A nonprofit’s website needs to make it easy to find out more about their cause, to donate money, and to become more involved. It needs to make it easy for media contacts to find the information they need and the contact information of key personnel. And it needs to do all this in a way that’s inviting to the organization’s targeted donors and/or volunteers.

I recently received an e-mail that had me riveted from start to finish. It contained a true story about two men aboard US Airways flight 1549—the one that crash-landed into the Hudson River. Both passengers had regularly backed up their critical computer data. One did this by transferring info from his hard drive to a second computer, but he had taken both laptops on the plane. The other passenger had used an online backup service called Mozy (owned by EMC)…

For local and small businesses, high-production quality does not bring the customers (in fact high-production quality is as likely to alienate customers!). Traditional videographers will sniff at this, but it’s simple, down to earth production where your prospects can really see you that has the greatest impact. What you should be aiming for is a “good, but not too polished” result. As soon as it gets too polished you lose that personal connection with people and they’ll see it as just advertising.