The Most Important Features of A High Performing Donation Page

Your donation page is actually a pretty big deal. With more than half of all donors worldwide preferring to give online, optimizing your donation page should be a top priority. While online donations probably aren’t your sole focus, it’s an integral part of a holistic fundraising strategy.

Whether it’s everyday giving or a specific campaign, your donation page serves as the central hub for online giving. When donors navigate to fill out an online donation form, you want to make sure it’s a joyful experience because this directly relates to whether or not they give, or choose to keep giving. 

In a nutshell, your donation page can have a big impact on your revenue. 

If you’re wondering how to improve your donation page, here’s some best practices and four important features to keep in mind:

1. Make Your Page Mobile-Friendly

<In 2018, mobile traffic made up 48% of all web traffic to nonprofit websites, surpassing desktop and tablet usage. Optimizing the mobile giving experience with a mobile-friendly donation page can help boost conversion rates. 

A mobile-friendly page will adjust for optimal viewing based on the user’s device. Generally, this means having things like a vertical layout or using a bigger font. To ensure that your fundraising page is ready for mobile, consider these 7 steps or see how your website stacks up using our mobile checklist grader.

With mobile fundraising on the rise, consider mobile payments that’ll let your supporters give via the touch of a button. Through services like Apple or Google Pay, you can minimize the amount of time donors would normally spend manually entering their payment information each time they give. 

Both options have their own authentication measures that a donor has to go through before their payment is approved. By making the donation process more secure, efficient, and convenient, get ready to see an increase in your conversion rate.

2. Provide An Option For Easy Monthly Recurring Giving

Another great feature on a high performing donation page is providing the donor with the option to select the frequency of their gifts and whether they would like to make their gift recurring. 

The goal of recurring gifts is to build a consistent base of donors who give to your organization on a regular (usually monthly or quarterly) basis. This helps to provide a predictable income stream towards your cause.

If your donation form isn’t equipped with an option to donate on a recurring basis, you’re leaving quite a bit of money on the table. After all, it’s easier and less costly to solicit from donors who have given to your cause previously than to start from scratch and cultivate new prospects. 

CauseVox makes setting up a recurring giving easy, and you can choose to make your page optimized for recurring giving by defaulting recurring donations. The user can always opt out and select a one-time gift if they choose, but most users don’t turn off recurring giving and let the app donate for them on a consistent basis.

Plus, if your donors are committing to give monthly, you’ll want to use a service that helps you retain donors.

If a donor’s credit card fails, CauseVox automatically sends emails to rescue lapsed recurring donors and give them a quick and easy way to update their card, helping prevent donor churn and help you continue raising more long-term.

Keep in mind that recurring donors give 42% more annually compared one-time donors. With the average monthly donation being around $52 per donor, that’s $624 over the course of the year! Long story short, recurring donations can add up pretty quickly.

3. Make Your Donation Process Quick And Easy

If your donation process is cumbersome, chances are that a visitor will leave your website without making a donation. In order to provide prospective donors with a pleasant and seamless experience, here are few best practices to consider:

• Make sure your donation button is easy to find. Try placing your donation button on  your website’s navigation bar. Make sure this button is visible by using an eye-catching color or a bold font. By placing an attention-grabbing “Donate” button on your website, you’re making it easy for your supporters to your donation page.
• Be consistent with your brand. With any donation page, make sure that the look and feel is consistent with your brand. Branded donation pages appear more trustworthy and reliable to donors, increasing the chances that they will complete their transaction. Consider the use of colors, images, and a call to action that’s unique to your organization and can be easily identified by your supporters. Remember, the goal of a donation page is to convert a visitor into a donor. 
• Simplify with fewer fields and fewer steps. While it’s tempting to collect as much information as you can get from your supporters all at once, asking for too much information creates additional steps that can bog down a potential donor, making them less apt to give and lowering your conversion rate. With that said, keep everything short and sweet by limiting the number of required fields. At the minimum, you will need contact and payment information from your donor to acknowledge their gift. 

Tip: Need some inspiration? Check out these 7 donation page examples to get the ball rolling. 

4. Consider Embedded Options

We don’t recommend simply redirecting your donors to another website or to a generic Paypal form because once they leave your website to complete their transaction, chances are that they won’t. 

Instead, use an embeddable donation page, to make giving easier and to keep donors on your website. With embeddable pages, you have a couple of great options and it really comes down to preference:

Pop-Up Forms

Pop-up forms, also commonly referred to as lightboxes, are an effective donor conversion strategy. These forms work by grabbing the viewer’s attention and directly asking them to donate. 

Here’s a few advantages worth noting about pop-ups donation pages: 

• The donation page pop-up can be triggered across any page on your website via a link. Have an donation ask across several pages? Just link your image, text, or button to trigger the donation page then and there — it’s great for quick call to actions (CTAs) on your website.
• Direct links let you automatically pop-up the donation page. Additionally, for email, social media, or any externally linked CTAs, you can direct people to a specific page with the donation page pre-loaded onto it to prompt a donation. For example, in an email, you may ask your donors to give to a specific program. You’d be able to link that program’s landing page with the donation page pre-loaded onto it to automatically prompt a donation. 
• It’s easy to embed. With one copy-paste of code onto your website, you’re all set to accept donations on any page. There’s no long development process or expensive implementation. You can embed the donation page and start receiving donations in minutes.

On-Page Embed Forms

Similar to pop-ups, on-page embeds are easy to embed and mobile optimized. Some advantages of on-page embeds to think about:

• Perfect for your Donation Landing Page on your website. If you want to provide more content around your form, and embedded donation page is a great fit. You can link your donation form to a landing page with an on-page form embed. This way, you can add in images and additional content that compels your donor to complete their donation.
• Great for existing CTAs. If you’re already linking to your donation landing page from emails, social media, and other pages on your website, the embedded donation page is an excellent option to continue driving people to one page to complete a donation.
• Easy embedding on any page. Of course, you’ll want to embed the form on your donation landing page, but you also may want to include a form on a program landing page. Embedding a donation form couldn’t be easier. You can easily copy the code onto your website, and place a small bit of code on any page you want the form to appear. Similar to pop-ups, there’s no long development process or expensive implementation. You can embed the donation page and start receiving donations in minutes.

CauseVox makes implementing embedding a donation page easy and seamless. To learn more about how our donation page embeds work, check this out.

5. Customize Donation Tiers

Did you know that including donation tiers can boost the average gift amount by 12%? Offering suggested donation amounts is a great way to increase online donations by taking out the guesswork for donors.

Along with pre-determined dollar amounts, each donation tier should include a brief sentence that helps your donor conceptualize what their gift will do. 

These benchmarks communicate impact and provide a level of transparency that can influence how much your donors are willing to give. For instance, the donor who had originally intended to donate $25 may decide to donate $100 after reading about how their donation will make a difference. 

For example, the IIIC saw a $100 average donation increase by creating donation tiers (levels of giving) and tying it to impact. 

Using CauseVox allows you can customize as many donation tiers as you’d like. For some practical tips and tricks, check our post on how to create donation tiers that drive donations. 

Why CauseVox?

Having a high performing donation page starts with having the right tools. With CauseVox, we’re here to help you create an effective clunk-free donation page that converts more donors and raise more money. Optimized for any device, you can offer your donors that joyful giving experience.

Get started today!