As online giving continues to bring in a significant amount of charitable gifts, nonprofits need to make sure they’re optimizing their website donation forms to receive the greatest amount of contributions possible.
When nonprofits can put together a form that is easy to read and understand, they may be able to increase donations with just a few tweaks. Many nonprofits have donation forms that are confusing and cluttered, decreasing the likelihood that they will receive the maximum amount of charitable gifts.
According to a report from Dunham and Company cited by John Haydon, 72 percent of organizations put buttons, menus, or other elements on landing pages that allow visitors to easily click away from giving forms to other parts of the website. Also, 1 out of 5 organizations don’t use a call to action on their landing pages and 80 percent are not optimized for mobile.
While these attributes may not seem like a big deal, a streamlined donation form that provides an incentive to donate and keeps contributors on the landing page long enough to complete the transaction can have a great impact on overall fundraising efforts.
A post from ClickZ outlined an experiment the website performed during the 2012 presidential election. According to NPR, the website said, President Barack Obama gained 350,000 contributions in February 2012. If his donation form had been optimized, the contribution rate could have increased 10 percent, increasing online fundraising by more than $1.5 million.
Small changes to online forms, like changing the color or size of the “donate now” button, can significantly increase their effectiveness. This is true of other online functions as well, such as grant applications. Process improvement comes from updating technology and thinking about the people who will be using these functions. Combining this point of view with technology upgrades can yield better results.
