Why non-profit websites lose out on donations. 
Research discovered these primary turn offs:
- 50% were usability problems relating to page and site design, including unintuitive information architecture, cluttered pages, and confusing workflow.
- On 13% of the sites, users couldn’t even find where to make a donation.
- 43% were content issues related to writing for the internet, including unclear or missing information and confusing terms.
- 8% of the time users simply disagreed with the organization’s approach.
Donation Process Usability testing found that the single biggest problem in the donation process was on websites that use third party payment systems. Websites that utilized e-commerce checkout had far less complications because users knew how to deal with the intuitive checkout process.
Non Monetary Contributions
Non-profit websites scored the lowest satisfactory rating in the usability study regarding non-monetary contributions. Information about how to donate physical items was difficult to find and rarely specific.
What You Can Do
- Make sure your site is easy to navigate. Don't make people think! Make it intuitive and obvious what you are wanting people to do.
- Writing for the internet is different than writing for print. When writing content for your website write in what is called "scannable text". Scannable text includes using bulleted, bolded, and highlighted text with headings so that the reader can quickly glance at or scan the text to get the overall point.
- Keep your website clean and free from clutter.
- Use a merchant account for donations instead of a third party payment system. Not sure how to set that up? That's what we're here for!
The SiteHatcher suport team is here to help you create a website that gets results for your non-profit organization.
