Home(page) for the holidays | Weekly Roundup

• Can website visitors see the donate button on your homepage without scrolling? A new tool from Google Labs shows you what percentage of website users (on average) can see any given area of your page when they open it up in their browser. (Of course, there are those who would argue that it doesn’t really matter.)
• On Social Media Today, Angela Connor suggests making a new year’s resolution to fight online overload by opting out of email lists and communities that aren’t helpful to you anymore. Good advice, and also an important reminder to think about your nonprofit’s email strategy. If one of your subscribers were to go through her inbox ready to hit the “unsubscribe” button, would your emails be interesting, engaging, and helpful enough to survive the purge?
• You know your organization should think about doing more in social media. But your staff is already too busy. Can’t you just bring in an expert to do the tweeting? On Social Media Explorer, Chris Garret speaks to the pros and cons of social media outsourcing. The bottom line: don’t outsource your relationships.
• When a visitor to your site clicks on a broken link or mistypes a page address, what do they see? If it’s the standard “page not found” message that your server automatically displays, you’re missing out on a fun and easy opportunity to showcase your brand. For examples and tips on making the most of your 404 Error pages, check out Heather Gardner-Madras’s post on the Idealware blog.
• In this season of Black Friday sales and mile-long wish lists, one nonprofit fundraising campaign invites you to take a stand against shopping: choose an item, don’t buy it, and donate the money you would have spent instead.

A weekly roundup of interesting reads from the online world of nonprofit communications. Check out my Delicious bookmarks for more noteworthy links.