 Welcome, thank you for joining us. I am thrilled to be back and here with Julia Patrick for another show of the nonprofit show, our episode I should say. And today we have Heather Locke with us. Heather is the CEO, Chief Support Officer with Hammersmith Support. And I am thrilled to have Heather with us today to share with us about what top web trends we should know for our nonprofit. So I'm excited to have Heather, but before we dive into the deep conversation that we are about to have, I of course want to make sure that you know that Julia Patrick is here. Julia is the CEO of the American Nonprofit Academy. I'm Jarrett Ransom, your nonprofit nerd and CEO of the Raven Group. We of course are so thrilled to have the continued support from our presenting sponsors. You can see them right in front of you on the screen, but I will go ahead and share them with you. Thank you to Blumerang, to American Nonprofit Academy, fundraising academy, nonprofit nerd, your part-time controller, the nonprofit Atlas, nonprofit thought leader, as well as staffing boutique. Please check out these companies because they are here to help you and your nonprofit do more good throughout your community. So please do check them out. And if you've missed any of our almost 500 episodes, you can find them here on Roku, YouTube TV, Fire TV, Vimeo. And of course, we're now in podcast platform. So wherever you stream your podcast, you can find the nonprofit show. And again, thanks to our presenting sponsors that keep this show going and growing. And we are thrilled to have Heather with us today. Again, Heather Locke is the CEO at Hammersmith Support. Welcome, Heather. Thank you for having me. Well, I am thrilled. You and I have connected on a couple of different occasions that I know are connected on LinkedIn and we've had a one-on-one conversation via virtual conference not too long ago. So let's start off. Tell us who are you? What is it you do, you and your team, of course, with Heather Hammersmith? Although, Heather Smith would be really good too. I never thought about that. That is a good idea. Yeah, tell us about your group. Sure. So Hammersmith Support is a full-service web development company. We do design, development, hosting, and maintenance for WordPress websites. So not only do we do design and development, we work with our clients under our support packages to proactively maintain and keep their site evolving. We don't see a website as a static document. It should be always changing and always evolving and staying up to date. Good. I love that you said that because so much, I think so many times, there's so many of us in the nonprofit sector that are like, whoo, tick the box. We got the website done. And then we don't go back to it. Maybe, you know, change the one minor thing and that's just such a big problem. And I think that's why we're so excited, Heather, to have you on to talk about what and how and why we need to really be investing in this. So starting off with website micro interactions, what does that mean? It means any sort of feedback you can give the user. So if you hover over a button or you could have an interaction there or as you scroll for something to build on or any kind of just think of it as any sort of feedback that keeps the user engaged. And I will say there's a fine line. I personally am not a fan of too much motion on the page, but just a little bit so that they know it gives confidence in that the site's reacting that it's doing what it's supposed to do. They're getting feedback that they're interacting and it's a seeing success. And so hopefully helping to keep them engaged. Yeah. I love that and I love the concept, but you're right. There's a fine line because I will speak for myself if there's too much pop-ups or are different interactions. I'm like, there's too much noise. And Julie and I talk about this often about how much noise is in the world right now, not just our sector, but really the world. But I'm curious to this point when it comes to these micro interactions, can you analyze the traffic? Like, is that something that you can quantify the success of? Well, the very specific interactions, I mean, you can. It's a lot of integration to really do that, but it really should just be subtle and classy, I would say. Just so that as you are moving through the site, you're feeling the user is feeling engaged and you keep them on the site, you keep them moving forward to whatever your conversion goal may be. Yeah, perfect. I love that you say conversion goal and that you're specifying that. I think that is super cool. Before we go on to our next question for you, can you talk a little bit more about that? Because I feel maybe I'm speaking for myself, but I think a lot of times I'm like worried about making it pretty and having it function and not really setting demands or parameters for how it's going to really work. So talk to us about setting that goal. That's super cool. So when we work with clients, one of the first questions we ask, like if we're working on the homepage is, what do you want someone to do on this page? What is the number one thing? And that is a question you can ask on every page of your site. And in some cases, it may be you just want them to get an overview of what you do or click into one category that might interest them for them to learn more. And that would be kind of like a passive call to action. But for the homepage specifically and some of the more maybe your donate page, for example, you want those calls to action to be very strong and join our fight, donate now, help us continue. Anything that's more action-based, donate today. And if you think about, as you're going through your site on each page, what is the number one thing that I want someone to do on this page? Then that will help you figure out what your conversion goals are for each page. And then really focus your attention on measuring those. And then if you measure that versus your traffic, you can see how successful you're being. I love that. That is like, I don't know what, Jared, for me, that's like, yeah, the light bulb just went off. You know, I've been involved with enough conversations and I feel, Heather, that we focus on the website as a whole and not each individual page. And to say what is the purpose in the intention of this page and to really chart out the course based off of these individual pages that make up the sum, of course, of the website. And so that was a huge, as Julie would say, here on Fire Moment. Well, especially with a lot of nonprofits, they have different programs and different services. And it's easy to, on the homepage, just in and date with too much information instead of really guiding the user. Well, let's talk about guiding in that direction because I'm curious what tips you might share with us about this design direction. You know, we have here simplicity, calming, easy navigation. Already that brings me anxiety because I think of so many websites that do not provide that, right? So it's like, it's not simple. It's not calming and it's not often easy. So what are the design directions that you advise? Well, one trend I've been seeing over the last couple of years is really just making it more simple. So even just a few years ago, you would go to most websites, there'd be a scrolling banner with five different messages screaming at you. But I really advise my clients to pick one main message in that main banner because if you think about how we use a website and a lot of times we're on our phones or even an iPad and your finger just automatically goes to start swiping. And so they're not staying there to read those messages. So your best chance is to really have a strong clear message as the very first thing they read. And I would say another good test I use for just seeing if it's easy to interpret the content and that the page makes sense. If you can scroll down the page and just read the headers and understand the overall of what the page is about, then that's a sign of success. Like if you can get this gist of the overall page just by reading the headers, you're on the right track. I do too, and I'm curious how their QR codes have made a comeback, right? They've really made a comeback. And as you mentioned this mobile platform and having the simplicity, so often we are driven to the website now from our phone by taking a photo or scanning over that QR code. So great feedback there and having those headlines, I think as you said, it's golden. And that's not only good for the user, it's also good for SEO because when Google scans the website as a bot crawling it, it is looking for what the header tags are and they have priorities. There's like a header one tag and a header two tag. So by reading the priority of the header tag, Google can get a sense for the structure of the page and what is the important content on that page and hopefully being helping you to connect with relevant searches that way as well. Yeah, I love that you said that. I've never heard anyone talk about that and linking those two together. Cause I always think of like that header tag is almost more of a design thing so that all of the headers have the same characteristics and all of that. But I think that's a really cool thing to be thinking about. Okay, so now I wanna redo our website which I've wanted to do for a long time but I'm really curious about this because this is something that you bring up that again, another design directive but positivity and whimsy, explain that, explain that. Well, this is when a good copywriter is helpful as well but I just think in the world we've all been through a rough couple of years and I just feel like design trends and from what I'm reading online that really going more towards optimism and fun is definitely hot right now. So light colors, light color palettes mean you don't see dark websites anymore give a sense of open space and optimism. So also space in general just spacing the elements out on the page and this also goes to the mobile aspects as well because when it compresses to mobile you still want it to be readable and have a nice flow from a spacing perspective. And then anytime you can use personality this can help communicate your core values or your culture and it might be more humorous for some it might be more serious for others but anywhere you can make it a little bit more specific to your organization and this can be done in your calls to action. It can be done through the copy and the photos. It seems to me like I'm seeing more graphics and that is everything from literally from stick figures to more graphically oriented representations of clients and donors. And it's just very interesting because for so long everybody was really pushed to develop that archive or library of images of stock images so that you could always put them up on your website and we would spend a lot of time talking about you can't show your clients you might have HIPAA regulations you have to be really careful about security and all this and it's just really an interesting confluence of design towards those more graphic elements. Well, graphic elements are great because you don't show race or gender necessarily when you're showing graphic elements they're universal symbols in a lot of situations. I'm a big fan of custom photography that shows who you actually are, what is your, what it looks like, where you work, what are the projects look like? And I think that is a real separator. As far as stock photography, I mean, the problem is it's just everywhere and so it's not really a differentiator. So you can differentiate yourself with more with graphics and custom photography. So let me ask you a follow-up question to the custom photography. How often would you recommend he do that? Is this an annual investment because many nonprofits are considering their budget moving forward? So I'm curious, Heather, what you would advise when it comes to this custom photography? That's hard because it does depend on your marketing plan and the cadence of your events and your programs but I would say at a minimum once a year there are a lot of photographers now that are offering even like monthly packages to keep your content fresh. And so that would be a good option for people. That is brilliant. It makes me think of, we've talked a lot before about the subscription model, Julia, and how the nonprofit sector is moving into the subscription model in so many ways but this content photography makes me think of that, Heather, in particular to update our photos. Do we include the masks? And that was a big thing. I remember in the news, and it would say these photos were taken pre-pandemic and so do we include masks in our website or do we take them down and just having that monthly opportunity, as you said, would be great but it might not be in everyone's budget. I think for marketing photos, hopefully we can remove the mask and photos now but I mean, again, I think that we want to build optimism and I don't think master that. I think you're right. Yeah, I think we're ready to show our faces, show all emotions, moving into that. Let's talk a little bit more about how we might include inclusivity, right? As we move into this age where inclusiveness is a big topic and that is something too that has really come to the surface over the last couple of years. So what does this look like by way of our website? So I think we kind of touched on it with photography and graphics a bit. I think this does go to copy as well and making sure the copy is up to date with the times. And written so that it is inclusive, a lot of it has to do with the words that are being used and the visuals. So it all has to work together. I would say the other part of it is making the website accessible. So this could be screen readers, it could be in how the contrast of color is on the screen for people with site issues. So making the site very usable and from an accessibility standpoint, making sure it's accessible to different accessibility tools. So screen readers and visual. And what about having the photo on the website and then that caption? So describing what's in the photo, how do we navigate that? And I'm curious if there's like an SEO trick in there too. There isn't a SEO trick there, you can embed a lot of information within the photo metadata. So as far as the caption and the caption is typically what comes under the photo and there's also a alt tag, which is what the photo is. So if alt stands for alternate, so if you don't see the photo, what is the alternate text you should see? So you think about that when you put in that alt text. So it could say, picture of kids on a playground or it could say, this is an icon representing something like that. So I mean, just think about if that photo wasn't there, what should the visual reference be for that? And then the caption would be like what's below it if you're naming the people in the photo from left to right, that type of thing. There's also a longer description you can add and that's where you can embed some SEO data for your organization. And the alt text and the description data don't necessarily show on screen, but they show if you are using an accessibility tool on your browser and they show when Google reads the site. Nice. Awesome. Okay, believe it or not, we don't have much time left. Well, through our time together, I think Jared and I have been so on about the digital component of life in the nonprofit sector as we communicate with our donors, our clients and our stakeholders. So we always have a lot of questions around this, but I'm really interested in this program that you have, the next pro bono nonprofit. And this is a really exciting thing. We don't often have folks that get to come on to the nonprofit show and actually talk about how they're gonna give back to our sector in this way. So talk to us about this. So giving back is one of our core values and our support. This is our time, our energies and also our money. So each year we choose a pro bono client to be our nonprofit client of the year. And we accept applications, we're accepting them right now for about another week. And nonprofits can apply and then we will pick, six or seven of those to interview and then choose our client after that. And so it's for a full year of website maintenance and support. This includes our monthly service where you keep your site up to date and really proactively managed. And it also includes 24 hours for new developments. So could be some redesign, could be some new pages, could be used for whatever we see the need to be for that. And it has to be. This is our third year. And it has to be WordPress, correct? It does have to be WordPress site, yes. And the nonprofit, is there a certain geography base for application and consideration, Heather, or is it open? We are accepting applications nationwide. So anyone can apply. So exciting. That is a tremendous offer. And as we started today's episode and you sharing, Heather, the website should be a constant evolution. And to have the support is phenomenal. I can think already of so many of my clients that would benefit from this package and having the opportunity to do this. So for those of you listening or if you're watching the recording, wanna make sure that you're mindful of your deadline here. It's coming up soon, but the application is not strenuous. So there's no reason why you can't do it. It's literally a couple of questions. And so it's very doable. It's not something that you have to set off a large chunk of your time. Heather and your team, you've made this very accessible, very simplified, which I love. I think, you know, often too many times we're jumping through hoops and then we're gonna light that hoop on fire and then there's a ledge and there's just all these things that we have to consider and you have not put these obstacles in the way. So thank you for that. You're welcome. You know, Heather, I'm really interested when we look at something like this, you know, a good partnership means it's going both ways. It's not only a business that is going to offer an opportunity like this, but it also requires somebody to step up and say, okay, we're going to be an active partner in something like this. My question to you is where do those people come from? Is this the marketing team? I mean, a lot of nonprofits aren't gonna have their own web dev department. So who is the profile of that person or team that would actually get to interact with somebody like Hammersmith's support? Well, you are correct. And that's one of the things we look for when we interview is that they will be a partner with us because it takes, we need content, we need direction, we need to understand the objectives and the goals. We need someone that's going to be actively involved. And typically it does fall on the marketing director, marketing manager to kind of lead that from the client's perspective. In smaller nonprofits, it could even be the executive director. So whoever is kind of tasked with the website, that is who we will partner with in this. Okay, so you're really looking for somebody that can journey with you because it's a lot of heavy lifting. You don't just like flip the switch and everything's good to go. I mean, I think sometimes we forget, we just think, oh, a website's gonna be there and we can turn that over to the techies. But what I hear you saying is you really need to come to the table with an interactive kind of mentality or mindset, right? Absolutely. So last year our pro bono client was Phoenix Center for the Arts. We were able to redo their entire website, but that's because they were a very active partner and they helped us figure out what content was staying and going and helped us even integrate some of the content. So it was very collaborative and we made the most of the hours available to them. And we love it when we can make a bigger impact. And so that's what we're looking for. What about by way of timeline? So someone will be the recipient of this year's award in partnership with you, Heather. You know, when it looks like, I don't know if it's an overhaul of the website or just refresh, what does that timeline look like? So the person is awarded or the organization is awarded. When do we as the general public start to see the fruits of your partnership labor? Good question. I would say it's different depending on what the needs and goals are for the client. So with Phoenix Center for the Arts, it was ended up being quite a large project. We launched it in January. The term of the contract is basically April through March. So during that time, we were managing keeping their old site updated while simultaneously helping them build their new site. So it depends on kind of what the overall needs are. If there's a lot of needs that are really clear cut and easy to integrate, then we can start to do those right away if it's a larger project and we need to tackle it in a different fashion then we do that. Great, I love that. Well, let's pull up Heather's information because I'm sure there's many people chomping at the bits. They might have even left the episode to go ahead and apply. So Heather, thank you, CEO, Chief Support Officer with Hammersmith Support. And I have to share, because you're very engaged in the Metro Phoenix community as well as Nashville. Is that correct? That is correct. I love that. Well, thank you. You and your team do such amazing work. We are grateful to have your skilled expertise in the sector. Times have changed a lot over the last couple of years. I've been saying, we're due for a shake-up and I think our websites are seeing that for sure. That's where we need to start. That's where we need to start, absolutely. Oh my gosh. The link for the pro bono application is hammersmithsupport slash pro bono. Great. It couldn't be simpler. Hey, well, everybody, thanks so much for joining Jarrett and I today. We've had a great deal of fun with our guest today, Heather Locke, talking about things that whether you're involved in pursuing this great grant opportunity or not, thank you so much for sharing your wisdom with us today. I learned a lot and I think it helps us get closer to that ability to make this tool really work for us as a sector. So thank you, thank you so much. Hey, we wanna make sure that we thank all of our presenting sponsors, Blumerang, American Nonprofit Academy, your part-time controller, the Nonprofit Nerd Fundraising Academy, the Nonprofit Atlas, Nonprofit.Leader and Staffing Boutique without these valiant warriors that help us support the nonprofit show. We would not be here. Okay, Ms. Jarrett, I have a feeling that we have hit that 500th episode mark or we're about to, I mean, I don't know. We have to check. We have to check, absolutely. I'm so excited our presenting sponsors have allowed us as well as our many, many guests like Heather today. I was so excited, you know, we started this on a whim March of 2020, thinking it would last two weeks. Here we are, three years, 500 episodes, podcasts, sponsors, really excited. So we will have to check and do the math. It's terrible. I mean, I think it is around this time, but yeah, but we'll get back to everybody on that because dang it, dang it, we should know, right? I mean, I'm horrified that we don't, but it is, we're up there pretty close. And so again, thank you to everyone that has been here to support us and to join in with us. As we like to end every episode, we want to remind you and I think ourselves, stay well, so you can do well.