It's a tiny thing, after all. A little callus on the thumb, a little path worn through the garden ... the visible tokens of the concessions we make every day to plug a malleable soul into the life its fleshy prison shambles through. Most of the time, one only notices the smallness of one's niche within the range of human experience in the face of some jarring contrast.

I caught myself in a bit of that the other day, and when I stepped back to examine it, it struck me kind of funny. We use a Jabber installation for internal IM, to which I connect along with various other services with Pidgin.

My normal m.o., to keep my screen uncluttered, had been to shut down chat windows awaiting a pending response, counting on my correspondent to pop it open when and if they answer and I need to pay attention to it again.

Jabber, as one can see, gives one's correspondent a rather brusque message that sort of thing is done. "Left the conversation"! Just imagine excusing yourself from a tiresome party encounter with a line like that. (Don't think I haven't imagined.)

What makes someone hitting your web page stick around, join an e-mail list, forward to a friend? This Slideshare presentation makes clear that design and content both play crucial roles in creating (or undermining) an appearance of credibility on a website.

The research here is much deeper and could be of particular interest for anyone involved in a redesign ("Websites lose credibility whenever they make it hard for users to accomplish their task at hand"), but here are a handful of top-level takeaways of use for any nonprofit whatever their web presence or expertise:

• Show your physical address -- proving the existence of a real organization that stands behind the site.
  
• Don't link to non-credible outside sites ... but do link to source material for your claims, showing confidence in your positions.
  
• Update often.
  
• "Small errors like misspellings and broken links hurt a site's credibility more than most people imagine."

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(Susan Finkelpearl of former DIA roommates Free Range Graphics has this week's Tuesday Tips entry on a little spring cleaning for the web site. This post is also available as a .pdf, and will be one of her handouts at the Nonprofit Tech Conference this week. We could probably stand to take note of a few of these tips ourselves ... thanks, Susan! -jrz)

Have you given your website some design love lately? Here are some fast tips for taking your site to the next level.

1. Don’t forget the fold. Just as old-fashioned newspapers have a fold line, if a web page gets too long, people will have to scroll to see all of the content on the page. When designing your home and interior pages, make sure to put important items such as news features, donate buttons, and e-newsletter sign-ups above the fold, where they can be seen easily.

2. Be a creative conformist. The web works because key site elements appear in consistent locations across all well-designed web sites. While you want your website to have a look and feel that is unique to your organization, make sure you also follow design conventions. For example, people have come to expect that search bars be placed in the top right of a webpage while logos are most often in the top left position. Nine times out of ten you should stick with these conventions. Groups like Amazon play with these conventions, but again it’s generally wisest to plunk key navigational elements where people expect to see them.

3. Make your asks contextual. Don’t let isolated "donate buttons" do all the fundraising legwork on your site. Work donation asks into areas where you are telling the most compelling stories about your accomplishments.

4. Let thy people donate! When someone does click a donate button, reward them immediately with a donate form. Don’t make them click more or wade through a lot of copy before letting them help you. In fact, it’s highly recommended that the form be the default first page of your donate section.

Our friends (and former landladies and -lords) down the way at Free Range Graphics are offering Gratitude Grant(s) for compelling progressive causes.

Free Range -- the brains behind such design/marketing brilliance as The Meatrix -- tantalizes with the prospect of:

up to $15,000 worth of our communications services from our menu of core offerings: strategic communications consulting, organizational identity, print design, web design and Flash animation.

Need to rally activists around an issue or capture critical media attention? Modernize your logo? Chart out an online fundraising strategy? As long as you have a concrete goal and a mission that makes a positive difference for our planet and its people, we encourage you to apply!

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