Presented By: Joseph Hall, Jr. Deputy Director, IT 2015 PAO ACADEMY - ORLANDO, FL. Maintaining an Effective Website to Showcase

Current Status of CAP Website Operations 2015 PAO ACADEMY - ORLANDO, FL.

Overview Overview CAP Branding Initiative Roles and Responsibilities of PAO with unit websites. Keys to Maintaining an Effective Website to Showcase Your Unit Website Demos and Exercise     The future of CAP website operations 2015 PAO ACADEMY - ORLANDO, FL.

Branding Initiative CAP Strategic Plan Goal 3.1: “Increase CAP’s brand awareness nationwide.” Effective CAP branding affects all priorities and goals outlined in the CAP Strategic Plan. A strong brand identity program is required to move beyond “America’s best kept secret.” 2015 PAO ACADEMY - ORLANDO, FL.

Maintaining an Effective Website to Showcase As a PAO, what are your roles and responsibilities when it comes to maintaining a wing/region website? 2015 PAO ACADEMY - ORLANDO, FL.

PAOs at the wing and region levels, in conjunction with the information technology officer and/or commander designee, will create and maintain their unit website in accordance with CAPR The PAO will have authority over the content of all web pages visible to the public and will keep the website accurate and current with assistance from other officers as is necessary. Information posted, unless timeless in content, will not be older than 6 months PAO ACADEMY - ORLANDO, FL. Maintaining an Effective Website to Showcase

Keys to Maintaining an Effective Website to Showcase Your Unit 2015 PAO ACADEMY - ORLANDO, FL. Clear Description of Civil Air Patrol's Mission/Purpose  Many of the visitors that will be arriving at the website will not be familiar with the organization. Upon arriving, they should be able to quickly get an idea of why the organization exists and a basic picture of what they do.  The full mission statement or purpose statement is sometimes part of an About Us page, but first time visitors to the home page should have an idea of why CAP exists without even visiting another page.  There are a number of different ways to help convey a message of mission or purpose on a home page. In some cases there will be a brief one or two sentence statement that is located in a prominent position. Photos and images can also help to communicate purpose.

Concise but Complete Information about Civil Air Patrol’s background  Once new visitors have arrived at the site and quickly determined that mission or purpose of the organization, if it is something that interests them, they may want to find out more details. Providing information about the history of the organization can be a great help for connecting on a deeper level with visitors.  Links back to the “About Section” of gocivilairpatol.com would be more ideal to ensure the same message is being presented PAO ACADEMY - ORLANDO, FL. Keys to Maintaining an Effective Website to Showcase Your Unit

­ 2015 PAO ACADEMY - ORLANDO, FL. Simplicity  Online users don’t have much of an attention span. Keep chunks of text to a minimum, use images (but don’t go overboard), and keep forms simple and easy to use. It may seem counterintuitive, but keeping your site simple and free of information overload will make your website seem more professional, not less. Keys to Maintaining an Effective Website to Showcase Your Unit

­ 2015 PAO ACADEMY - ORLANDO, FL. Clear Idea of the Sites Visitors and the Organization’s Audience  One of the difficult aspects of maintaining our websites is that we can have several different audiences, and the needs of each will vary. For example, one audience will include members, supporters, and volunteers who are all familiar with the organization and use the website to stay up-to-date.  Another audience includes individuals who are not familiar with the organization and are being introduced to it through the website. These people will generally be looking for information about what the organization does, why it exists, and hopefully how they can get involved.  The site must provide the necessary information and visitors will need to be able to easily find what they are looking for. Keys to Maintaining an Effective Website to Showcase Your Unit

2015 PAO ACADEMY - ORLANDO, FL. Photos of People Who are Impacted  Visitors like to see pictures of people that are being helped through their volunteer efforts. By including photos of the people who are benefiting from the work of the organization, it will provide a much more personal experience for website visitors. In addition to photos, some organizations include stories or testimonials on their site about the impact that is being made. This is a great way to encourage people to get involved because it is easier to see the results and how it is impacting real people, as opposed to simply seeing statistics. Keys to Maintaining an Effective Website to Showcase Your Unit

2015 PAO ACADEMY - ORLANDO, FL. Continual Updates  All the organization and ease of navigation in the world won’t do you much good if your site is out of date. Old information can be misleading or confusing. If your website is in need of updating, create a plan to do so, and stick with it. Keys to Maintaining an Effective Website to Showcase Your Unit

Contact Information  Your unit contact info should be readily accessible on every page of your website. Remember, if they can’t find what they’re looking for, chances are you just lost a prospective member. So in addition to having a page for your contact info, make sure your phone number, at the very least, is accessible at the bottom of every page PAO ACADEMY - ORLANDO, FL. Keys to Maintaining an Effective Website to Showcase Your Unit

News and Events Sections  In order to help visitors to stay up-to-date, to make the website more useful, and to add some dynamic content to the site that is changed frequently, it is a good practice to include an event calendar and news items. This way people can check the website to see what is coming up and participation should be improved. News items could be displayed through a blog or social media channels could be used for the interaction between the organization and visitors PAO ACADEMY - ORLANDO, FL. Keys to Maintaining an Effective Website to Showcase Your Unit

Website Demos of CAP Templates     PAO ACADEMY - ORLANDO, FL. Website Demos

Where do we go from here?? The Future of CAP website operations  The implementation of standardizing CAP website operations will be a huge undertaking but highly achievable!  Interim solution is to provide CAP website templates that will support freeware Content Management Solutions (CMS) like WordPress, Joomla and Drupal.  The ultimate goal is to provide units with a 3 rd party hosted CMS solution that resembles capmembers.com CMS, this will standardize a look across CAP websites, enhance CAP branding effort, ensure proper security protocols are in place to safeguard the content from vulnerabilities, and a backup process to make certain content is being backed up safely and available for continuity operations PAO ACADEMY - ORLANDO, FL.

Please complete the 2015 survey online for a chance to have your conference registration fee refunded CITIZENS SERVING COMMUNITIES Civil Air Patrol

Questions ?