The club home page

make the most of your home page

Club home page;

The home page is the most important. NOT because it is the page that people will go to automatically when they first visit your site (which it isn't), but because it is linked from EVERY page in your site and people are likely to go there as a second page if they found you via a search which took them to a sub-page. If the sub-page was interesting, they might see what else you have on offer - and the logical place to start is the page labelled 'home'.

• The home page should be brief and not require much scrolling down (if any).
• Many clubs have a 'tourist' style page, featuring local attractions and places of interest. Given that most of your visitors are likely to be fairly local (the ones that might be considered as potential Rotarians, anyway) is this necessary? They are likely to know these attractions already. They may not know about what your club does! So feature stories about your successes, donations to organisations, fabulous events etc.
• Keep the page updated regularly. At least once a month, in addition to the 'meeting details' information at the bottom of the home page, which changes weekly (if you've entered the information).
• Weekly meeting information. If you do a write-up of the meeting, aim it at non-Rotarians. 'In' jokes, Rotary acronyms (GSE, RIPE, PETS etc) confuse many - and not only non-Rotarians! The meeting facility automatically creates an archive of what your club has done, year by year. Given that the meeting is the cornerstone of Rotary - it should be an accurate reflection of what happens in your club. Would you join a club that appeared boring?
• Put photos that capture attention (yes, almost everybody hates the standard 'cheque presentation' photo - try to do one in a novel way if you must have one)
• Pictures of presidents in regalia don't do much for the public image!
• Put links direct to other pages, not write things like 'click on the photo galleries link on the left, then select XYZ gallery'. Also, don't name these links all as 'click here'. ('To see the photo galleries _click here_'). Most internet users already know that you click on links.