Having a well-designed and easy to use Naples website template is non negotiable in any charity organization today. Just having an “ok” Naples website used to be good enough. Good enough is never enough. But when you’re faced with creating a website, you’re basically staring into two options:
– A professionally made website from scratch
– A professionally designed and coded website that’s ready to go. (Naples template website)
The second option means, of course, an already created website made from a templates aka themes. Many organizations use these pre-built solutions in an effort to expedite the process setting up a site. Ready made themes are a perfect solution to any budding, or even established charity/nonprofit/NGO. They offer the least possible energy and financial input, but result in a maximum output.
This is the balance you should strive with any website: minimum input, maximum output. In fact, strive for this rule with anything you do in your life. The 20/80 rule as defined by Tim Ferris dictates that 20% of your time should make 80% of your results. The same goes for your site and social media.
A few reasons make themes so insanely popular.
Naples template website – Themes are inexpensive
Custom built sites are exorbitantly expensive. Quotes vary by country, where the west sees figures ranging from 5000$ to even 50,000$. Nonprofits simply should not invest so much in a site, no matter their size. A better solution would be a premium quality theme. The best part is that such finely crafted themes are now within reach for anyone. They’re cost-effective, to use the corporate term, and are a true example of the 20/80 rule. In the long run they’re cheaper to maintain, especially considering that a custom site would require custom support which again means thousands of dollars being paid to a web studio.
Themes can be customized
Almost all custom themes have flexible designs. This means you can modify them to your heart’s content. You can do much of the “heavy lifting” yourself, because the heavy in that lifting isn’t heavy at all. If you really need any outrageously custom pieces, you could hire a web designer to do it for you quickly. Even that option is cheaper than a full custom site.
Don’t mistake changing the site’s features with changing the site’s content. If you’re even mildly computer proficient, you’ll be able to change photos, write news, and manage the entire content of a themed website on your own. Thus, no need to call – and pay – just to have a new piece of news strung up on your site. You can even change some of the basic colors and functionalities of a theme by yourself, too.
We’ve made our own WordPress theme called Charity+. It’s pretty spiffy and inexpensive, too – check it out.
Content management is a breeze
The reason themes work so well, is because they’re based on pretty advanced content management systems. These systems have a fancy name but it’s just a bunch of smart code that takes your content – stuff like photos, and text – and make a website out of them. They’re so advanced, that you don’t have to touch any code, at all.
WordPress is the most popular content management system online. It powers 58.6% of all the websites whose content management system are known.
This is 24.6% of all websites. On. The. Entire. Internet.
This is a huge figure, considering just how big the internet really is.
People love WordPress because it handles any content you throw at it effortlessly. It’s made up in two parts. One is the behind-the-scenes part, the other is the public part. Visitors of your website see just the public part.
The backstage, or behind the scenes part, is where you write news, upload photos, manage your website. WordPress is basically 90% backstage stuff. And it does it like a pro.
But the public part is actually the design people see when they go to your website. This public part is your theme. WordPress comes with a few default themes which are nice but useless, because everybody gets them too. But if you get a theme from Themes Kingdom or Themes Forest, you can just import it to WordPress. It will do all the code work for you. In a few seconds your site will keep the same content, only now it’ll have a different skin.
It’s a pretty neat trick.
Usability
Custom sites are usually based on a custom, expensive, 2000$ content management system. The CMS requires a NASA manual just to know how it works. It gets pretty old and stale, too, because the original developer has moved on from your project to something else, and stopped updating your CMS.
WordPress is not only free, but it’s constantly updated by volunteers worldwide.
It’s made by people for people. That means you don’t have to be a rocket scientist to know how to change photos on your site, or how to write news and so on. It’s the most people-friendly CMS on the planet. And that’s why everyone loves it.
Responsive and mobile friendly
Google is now unforgiving towards sites that don’t have a mobile version. So, let’s say you have an old site that’s great for desktops but when you open it on your smartphone the text is microscopic, the photos are botched up…
Well, Google will now punish sites like that. How? When you search for your charity site, Google will put your result much lower in the list than before. It will favour sites that display well on smartphones.
The beauty in WordPress and themes from Themes Kingdom is that they both adapt great for smartphones. And they do it automatically – you don’t have to do a thing! When a website adapts the way it looks so it better fits the screen its on, it is called a responsive website. The ability to adapt is responsiveness, and it’s the biggest hit to happen to web design since GIFs.
Conclusion – Naples template website
Writing great content and taking care of your site’s copy is THE most important work you can invest in. It is directly related to how people perceive your organisation. Fantastic copy makes building trust with your visitors seem effortlessly easy. But it takes a lot of hard work and lots of revision to get it right.
The second important line of work is to build a robust website that’s easy to read (for your visitors), easy to manage (for you), fast and responsive. Our themes will help you with “fast, responsive, and easy to read” and WordPress will help you with management.
We made a WordPress theme that follows all of the tips and tricks in this guide. It’s called Charity+ so feel free to check it out. It’ll save you a lot of time and nerves.
Finally, cater to your social media presence in an unobtrusive way. Share authentic stories of real people.
And pretty soon you’ll find yourself getting real help, too.