Engaging Nonprofit Websites That Inspire Action

When we strategize about nonprofit websites for our clients, often the organization’s biggest goal is to get more donors, volunteers, and/or visitors in their doors. Most of the time, there’s a clear “Call to Action” button — a “Join” or “Donate” link that points to a relevant form. But is that first action enough? It might get them to click through. Then what? Clicking a button is not the same as actually engaging with the organization.

An often overlooked website metric is the “Form Abandonment Rate.” This measures how many of your visitors leave before actually hitting the submit button on a form. Looking at this data will tell you what’s really going on with your form, and if you need to make improvements.

High abandonment rates on forms generally stem from the form itself — the page visitors land on after they click through a call-to-action link. You need to give your stakeholders a reason to move forward and provide their information and/or donate.

In order to truly engage with visitors and inspire them to take action, there are two key pieces that must be clear and simple:

1) The “Why” Page

Pages that communicate benefits or personal impact get better results. People hesitate to submit forms when they rushed through without having any context for the ask.

6 out of 10 organizations did not provide a ‘strong’ reason to give on their donation page and 3 out of 10 organizations used no copy/text on their donation page at all. – Global Online Fundraising Scorecard by Salesforce.org and NextAfter Institute.

You don’t have to write a book. Even a simple grid of donation levels can be helpful. The mind doesn’t like complexity. It wants clarity and simplicity.

Examples:
This museum has multiple donor levels with different benefits for each one. Even though there’s a lot of important information to communicate here, the grid we created makes it easy for a potential member to quickly find which membership they wants and take action.

And in the below example, this land trust knows its audience of potential donors wants to learn specific details about the property they’re helping to conserve. We used a collapsed/expandable menu that makes it easy for each individual visitor to quickly see the most valuable information.

2) The Form Structure

Your form itself is how you gather data, but you can think of it as an important step in your visitors’ to engagement with your organization. The form should match where they are in their journey through your website. If it’s right on the home page, keep it short — a very easy first step, probably just asking for their name and email. Later, when they’ve gone deeper into your site and learned more about the organization, you can have forms that gather more information.

Throughout your site, all forms must be easy to use. Set one goal for your form and make sure the data gathered is ONLY supporting that goal. Donation forms that inspire action only ask for what they need, so think through when visitors are most likely to provide different pieces of information. You can always follow-up later as you deepen the relationship and offer more reasons “Why” they would want to share more info.

When you create a clear and simple page that both provides and collects the right amount of information at the right time, you get more engagement.

Contact us to think through how to make your website a powerful marketing & fundraising tool, or discover more on our Powerful Land Trust Websites page.