TOPIC:

Hello Fellow Toastmasters,

Please evaluate our website for Toast on the Hill.

toastonthehill.toastmastersclubs.org/

Club number 4723864

We are a very new club, chartered in May of 2015.

Please be gentle! I have never designed a website before. Very open to suggestions for improvement.

Many thanks!

Emalynn

Emalynn,

One of the nice things about being evaluated by Toastmasters, is that should be able to expect honesty, given in a gentle manner.

Great cover photo! This is really a nice break from so many sites.

Great use of pictures on your club photo pages. Real members in real situations! Because you have multiple pages of pictures, maybe a "Back" link to the Club Photos Page at the bottom.

I am not sure why you have a separate club officers page, when all of the officers can be listed on the Meet Our Members page by uploading the photos and making them public. The advantage is that as officers change, you make a change in Membership Management and that page is updated. Some bios would be nice as well.

Your club calendar is up to date, but you can also link each post with your Meeting Directions page. The advantage of adding meetings using the agenda tool is that that link is provided. (Yes, you can use a blank agenda).

You should also add some banner messages, for both visitors and members.

Enhance your downloads by adding additional documents.

Logging in as an admin (Ambassadors can do that to help you), you should add more keywords on every custom page you create, to boost your search engine optimization. Check our documentation for additional help with this.

Add some color to your site, but be careful with overdoing it with something too bold. Take a peek at some of the other sites in this area of the forum to see some of the suggestions. Again, look at the documentation to see how to add color.

Occasionally, check your site for broken links (You don't have any) by using something like www.brokenlinkcheck.com/.

You have a great start, great job! Looking forward to seeing your site again.

Hi Emalynn,

Congratulations on your new club!

Your website home page looks dramatic, with the large picture, but I would recommend a bit of a change for best results.

I suggest reducing the size of the photo, or perhaps crop it down, to make room for more text. Try moving the text you have to the top, then adding another paragraph about Toastmasters, how it can help, maybe something about your club members. For more ideas, try searching for other TM clubs to see what they say about their clubs.

Also, some clubs put a group photo of their members, or some individual photos of members in action, on the home page or other pages. Again, the photos should be modest size to allow plenty of room for text.

Also, you can add additional custom pages on the website for special meetings, additional materials, more photos, etc.

regards,

George Marshall

Emalynn,

First of all, welcome to Toastmasters and to FreeToastHost!

I looked at your website... some thoughts, keeping in mind that you are a closed club....

1. Overall, you are off to a good start! Don't worry about the lack of website experience. That is what the FreeToastHost system is designed to assist with.

1. Although I like the scenic view on your home page, I strongly recommend putting one or more photos of club members on your home page in a meeting setting. (Preferably with smiling, welcoming faces.) You could do a group shot and/or you could take a photo of someone speaking at the lectern. The point of this is to show club members from your organization that non-members may already know... this helps with getting new members.

2. I would recommend a stronger value proposition (statement of benefits) on your home page than "We meet weekly to practice our presentation, public speaking and leadership skills." What are you committed to providing as a club that would make it worth LBL employees taking time out of their busy day to attend your meetings? If you are not certain about how to make a stronger value proposition statement, then I recommend looking at other TM club websites for ideas or at the TM Features, Benefits, and Values page.

3. Good job on the Meeting Info/Directions page!

4. Good that you have a contact # on your Contact Us form.

5. Good that you have officers listed on the Meet our Members page. It would help if you had photos shown for all the officers there. Also, a brief bio for each indicating why they joined the club and what they are getting out of it would be a big help. A good way to get the bio information is to just put together a short form with some prompting questions on it (e.g., "What are you getting out of Toastmasters?") that you can use to draft some short bio paragraphs for their profiles... just get permission to edit their member profiles and paste in the bio paragraphs. You enter the bio paragraphs so you do not have to wait on them to put them in their own profiles. (It is quicker and you can edit the paragraphs for length.) The reason for doing this is that it helps you get new members.
Keep in mind that you can edit any members profile from inside Membership Management so long as they do not block that.

6. Your other photo pages are nice, but as indicated above, I recommend having photos of people on your home page. People want to see people getting the benefits of the club.

7. I recommend getting acquainted with the agenda features. They are intended to save you time.

Overall, good job... keep it up!

Hello Emalynn;

I agree with what Roger said and I would like to add that you should add more content on your home page.

Again, check out the other sites in your area.

I do like the officers page, except if you keep that page, maybe put duties of each of the officers.

Check out my websites to see what I have done for example.

I believe that this could help motivate others to take on one of the roles.

I also agree with what Steve says too...

Great first start on the website! Keep at it!

Also, add links on home page to other pages, such as your photo page and possibly having a photo of either your officers or members receiving awards on your home page.

Hello Emalynn;

Great job on the web site so far.

I agree with the other comments I've seen here, and, even though I echo some of them, here's my two-cents worth:

1.Under "Site Administration" change the "Menu Style" to "Tabbed" - that will bring the "Members Only" tab up next to the "Main Menu" tab. This allows for more info on the tab frames without "hiding" the members tab. That reduces the need for members to scroll down to find it.

2. Add all of the officers to the "Meet our Members" page, including some comments and lose the "Officers" page. Encourage all members to be "public", emphasizing that phone numbers and email addresses are not shown. I believe the "bio" information is essential to use as it tells the browser something about the club. It doesn't really have to be biographical in nature. In our club I ask members to make this info about why they joined the club and/or how it has helped them. This is a good tool to aid in attracting new members (as in "They have a lot of members, must be a good club").

3. Reduce the size of the home page photo and insert a column next to it with other info. Consider adding buttons in that second column to replace the "Accordion" links at the bottom of the page. Those can be turned off using the " Default TM Information Panes" on the "Appearance" tab of "Site Administration". I created my own buttons to show those and put them in the column I added next to our meeting place photo and can supply the images for you if you'd like (I've attached one of them). I even added a button pointing to the TI page for our club's DCP status.

4. When you include a link to a video, set the "Target" to the "New Window" option. That way, when the video (or web page, whatever) opens it's in an independent window so that when the user exits they go back to the web page. When I looked at your President's message video and tried to back out, I lost the club web page and had to go looking for it again. The viewer could use the "Back" button to return to your page, but chances are that the casual visitor will just close the video page and lose your site, the go somewhere else and you've lost a viewer.

5. If you have someone that can video speeches at meetings you could have a separate web page to show them, either publicly or privately. If publicly then it's another good PR/Recruiting tool. If it's only (or even in addition to publicly) privately then it helps members judge their own performances.

You can see how I've implemented these ideas on my club's site at newalbanycommunicators.toastmastersclubs.org.

Glad to assist and hope you find my comments helpful.