Non-Profit Tips

You should all read a truly insightful article entitled Data Mining And Predictive Analytics On Web Data Works? Nyet!

The issues are:

1. Type of Data:
2. Number of Variables
3. Multiple Primary Purposes
4. Multiple Visit Behavior
5. Missing Primary Keys, Data Silos, Lack of Holistic Datasets
6. Massive Pace of Change on the Web

As the author states:

My post (attempts) to cover any website on the planet and taking millions of clicks and visits data, mostly anonymous if not all of it, and then trying to do predictive analytics on top of that. I realize that some of the people on those sites will buy and in that way share their data and that is of some value. But traditional predictive analytics used in offline words is not the most optimal investment. For now. Things will change in due course.

Many/Most nonprofit organizations aren’t performing this type of analysis of their data. It looks to me like most organizations shouldn’t.

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WebPagesThatSuck doesn’t really focus on NPO, but here are their top 10 contenders for Worst Nonprofit Web Site of 2007. Yes, there are worse sites than these ten, but this is what appeared on WPTS.

The Worst Nonprofit Web Sites of 2007 #1-10

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An important post that brings up the issues every NPO needs to consider before moving to online apps like Google Apps, Zoho, ThinkFree, Zimbra, Microsoft Office Live, etc.

5 Things About Google Apps That Concern Me

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This week, Read/Write Web is focusing on non-profit organizations. They’ve provided a list of online tools for running a NPO.

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Web designers are under pressure to put as much content as possible above the fold. Why the pressure? It’s commonly believed that people don’t scroll. There’s an interesting article that tries to debunk this belief. The author of the article works for ClickTale, a firm that offers their customers the ability to “Record visitors’ every action as they browse your web site. Watch movies to understand visitor behavior, gain valuable insights and improve your web site.’s usability.” ClickTale knows if people are scrolling and states that 22% of a site’s visitors scroll to the bottom of the page.

My problem is that scrolling doesn’t translate into clicking, but that’s to be expected. If you put all your “good” content at the top, there isn’t that much left to click and there’s even less reason to click. It’s the proverbial Catch-22. My experience with heatmaps shows that menus start with a high number of clicks and rapidly degenerates. Content is different and I’m not sure what to say. It isn’t as straightforward.

Unfolding the fold.

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One of the nice features of Mashable is their compilations of different services, products, and articles. One of the bad features of Mashable is the slightness of the information. Their list of 30+ Mailing List Services is a perfect example. Here’s a typical entry.

AMailSender.com - Send mass emails, track their use, verify email addresses and much more.

Here are some other compilations NPOs might find helpful:

CMS Toolbox: 80+ Open Source Content Management Systems

DOWNLOAD EVERYTHING: 30+ Firefox Add-ons For Downloading Images, Videos & Files

FLICKR TOOLBOX: 100+ Tools For Flickr Addicts

Free Blog Hosts - 40+ Hosts

Freelancers’ Toolbox - 30+ Online Freelance Resources

GMAIL TOOLBOX: 60+ Tools For Gmail

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From WebPagesThatSuck: “God, it’s been a sucky year for web design. Will it be worse than 2006? Can a site be worse than the Association of International Glaucoma Societies? Well, here are the first 10 candidates — and these sites only came from January through June.”

The Worst Web Sites of 2007 #1-10

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“YSlow analyzes web pages and tells you why they’re slow based on the rules for high performance web sites. YSlow is a Firefox add-on integrated with the popular Firebug web development tool. YSlow gives you:

• Performance report card
• HTTP/HTML summary
• List of components in the page
• Tools including JSLint

“YSlow analyzes any web page and generates a grade for each rule and an overall grade. If a page can be improved, YSlow lists the specific changes to be made.”

It’s an interesting tool, but you’re going to get an “F” or no higher than a “D” unless you “Use a Content Delivery Network“, “Gzip components“, and Configure Etags.

Chronicle of Philanthropy - 64 (D) areas of concern: Use a Content Delivery Network, Add an Expires Header, Gzip components, and Configure Etags

NonProfit Tips - 63 (D) areas of concern: Use a Content Delivery Network, Add an Expires Header, Gzip components, and Configure Etags

Robert Scoble - 57 (F) areas of concern: Use a Content Delivery Network, Add an Expires Header, Gzip components, and Configure Etags

Microsoft - 47 (F) areas of concern: Make fewer HTTP requests, Use a Content Delivery Network, Add an Expires Header, Gzip components, and Configure Etags.

ASPCA - 45 (F) areas of concern: Make fewer HTTP requests, Use a Content Delivery Network, Add an Expires Header, Gzip components, Put CSS at the top, Move scripts to the bottom, and Configure Etags.

Seth Godin - 43 (F) areas of concern: Make fewer HTTP requests, Use a Content Delivery Network, Add an Expires Header, Gzip components, and Configure Etags.

Yslow (from WebProNews)

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Matt Cutts has a wonderful example of keyword stuffing that you have to see to believe. Reading the comments is always interesting.

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