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Your nonprofit’s donation page is a critical touchpoint for prompting supporters to take action. This area of your nonprofit’s website directly affects your fundraising success and plays a major role in your efforts to build donor relationships.
However, a successful donation page must be optimized for usability and donor engagement. Let’s explore five donation page design strategies your nonprofit can employ to drive conversions and strengthen donor support.
1. Simplify the donation form
When you first built your donation page, you likely looked for user-friendly tools with ample editing capabilities.
Donors should have a similarly user-friendly experience when completing your donation page on the front end. Your form should be inclusive and accessible, offering the options necessary to easily make a unique donation. Optimize the form by:
- Limiting required fields: Keep the form as concise as possible, minimizing the number of fields that donors are required to complete. Required fields should include name, donation amount, the type of gift (one-time or recurring), and payment details.
- Offering suggested donation amounts: Simplify donors’ decision-making by offering suggested donation amounts as buttons on your form.
- Enabling autofill: Allow donors to automatically input their information into donation form fields by enabling autofill.
A streamlined donation process is crucial for maintaining audience engagement, but it’s just one element on the page. Using this clear structure allows you to get creative with other page elements, such as the surrounding text and calls to action. In these other areas of design, you can incorporate elements that turn page visitors into committed donors.
2. Incorporate your branding
Trust greatly influences a donor’s willingness to give, which is one reason your donation page should highlight your nonprofit’s branding. Reinforcing brand recognition instills trust in donors because your brand is the core of your nonprofit’s identity.
Incorporate key identifiers into your donation page to solidify brand recognition. NXUnite’s nonprofit branding guide lists the following as essential brand elements:
- Logo: Place your logo prominently at the top of your donation page to reinforce donors’ connections to your brand. Also, make sure the logo is linked to your website’s homepage so that donors can easily learn more about your organization by clicking on the logo.
- Color scheme: Bolster your brand identity by using primary and secondary brand colors throughout your donation page. Use these colors to draw attention to important elements, such as the donation amount and submit buttons. But pay attention to how you use branding colors in order to ensure proper color contrast to keep your site accessible.
- Typography: Use your official fonts for headings, body text, and buttons. Optimize the font size and spacing for legibility on desktop and mobile devices.
- Messaging: Represent your nonprofit’s voice and tone throughout the donation page by adjusting the language used in the body text and buttons. For example, your calls to action might reflect your brand messaging by using phrases such as, “Join The Fight” instead of “Submit Donation.”
Additionally, visual consistency with the rest of your website will further increase donor trust. When your donation page is cohesive with your other pages, donors will be reassured that they’re giving to the right organization.
3. Emphasize social proof and urgency
Beyond informing page visitors of your cause, your donation page can cultivate a sense of community and inspire action by showcasing the impact of donations. For example, displaying patient testimonials on a healthcare website demonstrates the organization’s impact and how much the community believes in its efforts.
Take a look at how the Boston Children’s Hospital achieves this:
Using compelling images and specific details about each patient, this page urges viewers to learn more about the organization’s work and drive it forward by contributing. Similarly, this website could lean into healthcare content marketing by promoting targeted educational content about relevant health topics and how the organization addresses them.
Along with creating a community, your donation page can also evoke feelings of urgency, motivating visitors to give immediately. Use countdown timers to highlight fundraising deadlines and visual illustrations of your goal progress to compel visitors to donate right away.
4. Offer other ways to get involved
There are numerous ways supporters can further your nonprofit’s work, from volunteering for your summer program to raising cause awareness on their personal social media accounts. While your donation page is meant to collect donations, offering other ways to get involved can increase your chances of gaining support from page visitors—whether they complete your donation form or not.
Without overcrowding your page or taking the focus away from your form fields, offer easy ways for page visitors to vary their support, including:
- Matching gift eligibility: Embed a matching gifts database on your donation page so donors can easily check their eligibility. They may be able to double their donation simply by checking the database before they leave your page!
- Communication sign-ups: Make it easy for donors to stay connected with your nonprofit using a prominent call-to-action button. Link the button to sign-up forms for your email newsletters or text communications so donors can stay in the loop.
- Social media icons: Include social media icons at the bottom of your donation page that link to your nonprofit’s feed. This is an easy way to put your social media accounts on donors’ radars and increase your followers.
Offering multiple involvement opportunities will capture more support for your nonprofit and increase donor trust in your organization. When your donation page includes requests for different types of support, page visitors will be reassured that your nonprofit isn’t just after their money.
5. Increase accessibility
While your donation page should contextualize your donation request with information about your nonprofit’s impact and the importance of donor support, be careful not to overload the page and compromise its speed. Fast loading speeds are critical to maintaining visitor engagement since donors will quickly lose interest in a page they can’t access.
Beyond speed, your page can be further optimized for accessibility by following the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG). These guidelines outline various standards for ensuring your website is accessible to everyone, including using sufficient color contrast and adding alt text to any images.
To check your donation page’s accessibility, Kanopi’s website maintenance guide recommends the following tools:
According to Kanopi’s guide, these tools identify issues with your page’s color contrast, headings, and other technical elements to ensure you don’t miss anything. However, manual accessibility tests are also essential to catch any issues that aren’t automatically noted. Using both automated and manual tests can ensure your efforts are as thorough as possible.
Wrapping Up
A well-designed donation page can easily enhance your nonprofit’s fundraising success. For more ideas, look to other websites from organizations in your vertical and observe how similar nonprofits structure their requests for support. Additionally, you can always ask for feedback from donors to better understand their experience with your website.