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Great Nonprofit Website Design Encourages Donations

 Great Nonprofit Website Design Encourages Donations

 

Increase your nonprofit website donations

Four Ways to Meet your Goals

Nonprofit website donations are critical to every nonprofit and your website needs to be able to accommodate these donations.

How can you build an online presence that not only enables, but encourages financial contributions from your supporters?

Here are 4 tactics your nonprofit website can use to accomplish just that.

1) Build Excitement

Your audience needs to understand what cause they’re supporting. That much is clear; but how can you communicate your core value and benefits in a world where our online attention span is at 8 seconds and shrinking?

The key: building excitement about your cause through effective visuals. Strategically placed images and videos can communicate your message much more effectively than any amount of text. A hero image, for example, sets the mood for the entirety of the content on a given page. If you need to explain more complex concepts, consider designing and placing infographics on your website.

2) Offer Reciprocity

Often, simply explaining your charitable cause is not enough. To be convinced that a financial contribution is the right thing to do, your audience may expect something – even intangible – in return.

It’s an outgrowth of the basic psychological concept of reciprocity, which guides much of our actions in everyday life. We’re more likely to take action and give up something if we receive something in return. We need to feel like what we gave was worth the effort.

For an increase in your nonprofit website donations, highlight the benefits, create an exclusive club, or allow your audience to better understand how their donations change the lives of not just the organization but society as a whole.  charity: water, for example, allows its audience to track exactly where their donations will be used and donors can keep up with the water well drilling process.

3) Streamline Your Navigation

Unfortunately, both of the above concepts matter little if your audience can’t find the spot to make their contribution. In other words, your web design and call to action need to be strategic enough to direct audience attention specifically to your donation page.

That means understanding users online behavior, and creating a sitemap and navigation that accommodates these behaviors. In addition, place ‘Donation’ call to action buttons throughout your website as short cuts.

 

4) Ensure Security

Https helps increase nonprofit website donationsFinally, as your users make their contribution, make sure to communicate the fact that their financial and personal information will be kept safe. Your website should include a security protocol, which your audience will notice by the lock symbol in their browsers’ URL field.

In addition, provide information on your website (linked on your donation pages) that explains exactly how your users’ personal information will be used. In other words, don’t scare your potential donors by loudly proclaiming THIS IS SAFE; instead, offer consistent logic as to why that’s the case.

However, if your website does not actively encourage donations, it may be time to go back to the drawing board. Your group likely survives on charitable contributions, and your nonprofit website donations should be the core mechanism through which you can accomplish that goal.

Fortunately, a few web design tweaks and you’re there.  The result? A successful web presence that helps your nonprofit make a difference for your community and volunteers.