Sue Woodward at International Fellowship of Christians and Jews sent The Agitator a challenge.
She’s re-doing the organization’s website, and has been searching other orgs’ websites — fruitlessly — for what might be a model Donate page.
Her challenge to us, which we’re passing along to Agitator readers: “Find a decent, well organized, user friendly donation page.”
Says Sue:
“I have yet to find one that I think is a good, clear and concise donation page format. I didn’t find any that are using their API – rather still using a template from online donation providers.
They either:
- Require numerous clicks to make a gift (I counted one that took me four clicks!)
- Give you in ascending order at least 6 to 8 options to click their button and select your gift amount.
- Confuse the reader with loads of options using industry language understood only by those of us who write the copy.
- Either go with too many pictures and no explanation or too many words that just make you want to scream “How do I simply make a gift?”
- Try to list every option to give on the same donation page.
- Try to be a mini annual report.
- Put in links to annual reports, and other options taking the donor away from the page you just worked to get them to.
I could go on and on – but if you don’t believe me take a look yourselves. We are so worried about conversions and click throughs etc. that we forget to stop and look at what our constituent, site visitors and donors see. I bet many ask what the heck is a monthly gift, donating miles, donating points, donating duck eggs. Well you catch my drift.”
Yep, we catch your drift Sue. Nonprofit websites typically convert their visitors at the rate of 3-5% to any kind of interaction, let alone donating.
I have a site in mind that I’ll nominate in a bit.
But first let’s see what Agitator readers suggest. OK, readers, let’s find Sue a model Donate page … recommendations please.
Tom
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UGM.ca/donate
What do you think about this one?
For me it is one of the best donate pages I`ve seen: http://www.charitywater.org/donate/
we just launched our new website and our donations page is pretty fabulous, if I do say so!
There are plenty of bad donation pages, but also some very good ones, often the result of hard work, clear thinking, and extensive optimization testing. Check out these:
https://www.rescue.org/donate/make-a-donation_a
http://www.amnestyusa.org/donate-to-amnesty
https://my.care.org/site/Donation2?df_id=10541&10541.donation=form1&autologin=true
Nick Allen
I recommend the amnestyusa.org donation page.
http://www.warchild.org.uk/
Right now War Child has the best donation page – it’s the first page you land on as it is an urgent appeal for Syria.
For most thing, always see what they have done! Great site.
oops left off the address http://www.hollows.org.nz
charity water has a great one too
I like the FOCUS (Fellowship of Catholic university students) giving page for one particular reason: it gently leads people toward monthly giving rather than one-time giving. And monthly giving is the gold standard.
http://www.focus.org/give-now/
Another vote for Amnesty International
Check out Union Rescue Missions of LA’s site: http://urm.org/
The donation button is right up top on the homepage, and links immediately to the fast and easy donation page. From there, there is a sidebar on donating by mail, phone, donating stock, property and products and planned giving options. They make it quick, clear and easy to give to URM in a variety of ways.
I’d give my vote for Charity:Water for their clean design, their website in general is great.
I think instead of directing people to the donation landing pages we need to go to the charity’s landing page. That’s where most people will land: it’s important to consider how easy it is to make a donation from that first page. I also vote for the amnestyusa.org page, as the donate button is very clear, and the little drop down box with donate amount is brilliant.
COTA has over 1,000 of these donation pages, one for each current patient, all following the same format. This example represents the recent changes all the pages received resulting in online donations going from 25% of total donations to around 32% of total donations since April 1st when the first changes were made. Displaying the donation summary at the bottom of the page was enabled just last Friday.
http://cota.donorpages.com/PatientOnlineDonation/COTAforhayesk/
I will offer our website as a potential contestant.
http://www.childreninplacement.org
As the article mentions, it’s not just about the form, but the ease of the path to the form. I really love how http://naral.org/ not only has a large donate button upper right that leads directly to a form (no middle “ways to give page”) but they also have a “start your donation now” widget on the homepage where supporters can select the amount they want to give, which is then passed through to the full form. Very user friendly.
I might be biased but I think ours (Canadian Cancer Society Ontario) is pretty great.
http://www.cancer.ca/Ontario.aspx?sc_lang=en
There is a lot I like about the Nashville Rescue Mission landing page and donation pages. Really helps people walk through a conversion funnel that is based on their interests. Plus its pretty simple in its design and structure.
http://www.nashvillerescuemission.org/donate/
The analogue to the donate page in the commercial world is the online retailer’s order page. In my opinion you are looking in the wrong place. Why are NPs struggling so hard to re-invent the wheel! The “best” NPO donate page doesn’t hold a candle to the run-of-the-mill purchase or check-out pages of online retailers. Use these commercial sites as your model and you will “disrupt” the NP industry and have the best.
A recent favorite: https://www.livestrong.org/donation/
Best donation page is not created yet but there are lots of good examples that you can mash pieces.
I like the design and simplicity of panda.org’s donation page http://wwf.panda.org/how_you_can_help/support_wwf/donate/ filling the blanks in a kind of letter is better than fulfill the forms.
However, this page and the follow up process still need improvements.
1) I guess, for all of us, best option is monthly regular giving. If we offer single donation and monthly donation on the same page, visitors mostly tend to choose single. We should drive them to make regular donations. (separate donation pages are better always more useful than single donation page. (Making them separate is just matter of layout and design. panda.org offers both of them in single page ) I don’t know why they choose “invest” word instead of “donate” but I’m sure “donate” is better for most cultures.
2) Payment methods are of course crucial. Visitors should feel that this page is secure. SSL could be useful and it’s secure message should be given at the first look without need to scroll down.
3) As you mention many clicks to complete forms are let visitor to stop process. Finish all process in single page with less option
4) Donation pages should contain only support info I need for my application. If there is a link for another issue lead you other page, sure they will click and go away.
Support person contact is also important. Knowing that you are able to call or send an email to real person if you have a problem is a relief. panda.org example is great from that aspect.
Annual report, other information are issues for retention not recruitment.
5) End is the most important part which is missing in panda.org. After visitor complete all process and make donation they deserve a Your donation is successfully done & “thank you” message. On panda.org example; paypall inform donor that donation successfully done and turn back to wwf page. When you click you’ll see there is no thank you message. They lead you to “You can help!” page. http://wwf.panda.org/how_you_can_help/ . It makes me feel “Come on I just did.”
It would be better to see a thank you message and then what else I can do.
That’s all I can tell about the donation page’s but I would like to add my thoughts about convertion. It is not only about how great is your donation page. It’s more about whole web-site
On main page, without scrolling down, visitor should see “DONATE” button.
Subpages should always contain “Donate Now” button. On the right side where visitor can easily see without scroll down and also after visitor read all the content and get inspired. As like in offline world, also in online world, asking is the most important part to recruit a donor. If it’s hard to add asking to all pages just check google analytics and add donation ask to pages which are most visited.
After donor finish whole process for donations show them and inspiring thank you page and add tweet this, share on facebook buttons.
Create a clear tweet, facebook message that tell “….. need helps, I did, you should” with a link to donation page. Friends and followers will click and you’ll see the magic and be happy.
“Find a decent, well organized, user friendly donation page.” that was my challenge – first thanks to everyone that commented and provided suggestions.
My team and I have looked at them all – as well as Mike’s suggestion around commercial sites and went to several of the best – but I have to say the winner by far for us was the Kiwi site!
http://www.hollows.org.nz was clearly organized – promoted monthly giving in several places – and definately user friendly. With some slight adjustments for the American /Canadian markets I think we are good to go. Thanks again to everyone and especially to Anastasia. I promise to keep Tom and Roger updated on the donation page changes – so they can report back to each of you and other Agitator readers. Cheers!
Sue
Great question, Tom. It’s interesting how conversations like these in the digital arena keep coming back to personal opinions about what is best or what people like most.
Even with digital fundraising being around for as long as it has, I am surprised at how many hardened direct marketers STILL operate on feelings and subjective opinions about what they like when it comes to donation pages (or anything in digital, for that matter). In traditional media, those same direct marketers would never trust their opinions – they would use experience and expertise to inform hypotheses and then run strict testing to validate.
And yet today, I only know of a handful of nonprofits that are even doing limited A/B/n or multivariate testing online. The only reason I can think of this is that the technology seems complicated or their IT departments have told them it isn’t possible to test the way they want to. (This isn’t true of course – we’ve worked with nonprofits who previously thought testing wasn’t possible on their platforms, and we were able to successfully launch tests.)
Late last year we worked with a client to run A/B testing on several donation experience alternatives – the winning test panel performed 209% BETTER than the control. I blogged about that case study here: http://www.masterworks.com/blog/donation-page-upgrades-increase-conversion-by-over-200-.html
We did similar optimization testing for another client on a sign-up process for an event. We started with usability testing and combined those learnings with experience to create a new sign-up landing page. The new page performed 138.3% better than the original.
In both these examples, unfortunately I can’t share who the clients were due to confidentiality. But I would encourage all Agitator readers to adopt the same philosophy of controlled testing that has served our industry well for many years. It’s an opportunity for all of us to be better stewards of our resources and drive more mission impact.
Blessings!
Dave
I happen to like my organization’s online giving form. This form was created and is managed in-house.
We redesigned it about 1.5 years ago. It went from a four-page form to the form you see now.
We implemented the same form for our e-renewals (with pre-populated donor info) and doubled response rate and revenue… with no other changes to the e-renewal form.
The comments fields at the bottom of the form are uploaded to the donor’s record in our database.
We are constantly tweaking and improving the form and its functionality.
http://www.opb.org and click on the red “contribute now” button.
Oh, and feel free to make a contribution while you’re there!
I see this time and time again. No disrespect to Sue, but everyone wants the “answer” presented to them without having to do the work.
The reality is–someone else’s best practice on a donation page (or any landing page) isn’t necessarily the best practice for you.
Sue’s list does a good job of identifying usability pitfalls so common on non-profit donation pages. My suggestion is that she re-design her client’s page to fix fundamental problems:
- eliminating numerous ways to detour from the page
- cutting down on the number of steps
- eliminating non-essential questions
- re-writing unclear or lengthy copy to be succinct & easy to scan
- zeroing in on the top motivations for donors based on existing donor knowledge and incorporating it into headline/main copy
- replacing photos that don’t communicate value with those that do
- removing competing actions (or featuring a single secondary action)
- using social proof to give claims some credibility
- etc.
Then test the new design against the baseline to ensure the changes do no harm. Only testing will tell you what design works best for your audience. Everything else is just guessing.
I’ll throw out this one. Very clean & easy to give.
http://www.newmanconnection.com/
(They have some work to do on follow up with donors, but that is something I have already let them know about.)
charity: water comes to mind – in part because it is so often mentioned as an organization and/or site that is doing [many] things well – [and it just so happens that I like their look and feel too]. I don’t have adequate time to try and market/sell their donate page to Sue, but I’d be interested to hear her feedback and comments.
Also, I’m quite sure that I’ll be in good company suggesting charity: water as a model for consideration.
I would also venture to say – humbly and politely – that making an all out effort to find a page that Sue likes doesn’t mean we should all rush out to replicate her favorite. No page will please all of the people all of the time – and key objectives will drive very different donation page structure and flow. Simple with minimal clicks might help drive transactions and dollars while falling short on info/data that would help build donor loyalty and repeat gifts.
I looked at all of the recommended pages and found 5 that I thought were unique or especially well done. Some of the recommendations were for complicated, buried, or busy donation pages. I suggest that folks look at these 5 (in no particular order):
1. http://ugm.ca/donate
2. http://www.focus.org/give-now/
3. https://secure2.convio.net/cco/site/SPageServer?pagename=on_donationapi&s_locale=en_CA&s_src=Cancer.ca&utm_source=Cancer.ca&utm_medium=Header&utm_content=DonateOnline&utm_campaign=DONATIONS_ON
4. https://www.livestrong.org/donation/
5. https://secure.opb.org/contribute/
It’s really nice to see everyone getting excited about how create a good donation page. It’s something that can always be refined. I’ve worked in the UK charity sector for a number of years and know that some charities are very sophisticated when it comes to creating the perfect donation experience online. This is a great and very recent report that I don’t think anyone’s listed here – really recommend a read and hope it is helpful: http://www.nomensa.com/insights/creating-perfect-donation-experience