Did you know: 17% of visitors to Charity web sites cannot find the donation page. Up to 90% of people visiting your Non Profit donation page may be leaving without making a donation. Optimizing your home page and donation page can lead to very large increases in online donations with no marketing spend. Some studies, tests & results

1. Optimizing Your Website
for Online Giving
Fundraising Ireland, July 1st 2009
Eugene Flynn, 54 Degrees
eugeneflynn@54degrees.com
www.twitter.com/eugeneflynn
www.54degrees.com

2. Let's look at the landscape
SVP has reported an increase of almost 400% in online
Giving in 2008 compared to 2007 - * Source SVP
Broadband Subscriptions reached 1,272,166 in June
2009. This represents a 28.2% increase on Q1 2008 -
* Source Comreg
In 2008, 36% of Irish People Shopped Online
Compared to just 14% 2004
EU Average is 32%
* Source Eurostat
Internet Advertising Grew by 17.1% in 2008
Other Advertising Chanells fell. * Source IAB

3. What We'll Look At Today
• Donor Expectations
• Effective Donation Pages
• Online Event Fundraising - Getting the most
from your online fundraisers

4. Are You Listening to Your Donors?

5. Donor Expectations
What Potential Donors Look For on a Charity Web Site
The organization's mission, goals, objectives, and work.
How it uses donations and contributions.
Insights
"Only 43% of the sites studied answered the first question on their
homepage"
"a ridiculously low 4% answered the second question on the homepage"
* Source: Donation Usability: Increasing Online Giving to Non-Profits and Charities, Jacob Nielsen

6. Donor Expectations
Reasons Given for Not Donating
47% decided not to donate because of confusing navigation, cluttered
design, and/or confusing flow from page to page
17% of people couldn't locate the donate button due to 'banner
blindness' and 'over-formatting'
53% related to content. Unclear titles and terms along with missing
information
Lessons
Design intuitive, clutter free easy to use websites with simple language
that answers your donors' prime questions about your organization's
mission, objectives, values, & demonstrates how their donation will be
used.
* Source: Donation Usability: Increasing Online Giving to Non-Profits and Charities, Jacob Nielsen

7. How Do You Use Donations?

8. Your Mission

9. Large Donate Button
A Big Donate Button is Important,
but make sure you offer other ways to give in your Main Navigation

10. Clear Calls to Action

11. Prominent Email Capture
Not all visitors will be convinced to give a
contribution straight away.
Ensure you give them easy alternatives to engage &
then work on your relationship.

12. Poor Design is Expensive
A Badly Designed Donation Page Will Confuse & Lose
Donors.
On Some Web Sites - Up to 90% of prospective donors who
visit your donation page are leaving without making a
donation*
Do You Know How Much Your Donation Page is Costing You ?
* Source, Donor Digital

13. • Size DOES matter: Bigger donate buttons helped convert
more donors
• Color can matter too: A vividly colored donation button can
strongly boost donation page conversion…
• Less is more: Removing unnecessary fields from the
personal information form significantly increased conversion
rate
• Small Changes Can Make a Big Difference - Removing the
title and suffix boxes from the donation form generated over a
30% lift in conversion rate.
*Source: Amnesty International USA, Donor Digital

14. Why You Should Test Donation Pages?
• Small changes can make a big difference to
the level of donations your receive online. If
you increase your conversion rate from 40%
to 80% you have effectively doubled your
online donations for a small investment.
• It's a lot cheaper than increasing visitor
traffic & you do not incur any additional
spend on Marketing

15. What Should You Test?
Page Heading
Introductory Copy
Donation Amounts
Form Layout
Field Labels & Field Prompts
Number of Fields
Buttons Size & Colour
Button Text
Security Assurances
Privacy Assurances

16. Case Study - Irish Red Cross
Problem:
Regular Giving Page Conversion rate = 40%
What We Did:
Tested, Redesigned, Tested etc.
How We Tested:
Observed a small number of users interacting with the site
Used Google Analytics & Website Optimizer to Measure
Results

17. What We Tested
Introductory Text & Security Assurances

18. Donation Amount String
Before

19. Donation Amount String
After

20. Required Fields
Before:

21. Required Fields
After:

22. Results, Lessons & Next Steps
Conversion Rate increased from 40% to 75%.
Next Steps
We Will Continue to monitor & Test
Will Review Other Donation Forms
What We Could Test
Different Gift Amount Strings
Removing Unecessary Fields

23. Say Thank You

24. Say Thank You in Style

25. No Need To Reinvent the Wheel
Offline Fundraising Tactics Can Work Online

26. O Event E v id en ce Pages
th er Fundraising
Getting the most from your online fundraisers

27. Search Engines Are Important
• John wanted to take part in the Beijing Marathon for Charity so he
consulted his reliable friend Google.
• Google Introduced his old friend Beaumont Hospital

28. Friends are Important
John raised almost €4,000
online without any need for
Staff to get involved....
The following year he came
back & raised almost
€15,000 with 3 friends
He Introduced over 150 New
Donors

29. Getting Your Fundraisers Online
• Ask them - in person, direct
mail, phone calls
• Hold technology Workshops
- how to sign up & raise
money online?
• Demonstrate that it saves you
money
• Demonstrate that they can
easily raise money online

30. Use Email & Phone to Motivate
• Upon Registration, Thanks
for signing up, here are some
tips
• Half Way, You're doing great,
is there anything we can do to
help?
• Final Push - Deadline
approaching
• When they Reach their
Target Do you think you could
do better?

31. Thank You
Let our discussion continue
eugeneflynn@54degrees.com
www.54degrees.com
+353 71 9127434
www.twitter.com/eugeneflynn