Quick Ways to Grow Online Giving
Did you know that online giving increased by more than 12% in 2017?
According to research conducted by Blackbaud, overall giving in the United States grew approximately 4.1% on a year-over-year basis and Giving Tuesday alone grew 28 percent! Blackbaud’s 2017 charitable giving report also finds that online donations are currently responsible for 7.6% of total fundraising revenue – the highest ever reported and a positive sign for the emergence of digital giving over time. If your non-profit organization isn’t already focusing on increasing online donations, now is the time.
In case you don’t know it already, there is no wave of a magic wand that will allow you to pull an effective fundraising program out of thin air. But! there are some strategies you can experiment with to try to boost your donation volume. Keep reading for specific ways to grow online giving.
Drive Traffic
Increasing the volume of traffic to your donation checkout page will definitely help increase donations online. Here are two ways you can do this:
Increase traffic site-wide
If you want to increase site traffic, start blogging! Create outstanding and compelling content for a non-profit blog. You can then share your posts across all of your existing social channels for an omni-channel marketing approach. You will gradually grow search traffic as well. In order to build more traffic, you can focus on trying to increase overall traffic to your website or…
Get more visitors to click on your donate button
How do you optimize for clicks? Well, your donate button should be a key element of your website’s layout. Yes, it’s great to have a donate call-to-action displayed prominently above the fold, but it’s even more important to carry that donate button through to other pages of your site. Visitors should always only be one click away from arriving at your donation page and being able to make a contribution to your cause.
One other easy-to-implement strategy is A/B testing. This is a great tactic to find the optimal position, color, and text of your donate button. These are easy things to test for and easy, from a technical standpoint, to edit. Hopefully, testing and then changing your donation page will improve the click through rate and increase conversions. Oh, hey, that’s what the next section is all about!
Increase Conversions
Brand your donation form
Do not have just another generic donation form! Customize your donation form to match your website. Of course, that blue and white PayPal checkout page is perfectly functional but data shows that branded donation forms receive, on average, gifts that are 38% larger than those gifts made through an unbranded page. Plus, people who have donated through a branded page are 66% more likely to return and contribute again. Win win!
Optimize for mobile
Blackbaud’s most recent giving data reports that 21% of online donations were made on mobile devices last year! Qgiv found that mobile-responsive donation pages yield 34% more donations. More people are looking at your fundraising campaigns on mobile devices than ever before so providing a mobile-friendly experience should be a priority. Your emails, your website, and your donation landing page all need to be readable and usable on a smartphone.
To optimize for mobile, campaign materials need to feature easy-to-click links, clear text, and streamlined design. Site navigation needs to be simple so it’s easier for folks to contribute. The donation process should have the fewest number of steps possible and have as little typing required as possible. Increasing the efficiency of the checkout page will boost conversion rates and potentially increase average size gifts.
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Building awareness and familiarizing people with your organization and its mission is very important. But increasing your online giving conversions to increase that bottom line will allow you to create a larger impact. Online giving should be quick and easy. If the process of donating online isn’t convenient, you risk losing current and potential donors. Consider the above steps to increase your online giving conversions.
