Currently 10% of charities’ donations are collected online but recent research by Jakob Neilsen has found that if charities’ websites provided better information, they would get far more donations. The main problem is that non-profits fail to provide the information that people need to make a decision about donating their money. Specifically charities are not providing clear details of:
- The organisation’s mission, goals, objectives, and work.
- How it uses donations and contributions.
But these are the main factors on which users base their decision to donate. To quote Jakob,
Sadly, only 43% of the sites we studied answered the first question on their homepage. Further, only a ridiculously low 4% answered the second question on the homepage. Although organizations typically provided these answers somewhere within the site, users often had problems finding this crucial information.
Where’s that donations button?
Sadly, on 17% of the sites, users couldn’t even find where to make a donation. That points to a big problem with the navigation and arrangement of content on the website.
The good news is that those people who decided to make a donation and actually located the right page, found the donation process to be simple and straightforward because these transactions systems are usually well-designed.
Take a look at your own nonprofit’s website
- check whether it provides information about your mission and how you use donations;
- put a link to your donations facility in a prominent position on every page;
- read more about the report on Donation Usability.
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