A organization’s website is a permanent promotion and advertisement that is available 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year.  Websites can be as big or as small as the organization wants to make them, and offer as much—or as little—information as the organization wants to offer.
A organization’s website is the window the world can use to look in on it; a display case to feature whatever it is the organization wants to tell the world about. It is important for a organization to know just what the public sees there, and how what it sees can be interpreted—or misinterpreted. In most cases, your website is the only “view” a action sponsor/beneficiary will ever have of your actual organization. Unless they come to your office and take a tour, they will never see what things look like or what is actually going on.
A web site is a powerful tool; one that organizations are just now beginning to understand how to use effectively. This is especially true in terms of internal and external communication.

Technical jargon.

Even though this is not a lesson about web design technology, there are a number of words and terms you do have to be at least a little bit familiar with in order to talk to the technical people who create and run web pages. The focus is on web design as a communication tool, so we do have to at least introduce you to some of the technical terms that are used. There are numerous books on the subject. Here are some basic terms:

• Application – A program like word processing, a database, spreadsheet, etc.

• ASCII – American Standard Code for Information Interchange. This computer code represents all the upper and lower-case letters in the Latin alphabet, as well as numbers, punctuation, and other commonly used symbols.

• @ – This is the “at” symbol, and is part of every e-mail address. It separates the “user” from the “domain” and says that the user is “at” that domain.

• Bandwidth – If you think of the Internet as a super highway, your bandwidth tells you how wide your access to it is. Is it one lane? Two? Six? 16? The “wider” your access, the more quickly information moves.

• Bookmark – Web browsers “bookmark” a web page by saving it in a file on your computer that lists the URL. To get back to a page you open that file and click on it. This saves people the trouble of memorizing and retyping the URL.

• Broadband – These are high-speed, high-capacity transmission lines that have more “bandwidth” which means information—including audio and video files—loads and moves more quickly.

• Browser – The computer program used to “surf” or “browse” the web.

• HTML – HyperText Markup Language. These symbols, or codes, tell the computer how to display something—size, color, location, etc.

• http – The HyperText Transfer Protocol is used to move files across the Internet.

• Hyperlink or Link – Click your mouse on a “link”—it is usually a different color than the rest of the page—and it will take you do a different place on the page or on the web.

• Hypermedia – These are links that take a user to sound, graphics, or video files.

• Server – The host computer where your web pages are stored, and that people access to see your web site.

• URL – Universal Resource Indication. That is your web address. For example, the URL for Google, a search engine, is http://www.google.com/

• Web Designer – The person responsible for the overall “look” and “feel” of the web site, much like a building’s architect.

• Web Developer – The expert who takes plans for a site and makes them happen.

• Web Page – This can mean different things to different people; what you can see on one computer screen without changing to a new “page.” It can also refer to the contents of a single HTML file, or to all the “screens” or “pages” at one site.

• Webmaster – The person in charge of the page once it is up and running, and the one to contact if you have any questions about anything anywhere on the system.

• www – The World Wide Web           

The Reasons for the Site Are : ..

Every organization seems to have a web site, but not every organization uses its site the same way. By their very nature, web sites are for communication. What, however, are the various web sites trying to communicate? What messages are they sending?

Before you decide what message or messages you want to send, see what other people—both in your field and out of it—are doing.

• Is it an informational site? Does it explain what the organization is, what they do or make, and go into detailed descriptions of all the services and product lines?

• Do they use it for direct interaction to stakeholders and beneficiaries? Is it possible to order a service online? 

• Is it designed to create a “good” impression of the organization? Does it highlight the organization and its employees in terms of its professional accomplishments and developments? 

• Does the site feature the people who make up the organization? If so, does it limit itself to top management, or are employees also included?

• Is it aimed only at people who use the organization services?

• Do people have to be experts, or at least extremely familiar, with what the organization does in order to understand the information on its web site or is it written so that anyone who can read can figure it out?

• Does it contain information—news releases—about what the organization is doing?

Is It A Bicycle Or A Limousine?

Some web sites have video clips complete with stereo soundtracks that run as an introduction when you first click on to the page. Others open up on the organizational logo and name and nothing more.

There can also be high resolution photographs, bright pulsating colors, 3-dimensional effects, complex graphics that move across the screen as you read them, and “pop-up windows” that open to make “special announcements.” Or there can be simple black-and-white line drawings.

At some sites you can scroll down or across the page to see more information, while at other sites a page fills the screen, and the only way to see more is to go to the next screen/page.

While some organizations have a multitude of buttons to click on, or arrows to follow, that will let you go anywhere on the site at any time, other sites are designed so that you can only see the various pages in a specific order.

Some organizations give you an option of looking at a text-only version of the page, with no graphics whatsoever.

Someone has to decide what a web page will look like, the impression it will create, and how much people can see or do on it. Each of those decisions leaves an impression on the person viewing it, and helps create the page’s ambience.

With so many options to choose from, how do you decide what to do?

Decisions

While it is obviously important to decide what your site will be like, you also have to spend some time thinking about the computing power of the people who might access it. Does your site take into account the bandwidth of the receiver?

Some sites look great when received at broadband speeds. But if the receiver’s window on the web is a 56 K modem—or less—much of the design and graphics, and even many of its features may be lost. Not everyone can receive and play audio or video clips, or even simple animation. The “bells and whistles” that festoon your site are effective only when others can see, hear, and appreciate them.

If you have a “heavy” site, the download time will be a lot longer for someone with limited bandwidth capacity, and this can frustrate people, and even get some of them to hit the “stop” button and move on to another site that is a bit more user-friendly.

One option is to provide a “text” version of the site: all the information without the graphics.

Web designers deal with this sort of problem on a regular basis, and know that there are solutions. But as technology advances, both the problems and solutions change quickly. Technology advances so quickly that the situations that generated many of  today’s web-related design and bandwidth problems didn’t even exist a year or, in many cases, six months ago.

 You will not find those solutions, however, until you accept the fact that there probably are web-page problems you have to look at.

Prioritize:

           Have your committee rank all the suggested mission statement elements in order of importance.

           It might be helpful to see which of these elements match those in your organization’s primary mission statement, or those of any of its subsidiaries or departments.

Set the length:

           Determine how long the web site’s mission statement should be. As a rule, most mission statements are somewhere between 25 and 75 words. Some people believe that it should be short enough to fit on one side of a T-shirt.

Vote:

           Vote on which ones should be part of the final mission statement.

Write it:

           Working alone or as a group, write the actual mission statement. It might be helpful to bring in a facilitator who will not be part of the writing process, and who was not part of the survey or selection process. The facilitator should be a disinterested party who will make sure that everyone’s suggestions are heard and treated fairly.

           Some of the elements could wind up being dropped because of length.

           Pass the final draft on to whoever will make the final decision.

Shorten it:

           Go beyond your initial mandate and see if the proposed statement can be shorted to 10 words or less that can be used as a motto or banner.