Beginning web content management for a Non-Profit Organization: Audience Analysis

Hello Friends!

I hope you’ve had an opportunity to learn about Lutheran Social Services of Minnesota (LSS). They’ve organized services to help families, youth and people with disabilities since 1865.

Our writing class is working with this organization to help manage their website’s content for four lines of service. Our class divided into groups, and my group is developing a revision for LSS Host Homes for Adults with Disabilities.

My group is very fortunate to have so much content to work with, but we are still taking this assignment very seriously. We’ve been analyzing the site’s audience to determine what type of content can deliver the message LSS desires.

Our goal is to encourage people to become Host Home providers. Our design should provide enough information to let viewers make an informed decision to get involved, and most importantly, create a site they can find and use. We began the creative process with a little science…

Audience analysis was fun and heartwarming. We reached out to current Host Home providers and interviewed them about what motivated them to become involved. We asked many questions and no two interviews were the same. After our group gathered normative knowledge on the service, we compiled the data into three deliverables: Personas, a Vignette and a Frequently Asked Questions list.

Our group used these audience analysis tools to guide which pieces of content to include on the site. This gave us an idea about which details were most relevant at the beginning stages of becoming a Host Home provider. We gathered all the LSS pages related to our line of business and made a content analysis chart.

Content Analysis Chart

Finally, we made a preliminary site map to give a brief, visual representation of the pieces of content and provide a simplistic view of how they relate to one another. We are still working on our first draft of the site map, but I’ll share the preliminary map so you can get an idea.

Preliminary Site Map

So far, we are feeling very fortunate to have such great contacts to gather first-hand accounts of the Host Home experience. We are also thankful for the abundant amount of content on the LSS website, which is also very organized. The audience analysis and the content analysis do identify a couple areas we want to improve: search engine optimization (SEO), cutting down to essential messages, considerations for which content comes first, and moving the conversation ahead through related links.

The last point about moving the conversation ahead through related links is a topic I discussed with my classmate, Christina. Her group is working to develop content for Host Homes for Youth Experiencing Homelessness. We were thinking about possibly linking our pages. Maybe a kind person wants to open their heart and their home to help, but they want to explore LSS services before making a decision about which service to choose?

These are all ideas we’re holding on to. For now, we have our hands full of links and headings…

Please comment below if you would like to know more, or if you have a good suggestion for my group’s project.