What is a Website?

Despite major advancements in Internet technology in the last decade, the website function as a communication channel remains relatively unchanged. The World Wide Web is still the most widely accessed Internet platform for information-seeking and distribution, public communications, and electronic commerce. Since the rise of web 2.0 and social media, the web has also become highly popular for online social networking and interaction. As of September, 2010 there are over 122.8 million active domains (DomainTools, 2010) and 15.88 billion web pages (Worldwidewebsize.com, 2010), with both statistics growing daily.

The absence of a consistent definition for website reflects the variety of ways websites are used today. The definitions will differ slightly or dramatically depending on the source. The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) have a long history of playing an authoritative role in developing web standards and thus can be looked to for working definitions of common web vernacular, including website. According to W3C (1999) , a website or ‘site’ is:

A collection of interlinked web pages, including a host page, residing at the same network location (or server). ‘Interlinked’ is understood to mean that any of a website’s constituent web pages can be accessed by following a sequence of references beginning at the site’s host page, spanning zero, one or more web pages located at the same site, and ending at the web page in question.

Less notable definitions move away from the technical aspects of a website and begin to describe practical functions and usage. For example, “a webpage or set of web pages designed, presented, and linked together to form a logical information resource and/or transaction initiation function” (Federal Financial Institutions Examination Council, 2010) or “a group of interlinked web pages stored on a server and accessible on a browser. Most websites represent the online presence of an organization, institution, or company” (Edison State College, 2010).

The Nonprofit Website

Early Internet studies prior to the rise of web 2.0 recognized that the World Wide Web had the potential to play a key role in increasing a NPO’s visibility and in diversifying their fundraising strategies (Frenza & Hoffman, 1999; Roufa, 1999). Today, NPOs use websites for a variety of purposes unique to their sector. Although these uses can resemble the functions of e-commerce websites, nonprofit websites are governed by a need to fulfill their mission, rather than generating sales transactions (Tuckman, Patrali, & Muha, 2004). At the most basic level, common uses are to educate and inform target audiences of their cause or mission; to persuade target audiences to adopt a desired point of view or attitude; and to facilitate desired actions as a result of persuasion, such as donating money, signing up to volunteer, or a number of other behaviors (Sargeant, West, & Jay, 2007).

As NPOs desire return volunteers and repeat donors, they consequently engage in relationship marketing, a form of marketing which assumes organizations seek to form long term relationships with its’ customers (Christopher, Payne, & Ballantyne, 2002) and generate trust (Gummesson, 1999). Theorists and researchers have long suggested that relationship marketing activities are particularly suited to nonprofit marketing (Burnett, 1998; Brennan & Brady, 1999; Sargeant, 2001; MacMillan, Money, & Downing, 2005). This process of relationship building with customers transcends the traditional transactional, purchase-exchange process in that it emphasizes the long term value of customer relationships over short term benefits. Ultimately, an organization’s website is meant to aid the fulfillment of their mission. Nonprofit relationship marketing calls for communicating with donors as partners in that fulfillment, rather than just a source of funding. This approach factors into strategy considerations for site design, functions, and content, which is discussed in the following section.

Effective Characteristics of Content, Function, and Design

Sargeant, West, and Jay (2007) attempted to determine characteristics of NPO websites that tended to raise higher sums of money than others by identifying patterns of fundraising performance and relating them to the different facets of site design. Based on a review of a normative literature of NPO web design practices and an assessment of sample NPO websites, the researchers derived eight relational constructs of fundraising effectiveness. These constructs were:

1.      Accessibility: The extent to which the sites make it easy to offer support.

2.      Case for support: The extent to which the site clearly articulates why the organization warrants support.

3.      Respect: The extent to which the organization communicates with the donor in a courteous and appropriate manner.

4.      Accountability: The extent to which the site indicates it is accountable to supporters for the way in which it uses resources such as donated funds and personal data.

5.      Interaction: The extent to which the site offers users the ability to interact with the organization in a variety of ways.

6.      Education: The extent to which the site provides an appropriate facility for the donor to learn about the cause.

7.      Customization: The extent to which the donor may tailor the site or the communications received to reflect his or her own interests or needs.

8.      Empowerment: The extent to which the site allows donors to take action or to have an impact on the cause.

Four constructs—accessibility, accountability, education, and interaction—were found to be highly correlated to the number of new donors a given site was able to attract, but less well-correlated with total online donations. Only empowerment appeared to be related to overall average donations. These findings suggest that website fundraising performance could be improved by enhancing the five constructs identified. Based on interpretations of the results, the researchers made recommendations for enhancing each construct:

1.      Accessibility: NPOs should make it easy to give by facilitating online donation throughout the site, such as providing a link to an online donation form on every page of the site.

2.      Accountability: Sites should have clear and unambiguous statements of how users’ personal data is stored, used, and shared with third parties. Their data indicated a negative impact on donations in the absence of a policy governing personal data. Second, data supported the notion that sites should be transparent and accountable as to how funds in the past were used and how current and future funds will be used.

3.      Education: Data indicated sites with high levels of information that have the capacity to educate tended to outperform others in donations. The researchers suggest sites optimized for search engines, direct email marketing, banner advertising, and other methods for driving relevant traffic to the site are essential in enhancing fundraising performance.

4.      Interaction: NPOs should focus on enhancing the quality of interaction donors experience on the site. This could mean simply providing a public outlet, such as on a social networking site, for donors to express their affinity for the organization. Results suggest an aggregate of positive messages can enhance performance.

5.      Empowerment. Consideration should also be given to the extent to which donors are empowered to take action or made to feel that their donation or involvement have made a positive impact on the cause.

Rosen and Purinton (2004) suggest that viewing the web from the perspective of cognitive psychology can assist in the development of effective web design. Based on the concept of a cognitive environment, where environments provide information and informational needs influence preferences for particular “landscapes” (Kaplan & Kaplan, 1982), they argue that computer interaction is highly cognitive and involves user perceptions and preferences. Interactivity implies the perception of the web as an environment, in which a user can be cognitively immersed into.

Employing a website preference scale to assess effective web design, the researchers identified and examined four cognitive dimensions—coherence, complexity, legibility, and mystery—in the environment of various commercial websites. Resulting data suggests that a simple and minimalistic approach and “eye-catching, but appropriate” graphics and categories had an impact on user likelihood of revisiting a website. The researchers also suggest avoidance of excess information and making access to pertinent information expedient, but clear. For the overall design, they note a website with a distinct appearance is more appealing, will differentiate the organization, and make the site more memorable.

Trust and credibility. Rothschild (1979) argues that donor relationships with NPOs are fundamentally different from customer-organization relationships. As such, donor trust in a NPO has been seen as a critical factor in fostering long-term loyalty and found to be a factor associated with individual motivation and willingness to donate (Sargeant & Lee, 2001). In a customer relationship, there are usually direct material benefits to the consumer (e.g. goods and services). Donors and volunteers, on the other hand, are not direct consumers of an NPO’s services. MacMillian, Money, and Downing (2005) describe the nonmaterial benefit to a donor as a belief or assumption about a NPO. An example of this is that it is making a positive impact or using funds efficiently. Simply improving communication offers NPOs an opportunity to improve donor trust (MacMillan, Money, & Downing, 2005). Not surprisingly, in an online context, evidence suggests characteristics of a website design as well as content and function have an effect on generating trust (Cheskin Research and Studio Archetype/Sapient, 1999; Ind & Riondino, 2001; Long & Chiagouris, 2006; Burt & Dunham, 2009).

Burt and Dunham believe trust along with altruism play a role in how individuals feel about in engaging in online donating. Results from their study on trust and online aid agencies indicated that altruistic individuals and individuals predisposed towards trusting people are more likely to trust and view an online charity favorably. It was demonstrated through one experiment that photographs presented on an aid agency website showing what the agency was doing in response to the 2004 tsunami in Southeast Asia significantly increased the trust rating for that particular website. The photographs suggested to the subjects how donor funds were being used. In a second experiment, the researchers manipulated the perceived efficiency of an aid agency. They describe efficiency as the amount of funds used for program activities as opposed to funds used for support services and fundraising. An efficient agency would use more funds for program activities, while a less efficient agency would use more for support services and fundraising. In this second experiment, it was shown that trust is rated higher for an efficient organization. This suggests that websites provide an opportunity to build trust with potential donors by presenting specific information. Furthermore, both these findings reinforce the need for accountability, a construct identified by Sargeant, West, and Jay (2007) as impacting online fundraising performance.

A joint study by Cheskin Research and Studio Archetype/Sapinet (2000) found that trust in a web e-commerce environment is communicated by six fundamental website elements: brand, navigation, fulfillment, presentation, technology, and the logos of security-guaranteeing firms. Brand refers to an organization’s credibility, reputation, and a promise to deliver “specific attributes.” Navigation refers to the way users find the information they seek on a website. Fulfillment refers to how orders are processed and is concerned with communicating the transactional payment processing and fulfillment of an order. In the nonprofit realm, arguably the closest equivalent of fulfillment is accountability. Presentation refers to the quality and professionalism of a website design. Technology refers to the presence of current and standard web technology that facilitates ease-of-use. “Logos of security-guaranteeing firms” refers to the presence of logos of firms that offer and ensure e-commerce businesses or any organizations engaged in monetary transactions online, security and privacy in such transactions.

The same study also found that a well-known brand does not necessarily lead to higher ratings of trustworthiness, even when paired with effective fulfillment and navigation. The brand itself needs to be trustworthy. In the absence of a well-known brand, the study emphasizes the need for strong navigation and fulfillment as a pre-condition for generating trust. For nonprofit websites, the latter implies communicating to donors how their funds are handled and will be used, as well as information that communicates the effectiveness of funds in fulfilling mission goals.

Similarly, Long and Chiagouris (2006) looked at how functionality and appearance of a NPO website enhances user feelings of security and communicates credibility. Employing Chen and Wells (1999) attitude toward the site (AST) scale, the researchers used 17 items pertaining to website design and functionality to measure user credibility perceptions of a website. AST is described as a measure of an online user’s predisposition to respond favorably or unfavorably to a website. These 17 items measured perceived credibility between the American Red Cross and American Cancer Society websites. As the researchers were interested in examining a range of consumer perceptions toward a website, the items were open to subjective interpretation by participants in the study.

What they found was that 8 of 17 credibility measures were significantly higher for the American Red Cross. In almost all of these eight measures, the differences were related to design considerations. The researchers note that design considerations such as, ‘the site is arranged in a way that makes sense to you’ or ‘the site is easy to browse for information’ are things that can be addressed during the development phase of a website. Another finding was that the item, ‘the site is by an organization that is well respected’, was only moderately correlated with AST. They speculate that there may be two aspects of consumer’s evaluation of an organization—attitude toward an organization and attitude toward an organization’s website. The former is formed offline and the latter formed online. If true, they suggest that website design can have a greater impact on consumer AST than what is perceived of an organization offline.

A Two-factor Model for Web Design and Evaluation

The proliferation of web-user interface studies in the web 1.0 era and the lack of consistent criteria in normative literature to identify effective web design, prompted Zhang and Von Dran (2000) to develop a theoretical approach to web design and evaluation. They attempted to identify features in web design that resulted in either user satisfaction or dissatisfaction. Founding their model on Herzberg’s hygiene-motivator theory, the theorists argued that “underlying goals for creating a motivating website are similar to those for creating a motivating workplace: to provide the conditions and environment that minimize user dissatisfaction and maximize user satisfaction by allowing them to focus on and achieve high task performance.”  This is not unlike Rosen and Purinton’s (2004) web as a cognitive landscape, in that the web is perceived as an environment users enter and develop preferences for within particular dimensions. However, Rosen and Purinton were concerned with cognitive dimensions, whereas Zhang and Von Dran focus on two distinct attitudinal dimensions—user satisfaction and user dissatisfaction—within the context of hygiene and motivator factors. Hygiene factors describe the presence of elements that make a website functional and serviceable and whose absence causes user dissatisfaction. An example of this would be links on a webpage—users will respond with frustration and dissatisfaction when there is malfunction. Motivator factors, on the other hand, describe elements that add value to the website by contributing to user satisfaction and can motivate a return visit. For example, a website that frequently uses video to accompany text stories and might increase satisfaction and motivate to a repeat visit. However, the absence video would not necessarily lead to dissatisfaction as long as hygiene factors are present.

The theorists argue that satisfaction and dissatisfaction are two different constructs rather than two values of the same dimension, which give the theory explanatory capabilities in evaluating the effectiveness of a website. They refer to Spool et al.’s (1999) study on the effective usability of information-rich websites as an example of how the two-factor model could help explain web usability findings. Spool et al. found that some websites reported to be liked were different from ones reported to be used successfully, thus it was concluded that a site design that users like and designing a site that is usable may be conflicting goals. However, according to the two-factor model, a site deemed usable, but not likeable suggests it may contain the necessary hygiene factors, but does not necessarily contain motivator factors. The latter factor would explain why users like or are satisfied with a site, apart from perception of usability. Under the two-factor model, usability and likeability are two separate goals, rather than conflicting goals.

Out of twelve subject-identified and tested categories, results from Zhang and Von Dran’s study identified Technical Aspects (features related to the basic functions of a website), Navigation (features related to moving around in a website), and Privacy & Security (features related to user privacy and access restrictions on a website) as hygiene categories perceived to contribute to user dissatisfaction if absent or inadequately provided on a website. Enjoyment (features making website enjoyable, entertaining, and fun) Cognitive Outcome (features related to learning while using a website), and Credibility (features related to website’s identity, reputation, and recognition) were identified as motivator factors. The identified motivator categories were more related to user interaction with a website, rather than just relevant to features of a website, suggesting the possibility of cognitive or emotional involvement during interaction. Zhang and Von Dran suggest these motivator categories contribute to user satisfaction with a website when they are present or considered.

Zhang and Von Dran’s found that the type of website affected how subjects judged hygiene/motivator factors. Entertainment websites were expected to be active, fun enjoyable, visually attractive with vivid colors and animation. “Serious” websites, such as e-commerce or financial news, were expected to have a reputation, accurate, up-to-date information, security, and privacy. Education sites were expected to have “accurate, factual, nonbiased, and richer materials.” This implies that hygiene and motivator factors could potentially be reversed for websites of NPOs whose missions, for example, require that they educate their audience about an issue and provide up-to-date news on a crisis.

Practical implications for website design and evaluation. Based on their results, Zhang and Von Dran observe a number of implications for web design and evaluation. First, web designers can minimize user dissatisfaction by providing hygiene factors as routine practice and as a prerequisite to motivator factors. Second, aware that the presence of hygiene factors alone do not result in user satisfaction, designers need to constantly identify and incorporate motivational factors in order to add cognitive and affective value to a website. Third, the theorists note the finding of a perceived time impact reported by subjects. Over time, perceived motivator factors change as technology improves, go out of common use, and aesthetic trends shift. Assuming validity of a time impact, designers would need to constantly study their users and update their designs in accordance with current user preferences and technology. Fourth, the type of website can have affect user perception on a factor’s hygiene/motivator characteristics. On that note, careful consideration would need to be given to the tone of voice and appearance of a nonprofit site in consideration of the mission circumstances. For example, a youth arts and education foundation might appropriately have a playful, colorful, light-hearted tone of voice and appearance, while a cancer research foundation would use less vivid colors and take on a more serious tone of voice.