Five ways a nonprofit can improve online donation forms

Recently I’ve seen more and more valuable information about how to improve the online donation forms used by nonprofits. As you would expect not only is the donation form a key feature within a website for those who elect to support an organization but the efficiency of these pages can greatly impact nonprofit fundraising overall.

According to various studies donation forms that are confusing, slow to load or not optimized for mobile browsing are all likely to reduce the likelihood of a donor completing the transaction and/or donating less. Regardless of the size of your charity it’s important to take the time to assess how well your donation page works and what can be done to improve it and in turn rev up your fundraising. If you’ve yet to take the time to reassess your donation pages make it your priority this summer – either set up an internal team to review every aspect of these pages in terms of layout and functionality or gather the thoughts of volunteers who are ideally seeing the forms for the very first time.

1. Studies show that the less time it takes to complete a form online the better the conversion rate. Use your task force to measure the time it takes to complete the form and review if there are any unneccessary steps or whether certain elements of the form can be condensed to minimize the navigation within the form. Also take the time to independently review donation pages used by some other nonprofits – ask yourself what they do better, how long the process takes compared to your own and what could be incorporated within your own site.

2. Text heavy pages can hamper donation rates. Studies have also shown that pages that are 100% text can reduce the donation ratio/average donation amount. Adding images that are relevant to your cause can help foster engagement and improve conversions. In fact images placed above the content prove to be more valuable than images within the content or at the foot of the form.

3. Remove generic phrases and promote site/organizational security. Simple changes such as altering a ‘donate now’ to something such as ‘support cancer research’ (*the focus of your cause) improve conversion rates, as does the removal of any content that is generic when replaced by wording that is specifically aligned with your charity. The word ‘support’ is also apparently more attractive to visitors than ‘donate’. In addition donors are more likely to support a page that reminds them the nonprofit is verified or uses approvals from organizations such as Guidestar or Charity Navigator and if you use them be sure to link them.

An example of a clean mobile giving page

4. Simplify your form(s). Take the time to assess exactly which fields on your donor froms are truly needed for a donor to complete a donation. Determine the exact fields that are entirely mandatory to collect the donation online and remove the rest, even if your database requires additional information this can be acquired at a later time from your new donor. Each additional field needed to complete the donation impacts the conversion rate.

5. Mobile Friendly donor forms. As a rule of thumb if you are using the exact same forms for desktop and laptop visitors on your mobile pages they are likely costing you conversions. Invest the time to create donor forms that are tailor made for the mobile user – less text and smaller fill in forms will improve effectiveness and again less is more. Mobile use and site visits continue to grow and will in time constitute up to half of all online browsing so there is no better time than the present.

Considering how hard you work to build the awareness of your nonprofit via social media, email and online marketing it would be tragic to think that you might be losing some donor support due to your existing donation pages. Their are also a number of third-party vendors who will develop online fundraising pages and apps for you if needed. Take the time to review these simple steps and improve your donor forms as soon as you can and if you have other suggestions, ideas or questions let us know.

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Miratel Solutions is a Toronto call centre, eBusiness, and letter shop mail house specializing in professional fundraising services including inbound telephone fundraising, outbound telephone fundraising, online fundraising, lottery fundraising services, donation processing and receipting and direct mail fundraising services. We are committed to our CSR business values in all our business decisions  and advancing the missions of the nonprofits we proudly serve.