Research conducted by Fundraising Magazine has shown that 17 of the top 20 fundraising charities in the UK have ‘poor’ mobile website speed.
Using Google’s mobile website speed testing tool, Fundraising Magazine found that only three of the top 20 fundraising charities in the UK’s websites achieved either a “fair” or “good” rating when it came to mobile speed. The research also tested large fundraising charities websites in terms of overall mobile-friendliness as well as on desktop speed.
Separate Google research showed that “nearly half of all visitors” will leave a mobile site if the pages don’t load within three seconds, which means that charities who with poor mobile speeds could potentially be missing out on millions of pounds in donations.
The mobile website speed testing tool provided by Google scans websites looking for hindrances to usability such as font legibility, image optimisation, server response time and over-usage of plugins.
Ellie Hale, charity, marketing and PR lead at the Centre for the Acceleration of Social Technology, said: “Mobile fundraising is rapidly becoming one of the most popular forms of online giving and it will only continue to do so. Your website has to work on mobile devices.
“There is still a long way to go and a lot of charities are woefully unprepared, but at least there is more discussion about it and people have woken up to the need for mobile optimisation.”
Fundraising Magazine found that overall, charities have been making great strides in the last year to make their websites mobile-friendly. Fundraising found that 84 of the top 100 fundraising organisations in the UK had a mobile-friendly website in 2016, up from 73 in 2015.
Parkinson’s UK mobile optimised website saw ’24 per cent increase in income’
Parkinson’s UK has reported that a move to optimise its website for mobile has seen the charity’s digital income stream increase by 24 per cent.
Speaking to Fundraising Magazine, Julie Dodd, director of digital transformation and communication at Parkinson’s UK, said that year-on-year growth of digital-led income was up 20 per cent from 2015 to 2016, while giving to the organisation through digital platforms such as JustGiving was up by around nearly 10 per cent.
“We’re expecting that first 20 per cent to go up significantly again as a result of the new donation funnel improvements we’re currently making,” said Dodd.
This research comes from Fundraising Magazine’s main feature in its February issue. Subscribers to Fundraising Magazine can read the full article here.
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