Five “must haves” for every donation page

Are you leaving out the “must haves” on your donation pages?

If so, you could be leaving money on the table. And by money, I mean donations.

Why your conversion rates are as low as they are

People who visit your donation are feeling all unicorns and rainbows.

But then they have to go from that nice feeling to trying complete your donation form. That’s a pretty big emotional gap to leap across in a matter of seconds.

So naturally they hesitate.

This is why so many people click donation links, but only a few make donations.

What the heck are conversion rates?

A conversion rate essentially measures how well a marketing strategy converts people from:

  • Search visitors into email subscribers
  • Social media followers into email subscribers
  • Email subscribers into potential donors and volunteers
  • Potential donors and volunteers into actual donors and volunteers
  • Donors and volunteers into repeat donors and volunteers

Five “must haves” for every donation page

How effectively a donation page converts depends upon a number of factors, but often boil down to five “must haves”:

  1. Effective design––Generally speaking, your design should encourage action, not distraction. Highlight call-to-actions with colors that stand out, remove the sidebar, and experiment with button placement (sometimes below the fold works best!) Here are 18 other tips.
  2. A powerful story––Emotion puts people in motion. That’s why storytelling is essential for every donation page! Tell stories about real people. Stories that are urgent.
  3. A meaningful ask––People don’t like “submitting” or giving away their money. But they do like (and even love) being part of meaningful. Check out how World Vision invites people to be a part of a child’s life. sponsor a child
  4. Mobile design––There’s a lot to say about responsive design. But to summarize, make sure your donation pages look great on mobile.
  5. The right audience––If you’re simply blasting your entire email list with links to your donation page, you’ll turn people off. And your conversion rate will be crappy. If, however, you segment your list wisely, emailing only people who’ve signed a petition or watched a video about your campaign, you’ll have a solid conversion rate. Plus, you’ll lower your unsubscribe rate.

What’s your conversion rate?

The first thing you should do after reading this post is this: Start measuring conversion rates for your donation pages (if you haven’t done so yet).

You start by tracking how many visitors hit your conversion goal page (a “thank you” page), and divide that by the number of people who visited your donation page.

For example, if 1,000 people visit your donation page, and 100 hit the “thank you” page, your conversion rate is 10%.

100 people converted into donors. Is this good? That depends on how it compares to other pages and previous campaigns.

What do you think?

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