What is an audience-specific website page?

An audience-specific page contains valuable information to educate and inspire a specific type of person to take action. Who you write for on this type of page depends on the nonprofit and the industry vertical that you operate in. Most nonprofits will want to create audience-specific pages for donors, volunteers, or for other different groups of people, including the clients that you serve.

The goals of an audience-specific website page are validation and action.

These are two important goals of all website pages and in this case, because you're speaking directly to one of your target audiences, you really want to hit these two points of validating what you do and your ability to do it and inspiring that group of individuals to take action.

A note on organizing web pages

How you arrange the pages on your website is oftentimes called your website architecture. An audience-specific website page is one option of how you can structure your website architecture.

The first option is a program-based navigation. As the name suggests, this refers to when you organize the pages and the navigation on your website based on the programs that you offer. An example of this could be pages for your weekly soup kitchen or monthly book drives.

The second option is a people-based navigation. This is where our audience-specific website pages can be found. You can create pages for your volunteers, donors or other stakeholders, and of course your clients. For example, if you serve both teenagers and adults, you may want to create specific pages in your navigation for them based on this people paradigm.

What I often recommend for my nonprofit clients is a blended approach. This way you get the best of both worlds. You can talk directly about your programs and services as well as speak directly to the key stakeholders and the audiences that need specific information.

Why should you create audience-specific pages?

The number one reason why creating information and content for a targeted audience is so important is because relevant content is much more valuable than generic content. When we speak directly to the needs, ambitions, motivations, problems, and even fears of the people that we're serving or the people we are trying to get involved in our mission, they're more likely to take action.

They're more likely to pay attention because the content will speak directly to their beliefs and values. We're so busy online these days and we're exposed to so much information and marketing messages, it's really, really important to be highly relevant and highly targeted in the way we're speaking to the people who are visiting our website.

Customize your content to the audience

There are three ways that you can customize your content for the intended audience: the language you use, your branding, and the media type.

For instance, if you're speaking to an older audience and you know that they're not working on super-fast internet speeds or maybe even mobile devices, you may want to lay off the video. On the other side of the spectrum, if you're targeting a younger audience, you're going to want to lean in heavily on video, rich multimedia, and lots of interactivity with social media.

A web page for younger visitors will be more likely to use casual language whereas a page targeting adult professionals may be written more formally.

The branding and design of a page sharing a research brief will look very different compared to a page promoting a youth 5k walkathon.

The media type, the language, and even the branding on the page can make a big difference when customizing the page content for your target audience.

Here’s an example. I'm browsing a website for a nonprofit in the education space. If I see a link in the site navigation that says elementary school students, I'm going to guess that's for parents of elementary school students to read with their kids. Since I don’t have kids, I'm probably not going to click on that. Now, if I were the parent of an elementary school child and I clicked on that page (and didn’t leave after a few seconds), the website owner can assume that I’m part of that audience. Using their website analytics, they can see what I download, how long I spend on that page, and follow my journey through their website. This in turn will help the website owner learn more about what’s interesting to that audience segment.

You can learn a lot about your target audiences when you've customized the pages of your website to a specific group.

When to create an audience-specific website page

You can create audience-specific website pages for static pages of your website to serve that audience year-round. This type of page is “evergreen” because the content is valuable regardless of the time of year. Evergreen pages are a great way to introduce specific audiences to your work.

If you’re planning a campaign, consider creating audience-specific landing pages. A landing page is a specific page where you send traffic from either your email list, social media, or ads. Landing pages have a highly specific purpose. If you’re running a fundraising campaign, your audience-specific landing pages may speak directly to the questions and values of first-time donors. You may create a separate landing page for longtime donors that speaks to their desire to continue their legacy.

When you build audience-specific landing pages, you can send specific emails to the people you know who are in that target audience, such as parents of elementary school students. You can send them emails that direct them to their audience-specific page.

This type of marketing is highly personal and highly relevant and you're likely going to get better results for your marketing campaigns. And finally, you can add a tracking pixel from Google or Facebook or another ads manager that will enable you to serve ads and reach the people who visit that page. If you've created us an audience-specific page, you have a good idea that by retargeting the people who visit that page, you know something about them, you know that they care about the information on that page and so you'll be able to serve them with more relevant content ads and ultimately more targeted messages.

Audience-specific website page content framework

So here's my framework for creating an audience-specific website page. Start off right away with a case study that reinforces your key message and positioning. Now this is important because as I've taught you in a, in a few of my previous blogs, story is an incredibly motivating sales technique. Our brains absolutely love hearing stories, reading stories, and creating stories of our own.

1. Begin with a case study

Instead of choosing of a big bucket list of all the things that your nonprofit does, I recommend you start with a case study about one single program or service that you offer. The reason for this is because complexity drives people away. If you can get the reader interested in what your nonprofit does by telling them a compelling story about just one of the things your nonprofit does, they're more likely to stay on the page and read further. This is in stark contrast to a lot of the nonprofit websites that I see where they just kind of throw everything but the kitchen sink at their website visitors. We don't want to do that because our attention spans are so short, and our time is so limited when browsing the web.

I'd like you to identify the topic of your case study, and the core message or problem that it addresses. Keep in mind that if you're creating this page for clients, you want to speak directly to their problems rather than just about your nonprofit’s programs and services. How will your organization improve their lives? And then finally, when you're determining what case study you're going to share, think of the classic story arc.

What was the problem or the before state, what program or service did you provide? What was the learning that they had or experienced? And finally, what results did they realize? This is a key component that demonstrates the outcomes of what you do. Of course it's always appropriate to include a quote from the audience member to demonstrate your nonprofit’s effectiveness and positive results.

Here’s an example: if you're speaking to prospective volunteers in your case study, include a quote from a volunteer who's had great results and a wonderful experience with you. You don't want to include a quote from the clients that the volunteer helped because this audience-specific page is speaking to the prospective volunteer rather than the client.

2. A simple, clear plan

The next part of our audience-specific website framework is your how-to or engagement guide. These are your action steps and again, simplicity is key here. You want to provide three to five very simple steps on what this audience member can do right now to get involved with you. It could be something really simple like:

1. Fill out our quick volunteer questionnaire.

2. Our volunteer coordinator will call with options for you.

3. Help kids learn about agriculture as you volunteer in our community gardens.

Note that the final step includes the desired outcome that this imaginary volunteer wants, to help kids learn about agriculture.

We've given the audience a simple example of what the nonprofit does and simple steps on how the reader can get involved in that very same program. Up to this point, we've only talked about one program, now we've got them hooked. Now you can talk about the other things you do in bullet points below.

3. Introduce a few of your other programs and services

At this point on the page, it’s time to introduce a few of your other programs and services. I recommend listing only three programs or services. When you write these, use succinct bullet points and powerful verbs from the audience's perspective. An example:

“Help inner city kids learn where their food comes from.”

For our community garden program, you see how that bullet is action oriented. It's as if you're saying that directly to the prospective volunteer rather than saying, “We run an afterschool program in neighborhood community gardens that teaches students how to grow radishes.”

You want to be succinct and very clear; remember that this page is speaking directly to the perspective volunteer. Really zero in and imagine you're talking to just one person.

4. Share the benefits of engaging with your nonprofit

Next, you can follow that up with some of the benefits of being involved with your nonprofit. For this section, I recommend balancing “left brain” analytical data with “right brain” emotional and motivational stories.

To start, return to the emotional desires of the reader. What do they believe about the world? How will they feel as part of your program? Then, follow that up with facts and figures. This is where you demonstrate your capacity and your excellence with hard numbers and other data.

There's a little bit of a disconnect in the nonprofit world because of the perception of risk. In the business world, when you pay somebody for a product, you know you're going to get the product. In the nonprofit world, we ask people to give us money and we don't do a very good job of explaining the tangible results of where that money goes and how we spend it. By combining the emotional, motivational, “right brain” benefits of working with your nonprofit with logical “left brain” analytical numbers, you make it easy for folks to say, “Yeah, I want to get involved!”

5. Demonstrate effectiveness with social proof

Now the reader is familiar with your work, and they are approaching the point where they’re committed to supporting your mission. Now is a great time to offer social proof, a term coined by Robert Cialdini in his 1984 book, Influence.

Social proof demonstrates that other people have made the same decision that you are asking the reader to make. Online product reviews are a form of social proof. So are testimonials from your circle of support.

Social proof is so powerful in the Internet era; look at the confidence with which we buy products on Amazon thanks to the thousands of other buyers and reviews.

Show your prospective volunteer a quote from other volunteers about how rewarding and impactful their experience was to help them feel like they too can participate in your mission.

You want to show folks that others have had a great time and a positive outcome working with your nonprofit.

6. Include a call to action

Our final section of this audience-specific website page framework is the call to action. A great way to do this is to summarize the benefits, include a fact or figure, and end with the immediate next action that they can take. This could be the first action item in your plan.

In the action plan example earlier, it’s filling out a quick online questionnaire. You want to reiterate that action step down here at the bottom of the page because if they've made it this far, they may have forgotten how easy it is to get involved. They may have scrolled past the point where you ask them to fill out their contact information or shoot you an email or pick up the phone and call or donate. Ending with a clear strong call to action for the one thing you want the reader to do is a powerful way to inspire action.

Do’s and Don’ts

Don’t: write with general language or jargon.

Do: stay squarely focused on the needs and perspectives of your target audience with specific language. I recommend sitting down with someone in this target audience to review this page and ask them, “Does this really speak to you? Would you want to take action after reading this?” Think of your favorite donors, volunteers, stakeholders, and clients. What would they say if they were describing the experiences that they had with your nonprofit? Pick and choose some of the language that they use and include that in your writing so that they can feel like you deeply understand the desired outcome of working with your nonprofit.

Don't: throw everything but the kitchen sink at them.

Do: Write simply and break things down into easy action steps. It helps readers process the information on your web page in today's fast paced online world. We want the reader to easily understand what you do and how they can take action.

Don't: use transitional language in your call to action. That's soft words like learn more, explore, discover, read.

Do: use direct, powerful language for your call to action like register, call, donate.