Online fundraising begins with your web presence—plain and simple. A website is equally as important as a physical location for your organization this day in age. These days, an organization can survive and thrive by having only a website, without an actual physical location where a nonprofit is housed—via online donations.
For this reason, having an outstanding web presence is vital. Think of your website as your digital location—the URL is the street address and the background color or photo is the paint on the walls. In other words, your website should work in conjunction with whatever physical location you have. People should get the same feel for your organization whether they stumble upon your website, or walk in through your front door.
We care so much about our online presence for two reasons: awareness and fundraising. Inevitably one leads to the other. By informing your constituents without overwhelming them, you will maximize your online fundraising.
With all of that said, here are three tweaks you could make to your site right now that will improve your online fundraising:
Simplify Navigation
Cruise through your site’s navigation and keep track of how many clicks it’s taking you to get to any given page. A basic rule of thumb for navigation is that you should be able to get anywhere on your site in three clicks or less, but don’t get too crazy with your navigation menu bar. To keep your site’s navigation menu bar clean, it’s best to keep the clickable items to eight or less per drop-down.
Make Accessible to All
You may not have known this, but people with disabilities still view your site. For example, people who are blind use software that reads the texts on a web page by reading HTML codes and back-end tags. By making your site compliant with the ADA standards (American Disabilities Act), blind visitors can still check out your site and hear all of the content. (Check to see if your site is ADA-compliant.)
Optimize a Mobile Version
A recent fact sheet from Pew Research informs us that 60% of people who own a smartphone use it primarily to access the internet. This number proves the importance of making not only your web page mobile friendly, but also your mobile donation page. Having a mobile site doesn’t necessarily mean your donation form is optimized for mobile too. Test it for yourself. Is it functional? Is it easy? As for your web page, make sure all of your photos are the correct size and resolution, keep content short and sweet, and the design simple.
Two of our regular contributors, Jay Wilkinson and Jay Love, were recently hosted at a professional development training—where they discussed the “6 Steps to Never Losing Another Donor.” They covered donor retention tips, donor database best practices, website help and more. The session was a part of the Fundraising Fundamental series.
See the rest of the tips from Jay and Jay by following the link below:
5 Online Fundraising Tips You Can Start Today [Nonprofit Connect]
