Alex White » website

Five reasons your union should fix its website before getting onto social media

Alex — Sat, 03 Dec 2011 02:37:24 +0000

More and more unions are starting up Facebook and Twitter accounts, but the fact is that your union’s website is much more important than all your social media combined.

In Australia, there are more people using social media than ever, but when it comes to actually interacting with your union in a meaningful way (such as joining, volunteering, contacting an organiser) the first thing they will do is visit your website, not your Facebook page.

With many unions still having outdated websites, now is the time to invest in a refresh. Afterall, websites are the central hub for all online campaigning.

Here are five reasons why you should fix your union’s website before it gets onto social media:

1. Branding

Having a fresh, modern website lets you ensure that the branding is consistent and professional. It means you can directly customise the user experience to support the goals of your union. Whereas Facebook and Twitter have strict limitations on how pages look, your own website means that visitors to your site get an experience that your union designs.

2. Control

When you control your own union website, you have complete jurisdiction over its code, hosting environment, page count, content, plug-ins and more. This means that you have control to make any necessary changes, as well as major improvements for specific campaigns. With Facebook and Twitter, you can only tweak minor graphics, but not the underlying code.

3. Content

Content is important for so many reasons — engagement, SEO and social to name a few — so putting your content on your website benefits you rather than a third-party platform. Creating content about your union, its campaigns and members, then putting it on Facebook does nothing to help your own site. Putting that same compelling content on your site increases the likelihood that people will share it on their social networks. Having your own website means that you have control over your content — third party sites like Facebook always have the risk that it will be deleted or lost.

4. Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)

Talking about SEO, many unions have asked me “how can we drive traffic to our site?” If garnering lots of visitors to your site is a priority, then having control over your own union website is essential. Having a new, modern website that meets contemporary standards will mean that your content is more likely to have good search engine results. When properly coded and managed, your union’s website delivers natural and sustaining search results (due to search engine optimisation) that drive traffic to the exact pages on your site where you want visitors to be.

5. Analytics

Unions are used to making data-driven decisions on organising, recruitment and finances. It’s time to step up to online analytics, and at the moment you get the best analytics from website tools. Most social networking analytics are still rather rudimentary, with the more in-depth tools costing a small fortune. Free analytics tools for websites, like Google Analytics, given you world-class tools to examine your website and your online campaigning.

UPDATE: A Bonus 6th Reason: Joining

No matter how whiz-bang your Facebook or Twitter page is, there are only two ways potential members can join your union: using a hard-copy membership form and on your website. If your union’s website doesn’t have a page for potential members to join, then stop reading this blog and go and set one up right now. Having a page to join up new members is really one of the most important functions that your website can have. The good news is that you can customise and tweak your join page to make it more effective. It’s generally much harder to do the same for hard-copy membership forms (although it is possible).

Now, I’m not suggesting you drop social media. I’m advocating that your union should invest in a quality, professional and modern website that acts as the central portal to your other online presences and tools — including email, social networking, mobile and so on.

New free e-book: Online Campaigning for Unions

Alex — Thu, 17 Nov 2011 01:48:10 +0000

I am releasing my third free e-book, which compiles my articles on campaign websites, online design and effective Internet campaigining.

This e-book, Online Campaigning: A primer for unions shows you how to get the most from Web-based communication and campaings for your union.

By campaigning online, you can speak directly to your members, supporters and potential members, establish personal links, and reach targeted groups with specifically tailored messages at a fraction of the cost of traditional campaigns.

This e-book includes step-by-step advice for building campaign websites from scratch, how to create compelling messages, and drive your site’s visitors to take campaign actions. Also included are several case-studies and real-world examples of how other unions and progressive organisations have professionalised their online campaigning.

In this free 60 page e-book, you will find:

How to make a world-class campaign website for your union, from start to finish
Advice on how to deal with critical comments
Discussion on the pros and cons of different content management systems
Some of the latest usability research for websites

To download this free e-book, you must subscribe to my mailing list - an email link to the e-book will be sent to you.

I hope you find this e-book useful. If you do, please follow me on Twitter.

If you have already subscribed to my email list, you should receive an email from me with a direct link to the download page.

Thoughts on website development for unions

Alex — Sun, 10 Apr 2011 03:45:11 +0000

I’ve helped a few groups with setting up their websites over the last year or two – and set up many more for work. These have mostly been for specific campaigns or highly focused purposes – campaign sites.

Recently, I’ve had reason to reflect on a common challenge that I face when talking about websites with unions.

What do you want your website to do?

What is its purpose? What is it’s goal? Why do you need this website.

Just like Facebook pages, I find there is often a gut reaction to say “we need a website” (or “we need a Facebook page”) for X campaign, without asking important questions before hand.

If you’re redesigning your main website – which many union are doing – it’s probably a good idea to have a close look at the Google Analytics of your current/old site. What were the main search terms that visitors used to reach your site? What were the most visited pages? Chances are, “contact details” or “contact page” will be high on the list.

A site-map is a useful tool to think about what you want your union website to do.

Without thinking about what you want your website to achieve, it is unlikely that it will be a successful website. Who is the website for? If the main audience for the site is the union’s secretary, then perhaps its worth having a conversation with him or her as to whether a website is appropriate or worth the time and money. Remember, your union secretary is not a web designer.

Most union websites – especially campaign sites – can’t be for everyone (members, non-members, media, politicians, community, employers, supporters, union staff, Facebook users, Youtube viewers, etc). They need to have a primary audience, or a primary group of visitors, in mind. (Which is not to say you can’t have secondary audiences.)

Having a simple, concrete goal

In my view, union websites (and the websites of other progressive campaigns) need to do something or achieve something in the real world. However, your website should have a simple goal that can be explained in concrete terms and be easily measured. A site without a simple, concrete goal is one that will struggle to succeed at anything.

Some campaign sites I’ve set up and seen other unions create are ones that are solely for collecting the emails of campaign supporters. Sites that focus on this kind activity are typically more effective than campaign sites that seek to do everything all at once. Getting your supporters’ emails is a great goal for your website – it is measurable, concrete and simple. Email is afterall, still the “killer app” of online campaigning.

Other sites may want supporters to “send an email” to a target – a boss, company, politician, foreign government, etc. As Eric Lee has pointed out, unless you get real bulk in the number of emails sent, this approach can risk exposing the lack of support your campaign has, rather than its strength. Of course, this kind of goal is also simple, concrete and measurable.

When thinking about your main union website, is it clear what your site’s goals are?

The NUW website has three clear goals.

The NUW website has three clear purposes for their site, followed by a host of secondary goals.

The three goals are: join, get active, and get help. They are front and centre, with large calls to action. Secondary to these three main things the NUW wants visitors to their site to do are: find out about campaigns, get news, and sign up to their e-news. These secondary goals don’t diminish the primary calls to action.

I’ve written about the National Union of Workers’ website before (here and here).

This blog post is really an addendum to my earlier post last year about how to make the ultimate union campaign website. A lot of the advice in that post really won’t help unless you’ve thought about what you want the site to do.

Read my article Five tips for the ultimate union campaign website.

Don’t use stockphotos (you don’t own)

Alex — Wed, 23 Mar 2011 23:39:45 +0000

Unions not only have a legal obligation to respect copyright, but an ethical obligation. Unions have fought for intellectual property rights for photographers for years. Respecting copyright doesn’t mean kowtowing to Disney. It means not using photos from the Internet without permission of the owner.

I mention this as a “pro-tip” because I have often seen unions use images harvested from the Internet without permission – whether it’s a political cartoon taken from a newspaper website and used in a flyer or poster, or an “generic” image of workers for the union website.

Recently, I visited the homepage of Unions ACT and what I saw on the homepage disappointed me.

While I welcome the increase in union membership by 4% in 2009, I am dismayed that Unions ACT have used a stockphoto that appears to be taken from the Internet without permission.

You can see the faint white lines laid over the image of those friendly workers – that’s a water-mark. You can also make out the Stockphoto logo (Stockphoto is an online company that provides stock photos for sale). The water-mark has been partially removed (presumably in Photoshop) – suggesting that whoever provided or uploaded the image for the Unions ACT website was aware that the photo was being used without permission.

(Update: Here is a link to the official Stockphoto website with the photo above.)

I’m “naming and shaming” Unions ACT because two weeks ago I contacted them alerting them to this fact.I received a reply a few days later from the Office Manager, letting me know that my email had been forwarded to “our web admin and design people”. Nothing happened for over a week – the image is still there now – so I followed it up again with the Unions ACT Office Manager, who again replied saying he had forwarded my email to the “web admin and design people”.

Union websites should be especially aware of the images they use. I try to ensure that the images I use on my own blog are Creative Commons licensed or have been made available for free by their creators. Similarly, at my union, we are making an effort to ensure no images are used without permission.

There’s nothing wrong necessarily with using Stockphotos – they can be useful when time is limited – although unions should endeavour to employ or hire a photographer and take their own photos, with their own members.

I feel, after two weeks notice, that there has been ample time for Unions ACT – made up of fine people doing good work – to remove the stockphoto image or replace it with one they have permission to use. I hope that after publishing this blog post, that they act more quickly.

My hope is that Unions ACT do have permission to use this stockphoto and have for some reason accidentally used the water-marked version. It is also possible that the company or person who created the Unions ACT website is responsible for using that particular photo, without the knowledge of Unions ACT staff. I would be happy to hear from Unions ACT to update this blog post.

UPDATE: In discussions with Unions ACT, the offending image has now been removed.

Do you have goals for your union’s website?

Alex — Tue, 15 Mar 2011 03:14:17 +0000

Do you have goals for your union’s website?

If you’re anything like most unions, probably not. Or, more accurately, your website’s goals are probably ambigious or vague. “Provide information to members” or “an online repository of union resources” or “a way for potential members to join online”.

Sound familiar?

Whereas most unions would be comfortable creating goals for their organising campaigns – “sign up 50 workers” or “mentor 20 delegates through Level A training” – we often skip the all-important thinking and reflection on what the goal of our website is; what should it achieve?

The New Organizing Institute is a fantastic organisation that I’ve watched from afar (I’m in Australia, they’re in the USA). As part of their “tip a day” email newsletter (which I recommend you sign up to), they give some fantastic tips on goal setting for your website.

What do you want people to accomplish?

There are things you want visitors to do, whether it’s sign up for the newsletter, or donate or volunteer. The idea is to make those goals clear and easy for the general audience.

Is there a clear hierarchy?

Think about visual importance. Does the design play into the goals of the site? Do people know what actions/goals should be important to them and which ones at the most important?

Is it fun?

People will take an action that’s engaging and fun. Granted, it’s difficult to incorporate fun into all tasks (looking at your bank statement isn’t usually considered “fun,” e.g.), but the more fun you can make it, the more likely people are to work a bit for the end result.

While these seem “common sense”, I’m willing to bet that most union websites do not have these questions asked about them regularly (if at all).

There’s a lot more great tips from NOI, so check them out.

The 10 second rule for website usability

Alex — Sun, 19 Dec 2010 21:42:28 +0000

How many times have you visited a website looking for something, like contact details, an email address or phone number, or some specific information – only to spend time looking fruitlessly for it? Usability tests and web analytics suggest that most people spend no more than ten seconds looking for they thing they came for, before leaving the site in frustration.

You have 10 seconds to make an impression with your website visitors.

Most people filter the huge amount of information each day – and the information they can read and absorb is limited. When reading a website, the average person scans the content at around 15 words per second.

Have a clear call to action

For example, if your union campaign website has the goal of asking visitors to sign a petition, then you have ten seconds to ensure the visitor to understand what you want them to do and how to do it. If you discover that most people visiting your union’s main website to get contact details, then you need to make it really simple and easy for them to get those contact details – don’t make it a goose hunt.

Make your info easy to find

Nothing makes website visitors leave a site faster than not finding the information they’re looking for. Put yourself in the mind of the person visiting your website. How can you make it simple and easy for them to get what they want?

Write for the web

In many cases, this means “writing for the web” – cutting down on the words. Reading lots of text on the computer screen is difficult and can be uncomfortable. Keeping in mind the 10 second rule, you should make any text on your main campaign website landing pages – especially your homepage – concise and clutter-free, as well as use headings and dot points. With only 10 seconds to get your message across, you really have only about 150 words to make your point and convince your visitor to complete your call to action.

Spoof sites – how useful are they?

Alex — Fri, 22 Oct 2010 03:24:14 +0000

Two instances of spoof activist websites have come to my attention recently (although there are no doubt thousands of them around).

The first was created by The Yes Men – the activists behind numerous notable media stunts including impersonating the WTO – and the Rainforest Action Network in the USA.

It is a spoof of the recent Chevron green-washing campaign called “We Agree”. The spoof included this website and a fake media release. Grist reported:

Chevron was planning a spendy (and ballsy) new ad campaign centered on “responsibility” and the phrase “We Agree” but prank-with-a-purpose group The Yes Men, along with activist organizations Rainforest Action Network and Amazon Watch, beat them to the punch by spoofing and releasing their own version of the ads right before Chevron’s actual ad launch. As usual, plenty of media outlets fell for it.

Chevron was understandably annoyed that their thunder was stolen by an activist group. Their media unit issued a statement crying foul:

Today, activist groups have attempted to interrupt the conversation by issuing a fake press release and establishing a counterfeit website, which are not affiliated with Chevron.

Yes Men responded:

“Chevron’s super-expensive fake street art is a cynical attempt to gloss over the human rights abuses and environmental degradation that is the legacy of Chevron’s operations in Ecuador, Nigeria, Burma and throughout the world,” said Ginger Cassady, a campaigner at Rainforest Action Network. “They must think we’re stupid.”

“They say we’re ‘interrupting the dialogue,’” said Andy Bichlbaum of the Yes Men, referring to Chevron’s terse condemnation. “What dialogue? Chevron’s ad campaign is an insulting, confusing monologue – with many tens of millions of dollars behind it.”

The legitimate Chevron site is very slick, but as the Tories in the UK found out, slick ads are vulnerable to spoofing.

The spoof site is not a direct rip off of Chevron’s site – only the message is attacked.

Subsequently, there have been several other spoofs that have appeared organically on the Internet. Here are two:

By all accounts, given the media the spoofs attracted, and with the intent being to highlight Chevron’s greenwashing, Iwould say it succeeded.

The second case of a spoof website being created to “disrupt” the normal operations of the target revolves around the recent Australian furore about the Murray Darling Basin Plan.

Irrigators opposed to the MDB Plan have created a website that is almost identical to the official MDB website.

The official site looks like this:

This move was criticised as having the potential to mislead. PR expert and PRIA councillor Tim Hughes said in an interview on the ABC:

I think it’s clever but I think it’s clever on the surface. I think that to be effective you really have to be up-front and honest in your communications and I don’t think it does that. So from that point of view I’m not sure that it’s got long term impact.

The implication is that a direct copy – albeit with changed text – could cause damage to the organising doing the spoof, through perceptions of dishonesty.

Of course, these two examples are fairly different. The first is aiming to expose the multi-million dollar green-washing that is performed by oil companies. It was expressly using parody to do so.

The second is done to highlight irrigator anger at the Murray Darling Basin plan. As New South Wales Irrigators Council CEO Andrew Gregson said, it’s no parody, “This is trying to tell people the other side of the story.” Gregson says the design of the site was chosen because “The layout of basinplan.com.au works.”

I’m inclined to partly agree with Hughes. The second example by the irrigators is less successful because the design potentially misleads without a purposeful message. The first example by The Yes Men misleads (journalists) with a purposeful intent to satirise.

Saul Alinsky is famous for saying that “ridicule” is an activist’s most potent weapon. That’s why The Yes Men’s stunt works well and strongly makes its point. It’s hard to counteract ridicule, and infuriates the target – as Chevron has found out.

You are being watched

Alex — Tue, 12 Oct 2010 22:18:17 +0000

I’ve had a recent surge in traffic from an interesting website, HR Communicator, pointing to my article showcasing union websites.

This should be a salutarywarning that as unions become more active, management of the companies where your members work will be checking your website.

Of course, this shouldn’t scare you – just be aware of it.

Be careful about what you put on the site, but don’t live in fear that your every word will cause a libel courtcase. The last thing you want happening is that your website never gets updated or has no content because you’re affraid that the bosses will read it and “uncover” your strategy, download special “delegate only” material or read training manuals for activists. Most employers don’t give a damn, and those that do are unlikely to use what they find on your site effectively.

If you manage your union’s website, this is required reading

Alex — Wed, 29 Sep 2010 23:04:08 +0000

Google has updated its Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) guide – two years after it first published it.

Search engine optimisation is very important for all websites – but union websites are serial offenders when it comes to SEO.

Simply put, SEO is about making your website easy for search engines like Google, Bing and Yahoo to find and categorise your content. If you want your campaign web page, blog post or media release to be easily found by people on the internet, then SEO is essential.

If your website is optimised for search engines, then your site will rank highly when people search for your “key words” – the search terms that people look for.

If a web development company has created your website for you, then make sure they’re on to SEO.

Afterall, there’s no point in spending a lot of time and money creating a site that no one can find.

(This is also required reading for local political campaigns who manage their own candidate website.)

Why I’m joining Labour

Alex — Wed, 12 May 2010 00:25:44 +0000

UK Labour continue to impress, coming out with a very impressive web app only days after the general election.

Adding Twitter’s @Anywhere

Alex — Mon, 19 Apr 2010 11:44:07 +0000

Twitter has launched a new feature, called @Anywhere, for websites to integrate elements of Twitter onto their websites.

This allows you to use your Twitter login to join or log into their website, as well as add Twitter-style popups over names that are Twitter accounts (such as @alexanderwhite, @UKLabour, or @climateprogress). This means you can follow people directly from the website you are on.

This is a fairly simple feature to add, and I hope that it adds a bit of neat functionality. Let me know what you think. Worthwhile or annoying?

Some comments lost

Alex — Fri, 19 Mar 2010 06:40:53 +0000

I’ve finalised the move from my old host (3iX) to my new host (Digital Pacific). Unfortunately the move means that some of the recent comments (in March) have been lost. This is a real shame, but unfortunately nothing can be done. I’m lucky I was able to save all of my old posts after the debacle that is 3iX hosting.