Is Your Homepage Fall Ready?

Back to school, back in the woods—it’s fall, y’all! 🍂

Before you know it, you’ll be launching big programs and campaigns tied to major hunting and fishing openers or Farm Bill expiration, so right now might be the perfect opportunity to get ahead of the rush and perform a little a pre-season web update.

Give homepage visitors a taste of the excitement to come this fall with these simple swaps on your homepage:

🎨 Check your color palette. In a rapid review of major homepage images, take note of on-the-water blues that signal summer and swap in more leafy greens, yellows, oranges, browns, and reds.

🔍 Survey species. Major headlines and images should showcase what’s in season for your audience this fall, so start working in more turkeys, whitetails, elk, salmon, and steelhead. You can make swaps now or line up content to hit your homepage over the next few weeks.

🥵 Take your temperature. It may seem basic, but images of people in short-sleeves or heavy UV protection are going to feel out of step when the first cold snap hits. Folks who wait for fall all year long won’t mind if they see beanies and vaporous breath a few weeks early, though.

We all get busy making new webpages and posting content across our sites, so homepage health and freshness can absolutely get lost in the shuffle. But the homepage is also a foundational marketing product and first touchpoint for many new supporters—don’t let your summer promos whither there until October.

Bonus reminder: It might be time to change all those little birdie icons to the big X. This includes in menu bars, footers, email templates, welcome series, contact us pages, and printed marketing materials. Check that you have the latest version of all the other social icons, while you’re at it!

I don’t know about you, but I feel like the rest of the year is going to fly by. Who’s having Giving Tuesday and end-of-year fundraising meetings already? Is anybody Christmas shopping?? If so, please calm down. You’re making the rest of us really anxious.

See you next week,
KB

P.S. I’m signed up for Delivered, a free virtual conference on direct mail marketing slated for September 20-21, and there are some new nonprofit-focused sessions on the agenda, including one being presented by Chelsea Broderick of The Nature Conservancy. If this is at all up your alley, there is very little commitment required. Just register and attend the sessions you’re interested in. Did I mention it’s FREE ie within budget? Check it out.

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