The year is 2045. The scene: a utopian nonprofit future where close to 100% of households are direct mail responsive, and #GivingTuesday has laid waste to both Black Friday and Cyber Monday.
The Sample family at 123 Test Street has received your year-end appeal mailing, and Mrs. Sample finds herself once again ready to make a very generous gift to your organization. She logs in to your website via her surgically implanted Google BrainLink™, credit card in hand. But when your landing page finally loads, Mrs. Sample is shock—shocked—at what she sees! Huge blocks of text. Images, videos, buttons and links in every corner of the page.
Oh, the humanity! All she wants to do is make a large cash gift, but alas, she doesn’t know where to click. “Maybe later,” she thinks to herself. Just like that, you’ve lost her. If only you had listened to your fundraising consultant way back in 2013 when he’d mentioned—oh, what was it—conversion process optimization? This whole ordeal could have been avoided.
Thank goodness there’s still time. Direct mail remains the single most important channel for driving philanthropic gifts, with many mail responders choosing to make their gifts online. While you’ve probably been testing various aspects of your mail packages for years, now is the time to start applying that same philosophy and attention to your website’s donation pages. In the same way a bad design decision on a printed reply form can suppress response, a poorly thought-out donation page could be driving away potential donors and costing your organization money.
First, our digital strategist conducts an audit of your website’s donation page to be sure it adheres to best-practices. We then make recommendations designed to increase page load times, reduce on-page clutter and distractions and direct the potential donor to the most important part of the page: the donate button! Once the donation page is converting donors at a favorable rate, we’ll begin implementing a series of tests with specific goals, such as increasing average gift or capturing monthly sustainers.
Have you ever looked at your website’s donation page analytics? You might be surprised at what you find. After electing to undertake an audit of their digital strategies, one Schultz & Williams client discovered that only 4% of visitors to their donation page actually made a gift. Six months later, following S&W’s conversion process optimization, that website is converting a much higher percentage of donation page visitors, and the average gift is up.
The trend is clear: some portion of direct mail response is moving online. As the number of nonprofits continues to climb and competition for donors and gifts grows, the strength of your website in combination with your other direct response channels could make or break your budget. Schultz & Williams can help you ensure that your donation page is as inviting and easy to use as the rest of your website.
