Test online donation forms to improve conversion rates

Fundraising | Becky Slack | 7 Apr 2008

Charities should spend their online budget on improving their direct debit conversion rates instead of buying banner ads, fundraisers at the latest Analysis in Fundraising Special Interest Group heard.

In a presentation on web analytics, Jason Potts, director of digital activities at THINK Consulting Solutions, said that he was surprised fundraisers don’t pay the same attention to online donation forms as they do to printed direct marketing materials, as to do so could dramatically increase the amount of donations they receive. He gave the example of one charity which had missed out on around £50,000 of extra revenue because it had failed to test a variety of forms.

“The website is the perfect medium to test this variability. It is pretty easy to configure a website so that every third visitor to a donation page is presented with a different version,” he said.

Potts also drew attention to how most charities have “way too much content” and advised them to use web analytics to identify the pages that no one visits. “If some content is not doing any good in driving donations – or is just not being read – why are you bothering to produce it?”

Who's Who: Becky Slack

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