then showed a screen shot of the Rainforest Alliance home page, which, like the Robert Wood Johnson site, makes good use of high-impact photos to make the experience of using the site not only more appealing, but also easier to relate to. Audience members added from their own experience that you can obtain images through your own work or through sites like iStockPhoto and Creative Commons licenses. Sen commented that Creative Commons licenses (which allow anyone to use copyrighted material, as long ans the owner or creator of the material is acknowledged) can be a great way to raise awareness about your organization and even drive traffic. Just make sure that you do indeed get permission to use any image you use on your site and clearly indicate ownership of images you put online by using a copyright notice or Creative Commons statement.

Sen moved next to the category of “embeddables.” Among the most common and essential for nonprofits and foundations are “social shares” that create easy links to Facebook, Twitter and other social media, and allow users to easily share your content through those mechanisms.  He said these embeddables are very easy to add to a site and are really just image links.  He showed an example on The Atlantic Philanthropies site that has prominent embedded social media icons and talked about some of the successes that organization has had with them.

The next type of “embeddable” he discussed was video.  He made the case that using a service like YouTube or Vimeo is better than hosting video on your site for a number of reasons, mostly because you don’t have to worry about hosting considerations like bandwidth since the videos are housed on (and streamed from) the outside service. Audience members raised questions about whether YouTube or Vimeo is preferable. Sen has recommended YouTube to most of his clients because it allows you to customize the video playing page to look like your own branded site and has more users that may find your organization through keyword searches.  Still, he said, Vimeo is a good option that many nonprofits are finding useful.  Either is very easy to incorporate into your organization’s site.  They also allow for statistical analysis of traffic and easy sharing.

Slide shows are also increasingly popular and easy-to-deploy tools that lots of nonprofits are using.  And, users are much more likely to click on a link to a slide show than to view a video.  Sen said that Flickr and PictoBrowser provide two excellent, easily embeddable tools to create and display slide shows.  The shows can be simple pictures with captions, or they can be created with timed advancement and voiceover and music. It just depends on how much time and effort you want to put in.

He showed another example from The Atlantic Philanthropies site where a slideshow was seamlessly integrated into the site.  He also showed an example of a YouTube video embedded on The Atlantic Philanthropies website, which uses YouTube to house all its video. He said that, because Atlantic used YouTube to host the video and had tagged the video with lots of keywords, it had driven traffic to the organization’s website, thanks to YouTube’s large user base.

There are other embeddables that allow organizations to give site visitors audio and podcasts.  The group talked a bit about embeddables that allow a site to display publications in a magazine format with flipping pages and stunning graphics.  One of the best, and easiest to use formats for doing that is Issuu. Like YouTube, Issuu hosts the publication and can drive more users to your site when people search its site on keywords.

Sen then moved our discussion into the third category of add-on: Plug-ins and APIs.  Many are familiar with APIs like Twitter feeds that show up-to-the-second display of how your organization or key topics are being discussed on Twitter. Also in the API category are Facebook Connect features like showing on your site Facebook members who have “liked” your organization so that viewers can see their friends that also follow you on Facebook, or allowing visitors to sign in to your site with their Facebook logins.

The group spent a generous amount of time talking the many great attributes of Google Maps and the related APIs that nonprofits and foundations can use with it to display information in geographic form – for example showing where projects are located, the reach of an organization’s membership, or the prevalence of certain social conditions.

Sen also touched upon the Google Charts API, which generates charts and graphs instantly and can be used to dynamically display data.

He said the main plug-in features nonprofits and foundations should be aware of are those that facilitate community and social features for popular content management systems like Drupal and WordPress, two platforms that are extremely popular with foundations and nonprofits.

As is nearly always the case with PPC, the conversation continued on past the conversation leader’s presentation and brought up specific challenges and questions from assembled members.  A good deal of the conversation looped back to the idea of doing good analytics to know what your audience uses and likes and providing more of it.  Sen said, “you want to give the audience more of what they want, make it useful, accessible and shareable.”

Sen’s presentation is available online in pdf format at: www.sen-associates.com/ppc

Additionally, The Communications Network’s Bruce Trachtenberg later shared this very helpful and extensive list of “57 Things You Can Do Right Now to Improve Your Website” http://www.dhcommunications.com/2011/03/57-things-you-can-do-right-now-to-improve-your-website/ Check it out.  It has lots of great ideas.

This is the another in a long-term series of posts for Communications Network, and appeared originally on its site.

Earlier this week I had the pleasure of joining many fellow Communications Network members for a webinar in which PowerPoint was put on trial.  It was a fun format in which the presenters truly relished their roles as prosecuting and defending attorneys. Strong cases were made by both sides.

The counts laid out against PowerPoint:

•                PowerPoint has changed the way we communicate for the worse.

•                PowerPoint, by its very nature, forces presenters to create bad presentations.

•                PowerPoint should be banned from use by all doers-of-good.

Colin Rowan prosecuted with gusto.  He showed several examples of typically atrocious PowerPoint slides with huge amounts of text and confusing visuals, including the now infamous Department of Defense chart of Afghanistan strategy.  He quoted and endorsed the charge made by Edward Tufte, information design expert, that PowerPoint forces a “relentless sequentiality” that alters the nature of information relationships in addition to contributing significantly to mind-numbingly boring presentations.  He predicted (accurately) that the defense would say that it is your (the PowerPoint user) fault that presentations turn out poorly and that the software itself is programmed for ease and flexibility that simply isn’t used.  But, said Rowan, mediocrity really is built into the functionality of PowerPoint itself.

Andy Goodman took up a vigorous defense of PowerPoint.  In an apt analogy, he compared the blame assigned PowerPoint to that which is often ascribed to guns, and he basically sounded the NRA defense: “It’s not PowerPoint that kills presentations, it is people that kill presentations.” From my point of view, I think it is a perfect analogy, although not a flattering one for PowerPoint, since many webinar participants may have agreed with me that guns are inherently dangerous and ought to be available for only very specific purposes by highly trained experts.  So if PowerPoint is a weapon that can be used for good or evil, should it really be in the hands of those who have no idea how to use it?

As the trial moved forward, the prosecution claimed that the PowerPoint template – with its blah title and ever-shrinking text format – is a major part of the problem. The defense countered that you don’t have to use the template – in fact, it’s best to just start with a blank slate.  Further, use of illustrative pictures and only minimal, but engaging text makes for high impact.  Rowan objected that high quality images from sources like Getty and Corbis cost a lot of money, which puts them out of the reach of nonprofits and foundations. Not true, said Goodman.  And he named many spots to obtain low-cost or no-cost images: iStockPhoto.com, stockXchange, Liquid Library, PunchStock.com and Snapfish.com. He said Flickr’s Creative Commons section is a great source for completely free photos. He noted that the Wikipedia discussion of public domain image resources is a good place to start.

The prosecution then took up the topic of complexity, asserting that many of us work in fields and on issues that are so complex that they don’t lend themselves to the simple charts and illustrative pictures that Goodman said should be used in PowerPoint presentations.  He said, essentially, that most social policy folks are “too smart” to be able to think about good design(!?!?!).

The defense again used the prosecution’s examples of poorly designed slides to show how, with just a little bit of time, thought and logic, the very same information could be presented in exponentially more compelling ways.  He said that there are very simple techniques that are entirely learnable – even by the smartest among us.

The Q&A portion of the webinar produced many important inquiries about…

•                How to get program people to think about presentation design as they are composing so that communications people don’t get stuck trying to make sense of things later;

•                When should PowerPoint absolutely NOT be used;

•                What are the maximum number of words that should reasonably go on a slide; and

•                What other presentation tools might be of better use than PowerPoint in particular situations.

All of these questions were answered adroitly by the presentation leaders and can be heard in full on the webinar playback (to which I recommend listing!)

In the end, the jury (all the webinar participants) cast its votes and rendered its verdict on the charges against PowerPoint.

•                Has PP changed the way we communicate for the worse? – the jury found PowerPoint GUILTY.  (67% said guilty, 33% said not guilty).

•                Does PP force presenters to create bad presentations? – the jury found PowerPoint NOT GUILTY.  (17% said guilty, 83% said not guilty)

•                Should PP be banned from use by all doers-of-good? – the jury gave PowerPoint a REPRIEVE. (Only 7% said it should be banned, 93% said it should not be banned)

The jury essentially let PowerPoint off the hook, free to incite mayhem in lecture halls and panel discussions from coast to coast.  The argument that the weapon itself was not guilty of the innumerable, indescribably heinous crimes perpetrated by deadly tedious presenters over the years clearly resonated as the defense’s examples of a few heroic uses of PowerPoint to save an otherwise defenseless speaker won the day.

Knowing that PowerPoint will now be with us for the foreseeable future, we owe it to ourselves to learn how to use it responsibly*.  Not unlike the NRA’s gun safety classes, The Goodman Center can help you learn how to not shoot yourself in the foot.  Andy, I don’t know how you sleep at night.

*The presenters also named several resources for those who want to read more about how to create effective presentations, including:

“Presentation Zen” by Garr Reynolds

“Slide:Ology” by Nancy Duarte

“Beyond Bullet Points” by Cliff Atkinson“The Back Channel” by Cliff Atkinson-

“Why Bad Presentations Happen to Good Causes” FREE by Andy Goodman

The topic of the day was “How to Use Low-Cost Multi-Media to Maximal Effect,” which was chosen by members at the last PPC meeting before we went on hiatus. While many of our meetings rely simply on the experiences of our own members, this time we had an expert (even though she insisted that I not call her that) to help us think through the topic: Susan Herr, President of PhilanthroMedia.

Susan started with the core point that thinking about what is “low cost” should take a step back from the costs of relatively inexpensive items like video cameras and video editing software, and look more broadly at the many other cost elements associated with producing good multi-media.

Using the example of her work organizing the “Gorilla Engagement Squad” at The Communications Network annual conference, she talked about how inexperienced and experienced camerapersons using Flip Cams and Tweeters could use inexpensive technologies in combination to extend the reach of a conference outside those present, as well as develop relationships among those on-site. But she made clear that the real cost was not the video cameras, etc., but the human resources to plan the video capture strategy, corralling interviewers and interviewees, and putting the pieces together into a compelling story.  It takes a lot of time (and someone fairly experienced in pulling it all together). This link features some of the participants in that effort talking about how it worked: Gorilla Engagement Squad 2009 http://vimeo.com/8174186

Then she talked about Video Skype and using it to produce “Diavlogs,” which, for the uninitiated, are essentially synched video of two people doing an interview showing both on-screen (usually from separate remote locations). The point here was that doing interviews and putting them up online is exceptionally easy and a potentially great way to share ideas/information in a conversational format. But just like any other interview – it has to be interesting to the audience!  Two people talking is easy to produce, but to get people to watch, there has to be great content, on both the interview and interviewee sides.  Here is a link to some examples of diavlogs: Beyond Branding http://vimeo.com/8265230

Next, she explored an example where she herself was a one-person camera crew, working for the Drum Major Institute for Public Policy, gathering footage for an effort to get Presidential candidates focused on urban issues.  As an admittedly only “moderately” experienced camera person and interviewer, but having access to a really well-connected producer and experienced logistical coordinator, she was able to interview 10 mayors of major American cities about the challenges facing urban centers and use that footage to produce a compelling, cohesive message, which was picked up by The Nation, netroots bloggers and many well-trafficked .org sites.  The point here was how key a well-connected producer and logistical-coordinator were, not the expense of the technology and other aspects of “video production.”

Finally, she showed a new website that she has created as an example of how easy it is to do man/woman-on-the-street interviews on a Flip Cam, along with Flickr to host picture slide shows.  She also talked about the social networking aspect (in this case Facebook) of quickly building an audience when you have simple but compelling content.  This is the site (which is based on a $69 template) that she used as an example: http://www.dapperq.com/

As we opened the conversation up to the group, I added a few thoughts of my own.  First, I made the point that, while everyone wants to produce a “message” video that is witty and gets people’s attention so much so that it goes VIRAL and everyone is convinced of your point, there are lots of other possible uses of video.

This is a classic example of a “message” video (we didn’t show it at the meeting because the video didn’t show well on the projection screen): Lost Generation http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=42E2fAWM6rA&feature=player_embedded

But you can do lots of other stuff with videos and other forms of multi-media, like…

–Highlighting organizational programs showing the programs in action.  Here’s a great teaser from the Anaheim Ballet that meeting participants loved: Anaheim Ballet http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y2XmRzaCFFY&feature=player_embedded  This is obviously great for arts organizations, but you can do it with panel discussions and other events relevant to policy-related organizations.

–Using multi-media to extend the reach of conferences/panel discussions, etc. (i.e. Philanthromedia’s work on Comnet09, Public Agenda’s policy breakfast series online videos, TED Talks)  Here is one example of a Public Agenda video highlighting programming: America\’s Financial Future http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mapR6TK8_Fo&feature=player_embedded

– To tell an organization’s history (for fundraising purposes)

– To take on powerful interests, critique leaders in a witty way

This is one that participant Michael Falco of Pro-Media Communications offered: ABA Showdown http://www.youtube.com/user/ABAShowdown  It is a great example of “taking it to the streets” and then taking the street online to spread virally.  It got a lot of hits.

– “instructional” : telling people what you want them to do and how to do it, for example: The World Sucks: Help it Suck Less http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oeAUQslfFP4&feature=player_embedded

– To recruit volunteers For example: Into Darfur: A Young American\’s Journey http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_BQcSyG7bOQ&feature=player_embedded

– To sell a policy direction For example: A New Sound: Green For All http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NNszFwmSg2Y&feature=player_embedded

The conversation ranged over a lot of territory after that and people talked about their own experiences producing multi-media, including best ways to produce slideshows.  Fenton Communications’ Lisa Witter offered that the organization Duarte is amazing at producing such multi-media slide shows and maintains a blog called “Slide:ology” at http://blog.duarte.com/

She also shared this very inexpensive, provocative video called Milking Cancer http://vimeo.com/6675967 It was produced for $5,000 – which included the actors and editor.

It was noted by several participants that every organization should have a YouTube channel by now, but that Vimeo is also quite valuable because of the cleanliness of the presentation.

Lots of folks offered other examples.  I apologize that I didn’t catch who offered what.  This one is a good example of using lots of forms of media capture and putting it all together on one cohesive piece: MQ2 http://mq2.org/

The conversation ranged across many of the challenges of utilizing multi-media, but several themes kept reoccurring:

1. The importance of investing wisely in human resources, and knowing what you can do in-house and what you need to pay an expert for.

2. The ultimate fact that you need to start with interesting content or a compelling story.  You can throw lots of stuff up on a website, but if it isn’t witty or emotionally compelling, no one is going to watch it.

3. Dissemination is not to be overlooked.  We only touched on this topic, which should perhaps be revisited in a future session.  But we did talk about how the first step of getting something to “go viral” (after producing something interesting) is to start with your core audience and creating incentives for them to re-post and share through social networking sites.

I hope these notes are helpful.  They capture only a small part of what I learned from my colleagues at the session.  Another thing I learned is that I need to have someone dedicated to taking notes at the session.  Next time.