Charities are potentially missing out on millions of pounds in online donations by not putting digital at the heart of their fundraising strategies.

Online behaviour of charity donors is changing. The British public increasingly depends on online resources and has high digital expectations of every organisation. In addition, viral campaigns such as #ALSicebucketchallenge can drive massive engagement and spikes in donations. In many instances, however, when people reach charity websites for more information or making a donation, they are let down. Many sites are difficult to navigate or don’t work hard enough to convert interest into support.

The four common failings of charity websites are:

1. Homepage optimisation

The page title is the most important ‘on page’ Search Engine Optimisation’ (SEO) signal. Yet, 42% of charities fail to optimise their homepage titles and risk a poor performance in search engines, as well as missed donations.

An optimised page title and correct mark up for the homepage will help charities in a variety of ways. It is essential in helping sites rank higher for a wide range of relevant search terms and for creating intelligible search snippets in Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs). It also influences the way the page is shown in tab titles of Internet browsers and when shared via social media.

Non-optimised page titles often reference just the charity name or include the keyword ‘home’. So unless the charity name equals the search term, people will have trouble finding the right website. On the other hand, a bespoke homepage title that includes a description of the charity or creates an emotional connection with a potential supporter will encourage conversation and clicks to the site.

2. Website page loading

According to Tagman research, every one-second delay in page load times results in 11% fewer page views and a 7% loss in conversions.

Let’s take the average donation size of £29 and average charity conversion rate of 3.96%. If we assume that if a charity website takes one more second to load, for every 400,000 unique visits each month, that charity could be missing out on up to £375,840 in donations every year.

It’s relatively easy to determine whether a site is running slow. Google also takes page load speeds into account for search rankings by assigning each website a speed score between 0-100 points. A score higher than 85 indicates a site is performing well. Anything below that would require improvements.

We found that only 10% of charities achieved a score of 80 or higher. 32 charities had a speed score of less than 60, which denotes poor page load speeds. With another 35% having scores in the 60s, there is a significant number of charities that can and should do much more to improve site speed to increase visitor engagement and donor conversion.

3. Donation buttons

Donation buttons need to be visible to work. Yet, 26 websites (20%) did not mention the word ‘donate’ on their homepage at all. Of those that do facilitate giving, the donation buttons are often not prominent enough to attract attention.

Every charity should make it simple for visitors to access the information they need and to donate, if they decide to do so. Yet too often, this dual requirement is not adequately reflected in homepage design. Site visitors need to be guided through the site and charities must tell them what they should do, in an obvious but not intrusive way.

Having multiple calls to action that encourage visitors to donate must be a key consideration for every charity.

4. Mobile websites

According to Google, 36% of all searches in the ‘Donations & Charitable Giving’ sector are now on mobile devices and this is forecast to continue to grow. However, almost 70% of the charities surveyed used the same template for their mobile, desktop and tablet sites.

For our own charity clients, on average 21% of all website sessions are on a mobile device. If we again take the average donation size of £29, unique monthly users totalling 400,000, and average mobile conversion rate of 0.2%, then on average mobile contributes around £58,000 in donations for our fictional charity each year. Charities that cater for a mobile audience and move to a responsive design will see conversion rates increase quite significantly.

Over 20% of all UK charity donations in the last 12 months were executed online. While charities spend significant sums of money on awareness and engagement campaigns, many unfortunately lose sight of their website’s role in securing donations.

By addressing the failings above, charities can future-proof their online strategies and collectively, potentially gain millions of pounds in online and mobile donations.

 

By Louise Burgess, COO of the equimedia Group. 

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