Rebuilding a Home (Page)

The site employs fly-out menus in the navigation, which Esslinger says can be cumbersome and is usually only necessary for sites that have an enormous amount of content, such as USAToday.com or ESPN.com. Street agrees that the feature is clunky and out of sync with the main navigation. The typography on the main menu buttons is thick, while the fly-out typography is small and plain. The fly-out menus also don’t align next to the menu buttons in a uniform way. Consistency is important to maintain a professional look on your site, he says.

Including prominent “volunteering” and “donate” buttons above the fold on the home page and each drill down page is excellent, but it takes three clicks to get to the donation page. And when visitors click on the “volunteering” button, they are taken to an intermediate page that includes another link to the downloadable volunteer form but no information about volunteering. Esslinger says if a visitor is interested in volunteering or donating, he should be taken directly to a page that allows him to immediately take action in one click.