There are certain rules to follow when preparing material for a website and the first one is to keep it short.

Website readers have a much shorter attention span then those who read print and that is because website readers are generally after fast information.  Count on no more than seven seconds per page view – if what the visitor is looking for is not readily apparent, they will be gone.

What is on a page must be to the point since website users scan more than they read.  Keep your paragraphs short and punchy with hyperlinks to more information on the subject if the visitor needs it.

The information on each page should use the inverted pyramid concept.  This places the most important information at the top of the page and it is not unlike the five W’s (Who, What, Why, Where and When) used by journalists.

Your writing should be in active voice not passive.  A passive statement would be “various graphic design layouts are being reviewed”.  The active voice would be “we are reviewing various graphic design layouts”.  Passive writing is bureaucratic, tedious and boring.

Since you want visitors to think of your site as a source of good information, it is important to build their confidence by allowing them to judge the accuracy of your material by citing sources whenever possible.

So much for content.  Now some style tips.

First, because word processing software adds bad format coding to website pages, material prepared on say, Word should be pasted into Notepad to remove the formatting first.  The exception to this of course would be if the author is working in a CMS (Content Management System) environment that automatically defines formatting buy using CSS (Cascading Style Sheets).

Second, the use of a bulleted list of facts after a short sentence is an effective way to grab attention and to make an impact.

Finally, many websites do not use hyperlinks properly.  Allowing visitors to find more information on your website or off-site (be sure off-site links open in a new window!), is important.  Do not use “click here” but rather actually describe the linked content as in “For more information, read our 2010 List of Best Practices”

Applying these techniques to your website writing will result in a better experience for visitors and encourage them to return.

“I can remember when I was first on a board and went to my first board meeting.  My book was all messed up because I had been writing things all over it.  I looked around the room and saw a bunch of pristine books and remember thinking, ‘I wonder if I’ll ever be able to get to the point where they are – where they can just jeep all those things in their heads.’  What I learned was that they hadn’t read the briefs.  So reading the materials and having knowledge of the material so that you have the ability to express an opinion on it are two of the most important things.  Silent board members aren’t terribly useful.”

Unfortunately, too many members of voluntary association boards never think about the organization between meetings and many more attend without having looked at the material provided by staff and others.  This is a waste of staff time and resources and an insult to others who have done so.

Carole Bearde is a not-for-profit consultant with some 25 years of experience in senior program positions including six years as the executive vice-president of the The McKnight Foundation, a Minnesota family foundation with assets of over $2 billion dollars.  In an article written in Nonprofit Director, she is quoted as saying:

Effective boards involve three main elements:

1.      Information

Boards work best when the directors come to board meetings well informed because staff have provided them with the tools they need to engage in meaningful and generative discussions.

2.      Questions

Effective boards ask insightful questions during their meetings, questions that are based on the information they have received in advance, filtered through the context of each board member’s experience.

3.      Decisions

Effective boards make decisions. The members are energized by the nature of the discussions and welcome the opportunity to contribute their knowledge, experience, and expertise to the deliberative process.

But, she says, information, questions, and decisions are not enough. Boards will never be effective unless the people they’re made up of are effective.

It begins with engagement, in her view. “Board members who are engaged in an organization’s work outside of the formal board meetings can participate in those meetings in a much more informed way,” she says.

Making this happen is a shared responsibility, she adds. “It starts with the executive director or staff leadership, but it’s also incumbent on the board member to let staff leadership know how much they can be engaged, what aspects of the organization’s work interests them, and how they think they can contribute to advance the organization’s mission.”

We have all served as members of not-for-profit boards – local and national associations, libraries and so on and we all have experienced the frustration of being at a meeting with others who are boringly unprepared.

What kind of board member are you?  Are you really interested in the work that needs to be done or are you simply there at your convenience for the glory and prestige.  If such is the case, you are doing the organization a great disservice.

Most of us have email service with standard POP3 protocol, which sends usernames and passwords in the clear.  Anyone with the ability to “listen in” can easily retrieve this information and read your mail.  Not only do governments do this (see below), but so do hackers.  This can be resolved by using email encryption.  You can read more here http://bit.ly/cyCmys

A few of us still have an older fax machine connected to an open telephone line.  Transmitting credit card and other confidential information with this equipment is simply courting trouble since not only can a paper fax be sent to the wrong recipient in error but the transmission itself can be hacked.   Information of how to secure your fax machine can be found here http://bit.ly/8XkP75

SSL stands of Secure Socket Layer protocol that secures transactions between web servers and your browser.  The protocol uses a third party call a Certificate Authority.  You can tell that you are on a secure website when you see https:// in your browser address bar.   Here is a good explanation of how it works: http://bit.ly/bCwpfn

Transferring confidential information and files using FTP (File Transfer Protocol) can also be very insecure if done through your browser.  Confidential information should be transferred using secure FTP connections with encryption.  Here is a brief explanation http://bit.ly/ckrX0K

Websites that sell products not only use a secure site to accept your credit card and other confidential information but they also use a merchant service like PayPal to ensure that this information is not transmitted in the clear but rather is heavily encrypted as processing takes place.

And last but not least is cloud computing – a new concept in cyberspace and how secure is that?   http://bit.ly/crj9b3

Most people are not aware of the surveillance system established in 1948 by the US National Security Agency (NSA) called Echelon.  This global spy network captures and analyzes virtually every phone call, fax, and email message sent anywhere in the world.  Canada is a member of this consortium together with England, New Zealand and Australia and to think that Echelon is the only information-gathering network of its kind in the world would be naïve.

For associations that need to transmit confidential and private information of any nature over the Internet, attention must be paid to ensure that the best level of security is applied to those transmissions while accepting the fact that nothing can ever be fully secure all of the time.  Application of an intelligent degree of risk management is the key as this final article explains http://bit.ly/9ab3jy

Proper website development starts by an in-depth discussion with the owner about why they want one and what they wish to achieve.  From this comes orderly content and creation of a site map

If the developer has little or no business experience then the final product will most certainly not come close to what the website owner really wants.  Developers need to be able to talk to website owners at or close to their level of business so that there is a very clear understanding of the target audience and desired outcomes.

Website development is not a matter of simply throwing a few pictures and text on a page.  Developers must be familiar with good design principles and the effect of colour on readability.  They also must be able to write well.

It is very rare that one person alone can build an effective website  because graphic design and proper HTML/CSS coding are unique talents.

The ideal situation is one where a project manager experienced in design, communications and business deals with the website owner and supervises a graphic designer and a website code expert.

An attractive and professional website is as important as a telephone to business and organizations and contrary to popular belief that product need not be expensive.  If you are a business owner and only need a small web presence, a development fee of less than $1,000 and annual fixed costs of some $400 is not an unreasonable investment.

“Leadership” by both association volunteers and staff must be strong, on-going and operate within clearly defined terms of reference that draw a line between policy and operations.

It is not the responsibility of senior staff to determine policy nor is it the responsibility of volunteers to dictate operations.  Good association support staff carry information to volunteers that might affect the organization.  Good volunteers assess that information and if needed, set policy that will cater to the situation through operations carried out by staff in accordance with that policy.

All too often senior staff believe that they “are” the organization and that is a certain way to destroy it.  Similarly, volunteers who interfere with the operations of the organization demoralize staff and cause operational havoc.

The bottom line is that if association staff cannot or will not manage operations efficiently and within budget to achieve policy objectives established by the volunteers then they need to be replaced.