Donation forms that are easy to navigate result in more completed donations, recurring donation revenue, and donor retention. To achieve consistency across your fundraising campaigns, unite your online donation form with the same platform powering your online giving events, giving days, team, and peer-to-peer fundraising efforts. Read on for best practices to optimize your donation page and make the most of this essential fundraising tool.
1. Use the Mightycause Embeddable Donation Form
Mightycause’s embeddable donation form is a user-friendly, highly customizable form, that will help you take control of your checkout and keep donors on your website during the donation process.
The embeddable form will offer ALL of the best practice tips below to ensure a better user experience than competitor forms or a PayPal button.
2. Include a compelling reason to give.
Just because someone clicks through to your online donation page doesn’t mean you’ve secured their donation yet. Use your donation page to remind prospective donors why you’re fundraising and what your goal is. Include a brief description of your fundraising purpose at the top of the page and a compelling image that highlights your mission. Make sure to keep it short and sweet, you don’t want to distract a donor with too much ancillary content, just enough to help make their decision.
3. Describe the impact.
Donors don’t just want to donate money, they want to create an impact and make a difference. Be sure your form helps them to visualize the good that their gift will do. One key way to do this is by including a description alongside each donation level. For
example: What does $50 really mean in terms of tangible impact your organization can have? Donors may feel encouraged to give more when they see the difference they can make with a larger donation.
Suggested giving amounts give supporters an idea of the types of donations that will help your organization the most. Offer a range of suggested donation amounts on your giving page. Base the lowest amount on your median online donation amount, and set the other numbers at increasing intervals.
4. Brand your donation page.
Your nonprofit likely put a significant amount of time and effort into your brand. You chose your logo, colors, and fonts deliberately to reflect your organization’s mission and values. Then, you incorporated your branding throughout your marketing materials, such as your website, social media, and direct mail.
Similarly, your online donation page should also be fully branded to your organization, using your nonprofit’s logo, colors, font, and message.
A branded donation page reassures donors that they’re giving to your organization. Plus, it helps spread brand awareness and recognition.
5. Only ask for necessary information.
A long donation form can deter supporters from actually completing their donations. Keeping your donation form simple and short allows donors to fill out the form as quickly and easily as possible.
Only ask for the necessary information that you will need to process donors’ gifts, steward their gifts, and connect with them later to share more ways they can make an impact.
6. Make your donation form mobile responsive.
Mobile users make up a growing number of online donation transactions, meaning your online donation page must be mobile-friendly to reach their audience segment.
Our embeddable donation solutions are mobile-responsive, meaning they adjust to the size of the screen they are being viewed on. And that means that donors can donate anytime, anywhere, from any device. So, you’ll never lose a donation because your nonprofit donation page is hard for people to see on a smartphone or tablet.
7. Optimize your donation page for conversion.
Making your giving form “smart” and optimized can mean different things to different people. First, you’ll want to make sure your solution uses Browser autofill so that donors can quickly and easily enter their address and credit card that they likely have saved to their browsers. It’s surprising how often a donor may choose not to complete their gift if the site cannot access their browser’s saved information.
Beyond autofill capability, make sure you are offering multiple payment types within your checkout form to respond to donor’s preferences. Credit card may be the most common, but it’s only one commonly used payment type. Make sure your form includes additional options like Paypal, Venmo, ACH and others.
8. Enable recurring donations.
The average recurring donor will give 42% more in one year than those who give one-time gifts. Monthly donors also have a greater lifetime revenue per donor. So make sure you provide an option for donors to turn their one-time gifts into recurring donations on your donation page. It’s a consistent revenue stream, allows donors to give what’s comfortable for them, and automatically withdraws from donors’ accounts after implementation.
9. Embed your giving page into your website.
Avoid sending supporters to an unfamiliar third-party website or Paypal button to submit their donations by embedding your giving form directly into your website. Branded integration on a secure site will also help your supporters feel more comfortable giving you their sensitive payment information. Once you’ve embedded the form into your website, make sure you aren’t distracting or confusing the donor with too many choices on how to donate. Your Mightycause embeddable form should be the ONLY payment method available on your donation page. If you offer a Mightycause form, plus a paypal button, a link to your Amazon wishlish, options to write a check or leave a bequest, etc you’re providing too many choices which will confuse your donors and likely detract from conversion. Choose your most prominent channel for donations and make that the single action donors can take on the page.
Also, make sure you have a button on your navigation menu that follows the donor throughout your entire website with an accessible “donate” button linking to this page. You never want site visitors clicking around on your website trying to find your donation page. Find website inspiration here.
10. Optimize your Thank You page and Donation Receipt
Think beyond the transaction and customize the full exprience start to finish. When a donation is completed, donors will be sent to a Thank-you Page that can contain a customized message from your nonprofit. You can build your custom message in a simple text editor that allows you to add links, videos, images, and more.
Ensure your confirmation page includes:
- A heartfelt thank-you message
- Social sharing buttons
- Additional ways to get involved
Your confirmation page shouldn’t be the only place you thank donors—you should also send a follow-up email that can be used for tax purposes. One of the benefits of using Mightycause is that we handle distributing tax receipts to your donors, and your organization has the ability to add a customized message that gets included into that receipt.
Optimize Your Donation Page Today
Sign up for a Mightycause subscription plan to gain access to an embeddable donation form that incorporates all of these best practices. Easily integrate it onto your website and start maximizing your fundraising potential today.
Request a demo to learn more about upgrading your Mightycause plan.