TOPIC:

Please give us your honest assessment and feedback on what we can do to improve our website. Many guests find out about our club via our website.

Lake Ridge Toastmasters is a neighborhood / community club that is almost 23 years old and a President's Distinguished Club

lakeridge.toastmastersclubs.org

Thank you,
Davin Peterson, Webmaster

Davin,

Here is my evaluation. These are my opinions, and others may chime in with theirs. (I hope so.)

What I like about your website:

1. It is obviously more developed and well trafficked (from hit counter). As I note below, though, a more developed website can present a different set of challenges. However, you have a wealth of content on your website to work with.

2. Main Page Caption: "A President's Distinguished Club" Grabbed my attention. Also, "Only 48 of over 14,300 clubs worldwide have sustained the same top recognition level as this club." Grabbed my attention.

3. Section starting "Our Next Meeting Is: Wed, March 4, 2015" Let me check my schedule right now!

4. "For more than 22 years, using Toastmasters International (TI) Communication and Leadership programs, the Lake Ridge Toastmasters Club has been helping community members" ... Great elevator pitch! I did not have to scroll to see it! Awesome!

5. Your table of contents on your home page with strategic links. Awesome!

6. "Last Updated February 26, 2015" My impression: This is an active website... this club is thriving.

7. Meeting Info / Directions Page: Exterior photo of venue: yes! Google Map: yes! Synopsis of location: yes!

8. Social media links on home page.

8b. Contact Us page has phone numbers.

Possible Areas for Improvement:

9. Look at using a bit more color. Looks very plain white. (bland) Avoid really intense colors, though.

10. "Less is more." Here is your biggest challenge, I think: too much information / information overload. You need to look at moving some of the public content to members only (e.g., Adv Communications Manuals, Timer Tips), make some of it more hierarchical (child pages), rotate it (visible vs not-visible via unlisted pages), filter it out, etc. Not everything has to be on the menu. Some of it can be files that you link to. Some pages can just be reached via link. I think you need to use Google Analytics to determine which pages are actually getting viewed, and then move the rest out of the main website view to lessen the information overload.

11. "Club 8913 | Area 13 | Division A | District 29 | Region 7" on your Home Page. Who is this information for? If am a prospect, I do not know what that means, and I could care less about it. If you really need it, make the font smaller (not bold) and move it to the bottom out of view.

12. Table of contents section at bottom of home page. I clicked the icons at left and got nothing. Link those to pages, also. Last two rows reference pages but have no links.

13. Your meeting venue section of home page... put a link there to your Meeting Info/Directions page and indicate that they can click to get directions from where they are.

14. Meeting Info / Directions page. I do not see any directions link there on your Google Map that a meeting visitor could use to actually get directions to your meeting. Check it out. (You need to look at how you set up your Google map and the resulting embed code.)

15. Meet our Members (MOM) page - Photos only for a couple of officers. Some bios, but inconsistent. Lots of TM globes for photos.

16. Downloads page. Outdated information. Needs some more organization. Maybe also move some of your custom pages to files.

Overall, you have a really great website, and a lot of great content. The amount of information you are showing is your biggest challenge, but it is a good problem to have. I think you just to make some decisions on what to show and when, and then archive or rotate the rest.

I, too, think your menu is a bit long and that most of that material should be under the members only tab.

I like the pictures on the club news page--good stuff there. However, I recommend that you caption those pictures, or in the text refer to the picture. "Susan Jones (pictured right) received her ACB award from Club President Joe Smith ...)

Good idea to show a picture of your meeting place on the directions page. I plan to take a picture of our meeting place today for that purpose!

Linda Karalfa
VPM, Spokane Falls Club

Davin,

In order to continue to have this forum section be useful into the future, we need to request that everyone contribute to it.

Therefore, we are implementing "Get an evaluation, give an evaluation." . Basically, we are requesting those who have received a website evaluation give a Toastmasters style website evaluation for at least one other club that has requested an evaluation in this forum section. (You get to choose which club website to do the website evaluation for.) Just post your impressions: things you like about the website, and areas for improvement. Everyone has something to offer... just trust your instincts.

My first impression is that this is a clean and orderly site.

You have the club number in the banner. It is also listed on the homepage. I am not a fan of listing the number in the banner and since you have it there on the page, I would remove it from the banner.

The social links posted on the homepage are duplicates of what is in the social media menu. I would not duplicate them on the homepage.

I like that I know where this club is and when the next meeting is without clicking or scrolling.

Nice organized areas for guests, questions, etc.

I like seeing that the web site is current. The last updated date tells me that.

Meet Our Members
A good number of members listed, but more need to complete their bios.

Public Downloads
Good documents here are organized well.

Toastmasters Calendar of Events
I like this. I would change the link name to "Events" or "Events Calendar".

What is Toastmasters?
Nice!

The Best Toastmasters Club in the Entire Universe
Awesome! Love this!

Club Leadership History
I really like this. Nice history of the club. I find "[*Some achieved their DTM after serving as Club President]" unnecessary.

Jeff Gordon served a long term from July 2001 to December 2011. I think that may be an error.

I would leave off the months of the term. They are all July to June save the one year. I would list them as:
Karen Booker, DTM - 1997-98
Brent Stidley, DTM - 1998-99
Mike Manning, ATM - 1999-00
Jim Heeren, DTM - 2000-01
Jeff Gordon, DTM - 2001
Donna Bolton, AC/ATM-S - 2002
Sharyn Jarzombek, DTM - 2002-03

Club News
Good stuff

Club Officers
I find the link to the roles on TI.org unhelpful. I would make that a link directly to the Club Officer Handbook. I would also place that in the members section.

Club Photos
<grin>

You have LOTS of links in your menu. I recommend you group them together to reduce the number. For instance, a link for Lake Ridge could have Best Club, Leadership History, News, Officers, and Photos.

Under TI Program you could place What is Toastmasters?, Ed Program, Comm. Manual, Adv. Comm. Manual, CL manual, Features

Guest Meeting Expectations
Good page!

Guest Welcome Information
Another good page!

Meeting Roles, Icebreaker Hints, Timer Tips, Grammarian, TT links I think would work better in the members section.

What I left with is that this site has a ton of information. It is professionally-looking. The site is text-intensive. I would like to see more member photographs on the text-heavy pages to help lighten the reading load.

Social
FB has current content. Good!
Twitter: never a post
Google+: no profile, link just tkes me to G+
Meetup: Like this page a lot!

Hit Counter
I find hit counters a relic from the early days of the web. I do not think they add to the look of a web site.

Instead, using Google Analytics provides far better information about the traffic at your site and is invisible to the visitor.

Obviously this is a club worth attending. I would just organize the information to make it more manageable.

Hi Davin!

With over 750 unique visits, you have o be doing something right! Here are just a few suggestion of observations I made...

Where are all the people? Don't wait for someone to click on "Club News",. show them on the Home Page. You do have a lot of really good award photos THERE, but you may want to include one of someone delivering a speech. People will take note of "action photos".

There are a LOT of links in your menus. So much, it may be overwhelming to a visitor. Some of that information, like the "Icebreaker Hints", "Internet Sources" you could simply put into a pdf for public downloads. "About Lake Ridge TM" isn't enough info to warrant it's own page, you could include it somewhere else, and thereby consolidate some of your links.

The meeting place photo on the HOME PAGE is real tiny. I realize it is a thumbnail link, but if you remove some of the lines on the menu, people will more easily see "Meeting Place / Directions". The photo size is good there.

Social media; You have a two and a half year old Twitter, but there are no posts. It could serve as a funnel for visitors to your site. I was glad to see A LOT of activity on facebook. AND so many of the posts there use pictures. Great job! You may want to place some of THOSE pictures on home page.

I'm glad to see you have so much original content, that really good, but you may want to consolidate and pair it down a little.

Blaine, ACB
VPPR, TM1757

Liked your page very much. I think I would join your club, but the Google+ took me to my home page and not yours. I don't know why. There were no tweets on your Twitter page that I could find. Thanks for sharing it and I will check it out more thoroughly later to get ideas.