How To Set Up A Donate Button On Your Website

Is your donate button kidnapping your donors?

Do they click on it and it takes them somewhere else? 

Suddenly, they’re on some third-party site or a weird generic payment form, wondering what happened. They’re supposed to give a bunch of personal information, but they don’t see anything from the organization they trust. 

Or is your donate button frustrating your donors? 

When they try to make a donation, does it take a long time? Do they have to enter the same information more than once, or create an entire login account to make their donation? Is the whole experience clunky and time-consuming? 

Or do you not have a donate button at all?

Do donors who want to make a gift have to hunt all over your website to figure out where to give? Are they giving up?

If any of these are the case, it’s time to improve your donate button. With CauseVox, it’s easy to do. 

Why Does The Donate Button Matter?

If you want to convert website visitors into donors, you have to make it easy for them to give. If you provide a smooth and simple giving experience, you’ll increase the chances that they’ll complete it by making a gift. 

On average, donations made on a branded donation form are 38% larger than contributions made through a generic PayPal page.

Changing your giving experience changes your results.

The Irish International Immigrant Center (IIIC) used to process donations through a generic PayPal landing page. It had no suggested donation amounts or meaningful information about their programs. It was clunky and out of date.

When the IIIC switched to branded, custom CauseVox donation page embedded on their website, they raised double the previous year’s online giving totals and increased their average gift size by $100. 

Now they have a “streamlined, donor-friendly page that we’re excited to direct our constituents to,” says Megan Miller, the development director at IIIC. “With minimal work, we’ve been able to increase our online giving, and know that there’s potential for us to grow and continue to develop new fundraising initiatives.”

It all starts with a donate button. 

Best Practices For Your Donate Button

When you add or improve a donate button on your website follow these best practices to make sure you’re giving your donors the best possible experience.

1. Put The Donate Button In Your Navigation

Make your donate button easy to find by putting it in your website’s navigation menu. If donors have to go looking for it, they may give up.

2. Link Directly To Your Donation Form

The fewer clicks it takes to donate the more likely it is that donors will finish the process. If your donate button sends them to another page, where they then have to click something else to get started making a donation, your process already has too many steps. Link your donate button directly to your donation form.

When you click on the IIIC’s donate button, this embedded pop-up immediately appears, and donors are on their way!

3. Un-Clunk Your Payment Process

There a lot of things PayPal is good for, but it’s not ideal for nonprofit donation processing. It’s clunky for you and for your donors, it doesn’t allow customization, and is out of date. 

When you have a customized donation page embedded right on your website, it’s easy to use, and the donation experience is smooth and painless. Donors don’t have to create accounts to give or worry if their funds are really reaching you.

CauseVox integrates seamlessly with Stripe for donation processing, keeping the entire donation process on your website and helping you access your funds quickly, as Stripe automatically deposits funds into your bank account on a 2-day rolling basis.

How To Set Up A Donate Button On Your Website

With CauseVox, it’s easy to put your donate button and donation form on your site. You can customize your form fields, add your logo and desired text, and create a form that looks like your organization.

We really can’t emphasize enough how easy embedding your CauseVox donation page into your WordPress site is. Here’s how it works:

1. You easily create your CauseVox donation page.
   Good idea! 
2. We provide the code to make it happen.
   Think of it as the secret recipe. 
3. You copy the code and put it on your website.
   You simply install the code, and you’re ready to go. It takes about 15 minutes, and we’ll walk you through it.
4. You change the link on your donate button to #donate to trigger the popup.
5. You have an embedded pop-up donation page!

Once you’ve got it, you can add it to any part of your website, link email campaigns directly to it, and more using the #donate link. Link it to your donate button, and voila, it will pop up when donors click on it. 

Seriously, Look How Easy It Is

If you can copy and paste, and access your website dashboard, you already have all the skills you need to install your CauseVox donation page. Don’t believe me?

Here’s an example of the install process for WordPress, but the process looks slightly different based on the platform you built your website on. 

It’s easy no matter what platform you use!

Step 1: Open your CauseVox account, and navigate to the “Embed Codes” tab in your Donation Page Settings.

Step 2: Select copy to clipboard and paste it onto your website right before the closing </head> tag.

Or, if you’re not the best person to embed the code on your website, you can select “Email Code” to send to your website administrator.

Step 3: In your WordPress account, Navigate to Plugins

.

Step 4: Search for Simple CSS and HTML and download plugin.

Step 5: In the plugin, navigate to the HTML section and paste in your embed code from CauseVox. Select “Update” to install.

Step 6: Once it’s installed, you can use link #donate anywhere on your website. Once the link to #donate is clicked, the donation page will pop up. 

Want A Closer Look?

When your donation button links to an embedded donation form, within your site, and without complicated payment processing, you’ll start to raise more. Book a 15-minute free consultation with Candace, and see how CauseVox can help you convert more donors with less clunkiness.