Case Study for Nonprofits: How to Drive Traffic to your Website

Case Study for Nonprofits: How to Drive Traffic to your Website

The Challenge

Humans taking Care of Animals (HTCA) is a nonprofit organization based in Minneapolis, MN. Its mission is to provide care and homes to animals that have been mistreated. In 2008 they built a website with information, blogs, videos, and pictures. In 2008, the website had 12,000 visitors; in 2009 it had 14,000 visitors. HTCA's Executive Director knew that their had to be other ways to drive traffic to their website.

The Background

In 2009, HTCA sent out a survey to its stakeholders. In that survey, they asked the following questions about their website:

- How did you find our website?

- What information were you looking for when visiting our website?

- How do you look for information and decide which website to visit?

They received over 250 responses to the survey, and after analyzing the survey responses, they identified the following themes:

- Most people that viewed the website were already supporters of HTCA and knew to look for their homepage.

- The stakeholders were looking for up to date and new information when they visited the website.

- Individuals were looking for validation from a third party.

- People are using social media as a tool to learn more about individuals, organizations, and causes.

The Solutions

Over the next year, they set about implementing the following solutions to drive traffic to their website:

- Writing and publishing articles with up to date content about their organization and animals that had back links to their website. These articles are published on websites that will give them maximum exposure.

- Create a web presence through search engine optimization. They made sure that they had a presence through video search and image search as well.

- Integrated their website into social media activities.

- Encouraged supporters and constituents to post on the HTCA blog and facebook page and they did the same. They developed virtual relationships and shared these positive experiences.

Within 6 months, traffic to the website had risen by 35% to over 2000 visits per month.

Lessons Learned

As the team at HTCA began to aces what their stakeholders wanted they realized that building an informative and interactive website wasn't enough. They immediately developed a plan to get more people to this great website. They created a web presence that draws new people to their webpage resulting in more supporters overall.

This case study was prepared by Netta Dankel of the Center for Nonprofit Success. For more case studies on nonprofit management, visit the Center for Nonprofit Success website at: http://www.cfnps.org/research.aspx For a calendar of our upcoming seminars on nonprofit management, go to http://www.cfnps.org/education_calendar.aspx

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