Here’s a surprising truth for a lot of nonprofit organizations: the donate button on your website is a really big deal!
A good donation page is more than a pretty website: it can increase both your number of donors and the size of their donations.
More than half of donors worldwide prefer to give online with a credit or debit card, so your online donation page can’t just be an afterthought.
And it starts with your donate button.
Once someone goes to your website and clicks on the donate button, it can either provide donors with an inspiring and joyful experience, or it can frustrate them. Their experience directly relates to whether or not they give, or keep giving.
The bottom line? Your donation page can have a big impact on your revenue, positively or negatively.
What Can A Donation Page Do?
Can a donation page really make that big of a difference?
The answer is a wholehearted yes.
A nonprofit donation page that’s slow, clunky, and complicated simply doesn’t deliver the results that branded, embedded donation pages do. Nonprofits who don’t optimize their donation pages are missing out on dollars and donors.
Your donation page serves as the “home base” for online giving. Even if you make an appeal on social media, you’ll probably route it to your donation page. Your page will integrate with a payment processing tool like Stripe and Paypal to collect donations. A good donation page also:
- Inspires donors to give
- Connects fundraising to your mission
- Supports everyday giving and specific campaigns
Luckily, the best practices that make a nonprofit donation page work aren’t complicated or intimidating. With CauseVox, they don’t even require waiting on your IT person or becoming a tech wizard.
Why Should You Give Thought To Your Donation Page?
Nonprofit organizations fail at caring for their donors.
It may seem harsh, but it’s true.
Too often, nonprofits (and their board) choose to keep using clunky and out-of-date software that makes it hard for donors to give.
A poor or difficult giving experience tells your donors that their time, effort, and money isn’t valuable to your organization.
And, in turn, your organization ends up losing out on donations, because your donors are either unable to complete their donation, or their experience was difficult so they’ll think twice about donating in the future.
Why are you sacrificing your donor’s experience, and losing funds in the process?
It’s time to re-evaluate your website’s donation page.
A nonprofit organization’s donation page is more than a payment processing apparatus.
Nonprofits need to place more value on your donor’s experience and more emphasis on what a well thought-out donation page provides.
Bottom line? Donation pages should make it simple for anyone, on any device, to give in support of your nonprofit or charity.
Take your donation page to the next level and convert more donors with these donate button essentials.
When you invest in making your donation page a good experience, you raise more and you show your donors they matter.
What Makes A Good Donate Button?
In many cases, the donation page is the first look your prospective donors have at your organization. Put your best face forward on your donation page to show your current and prospective donors you’re worth the investment. A sloppy, ill-formatted, or non-persuasive “hub” won’t do much to convince people your cause is well-managed and worthy of a gift.
CauseVox makes your donation page look spectacular. You can add your branding and colors, no coding needed. Your donation form fields are customizable, so you can keep things simple while collecting the exact donor data you want. With an embedded pop-up donation form, your donors will stay on your website, without a jarring redirect to a third-party site.
And not only do CauseVox donation pages look spectacular, they’ve been designed with the user in mind. Simple? Check. Seamless? Check. An emphasis on the user experience? Check.
CauseVox donation pages are effective because they include these important elements.
1. Clear Direction To The User
Donors should know exactly where to click to give.
This means that a bold “Donate” (or similar message) button is a must-have. The donate button should be easy to see in the top navigation and stands out whether it’s the color, size or all of the above.
One of the biggest keys is that users should be able to donate no matter what page they’re on.
A large, easy-to-find donate button saves your donor time and prevents them from dealing with the frustration of digging through your website to find how they can give towards your mission.
2. It’s Embedded On Your Website
Also, to maintain consistency and provide donors the best experience, make sure your donation page keeps your donor on your website. Redirecting to a 3rd party page can impact the donor’s trust in your organization (especially if it’s unbranded) and lends to a poor donor experience.
When you use CauseVox’s embedded donation form, donors never leave your website. This makes donors feel more secure, since they remain with the organization they trust, rather than a third-party site they may not recognize. This security results in greater giving. According to NP Source, custom-branded embedded donation pages raise six times more money.
With CauseVox, you can embed your branded donation page on your website through a pop-up, or a new embeddable form directly on the page.
Unlike other clunky software platforms, this fundraising experience is a smooth one for the donor.
Having the donation page embedded directly onto your site means your donor feels confident they’re donating to your cause and your cause alone. This increases the likelihood of a recurring donation and lasting relationship; what every nonprofit organization wants.
3. Customization
Rez Refuge uses CauseVox to keep their brand consistent on their donation page. Custom-branded donation pages build trust with donors, and increase both the size of average gifts and likelihood that a donor will make a second one.
Use colors familiar to your donors, such as those in your logo or other marketing materials. Familiar branding and imagery are always helpful in ensuring consistency and accountability.
With CauseVox, you won’t need to call IT or learn to code to build your branded page–it’s very easy, even for non-techies.
Whenever possible, give your donors different options to choose from when making a donation. This can include recurring giving, suggested amount, customizable donation tiers with descriptions (suggested levels of giving), and pledge donations.
If you’re unsure about what options to include, pull your donor data and determine how many people give monthly and other statistics such as average gift amount.
By having donation tiers tied to impact, donors are more likely to make a donation based on the impact they can create, as opposed to a dollar amount. This often leads to larger donations, while helping donors feel like they’re making a difference for your mission.
We’ve recently added even more easy-to-use customization options to our donation form. Read about them here!
4. Mobile-Optimized And Mobile Payment Options
Donors are reaching your donation page from a variety of devices, from computers and laptops and tablets and cell phones. The problem is, each of these devices has different screen sizes, loading timeframes, and more. Make sure your donation page is simple for anyone who accesses it, regardless of what device they’re using.
About 65% of all donations that you get online will be on mobile, and mobile giving is only growing.
But, if your donation page isn’t optimized for mobile, you’ll lose out on those mobile donations and frustrate your donors in the process.
Be sure to make it easy for your donors to donate on any device. CauseVox now offers Paypal, Google Pay, and Apple Pay as mobile payment options for users.
Since donations by mobile are a growing trend, making that process easy and seamless is not only helpful for the donor, but also a way to ensure your organization receives donations from every kind of device.
5. Simple Donation Process
The more clicks and fields a donor has to fill out, the higher the likelihood that your donor won’t complete their donation.
Donors shouldn’t feel like giving through your donation form is a chore. So, the simpler you can make the experience, the better.
Eliminate fields you may not need, like postal address, and use a solution that makes their giving experience easy — and you’ll see a much higher conversion rate.
With CauseVox’s new donation page interface, users can make a donation in two steps, which makes the process of achieving donations super simple and seamless.
If donors have to wade through a clunky platform or multiple steps just to make a donation, chances are high they could get frustrated and leave your site before completing the transaction.
CauseVox’s donation page interface takes the guesswork out of the process and gets the donor from point A to point B in two simple steps.
6. Monthly Recurring Payment and Pledge Options
Monthly Recurring
If your donation form doesn’t have the ability for your donors to give monthly, you’re leaving a lot of money on the table.
Recurring donors give 42% more than one-time donors over the course of a year.
Plus, recurring donations keep your donor engaged.
If a donor is engaged with your mission, why wouldn’t you go after recurring donations? By selecting “monthly recurring” vs. “one-time” donors can make multiple donations with just one button, eliminating frustration and making it easy for donors to continually support your mission.
And if your donors are committing to give monthly, you’ll want to use a service that helps you retain donors.
If a donor’s credit card fails, CauseVox automatically sends emails to rescue lapsed recurring donors and give them a quick and easy way to update their card, helping prevent donor churn and help you continue raising more long-term.
Pledge Donations
As a separate option to recurring donations, you can use CauseVox’s state-of-the-art model for pledge donations. It allows donors to select or enter in a dollar amount, and commit to completing the gift through several monthly or annual installed payments. Like with recurring donations, their card on file will be automatically charged for each installed payment.
Data shows that 81% of active donors would increase their donation size and donate more often through online pledges.
See this article to learn more about pledge donations could revolutionize your fundraising model.
7. Integration With Paypal
When you use a simple PayPal donate button, you are unable to customize it to your liking. Donors are more likely to drop-off and not complete the transaction when they are taken to an unbranded page.
The exciting news is that CauseVox now offers an integration with PayPal that gives users a better experience than a simple PayPal “Donate” button would.
Our new donation form gives your donors access to more choices for the fastest transaction. Use flexible payments to:
- Allow donors to pay in many ways.
- Display up to three mobile wallet options per form: credit card and Apple/Google Pay for all gifts (one-time, monthly recurring and pledges), and PayPal for one-time gifts.
- Access a new, streamlined connection process between CauseVox and PayPal. It’s easy to connect and has a stronger, more reliable connection!
Through CauseVox Donation Pages, your donors will have a more fluid experience, and your nonprofit will receive more data. With more control over branding and donation tiers, CauseVox users have reported a 2x increase in funds raised and gift size when switching from using a simple PayPal “Donate” button.
8. Spend Less Time On Admin Tasks
Having a good donation page isn’t all about the front-end experience.
Your donation page solution should streamline administrative tasks for you, saving you time and effort.
Here’s a few things you’ll want to look out for when you’re considering how your donation page can benefit you:
- Easy donation data management and tracking. Your donation page should allow you to see donations as they come in, in real-time. Plus, it should be easy to access all your donation data, saving you and your team time and headaches.
- Integrations. Whenever possible, you should also ensure your donation page integrates with the other tools and applications you use, saving you time and effort while streamlining your donation process.
- Automatic receipting. You don’t want to have to worry about manually sending a receipt to every donor. Ensure your solution has automatic receipting, with the ability to edit the receipt so it’s up to tax-deductible standards.
- Fraud prevention. Across the internet, there’s been an increased number of security breaches, leaving many people’s cards vulnerable. Unfortunately, organizations are liable for any fraudulent charges made on their donation page. Be sure your solution has fraud prevention running in the background for you, helping you fundraise with confidence.
Looking for a solution?
CauseVox does all this for you, and more.
You don’t want your team to spend countless hours on administrative tasks that could be automated for you. CauseVox has an all-in-one solution that simplifies fundraising and frees up your time to spend on other necessary aspects of the organization.
- CauseVox’s donation pages will simplify your fundraising. You can add offline donations and keep track of donor activity and history with its easy-to-use digital fundraising reporting interface.
- CauseVox plays nicely with others, integrating with more than 1,500 tools. This frees up your time from manually transferring data, and helps streamline your process so you can focus on your donors.
- With CauseVox, you can create a customized receipt up to tax-deductible standards that will send automatically after a donation is made. You’ll save time from having to manually send receipts later.
- And CauseVox donation pages have advanced fraud detection built in, reducing the chance of fraudulent transactions appearing on your account.
Why CauseVox?
When tasked with evaluating platforms that would help their organization raise more with less effort, nonprofits have told us that they have chosen CauseVox because it helps them accomplish these goals:
- CauseVox offers personalized one-on-one support
At CauseVox, real people cheer you on and answer your questions, not robots. - CauseVox is optimized for mobile payments
Trends show that mobile giving is growing, and about 65% of all donations you get will be coming from mobile. With CauseVox, donors can easily make donations from any device. Donation pages are optimized for mobile payments and CauseVox now offers PayPal, Google,Apple Pay as payment options for users. - CauseVox platforms require less steps and fields for donors to fill out
With CauseVox’s new donation page interface, users can make a donation in two steps, which makes the process of achieving donations super simple and seamless. There are less steps and fields for donors to fill out, which increases the likelihood that they’ll complete their donation.
Drive More Donations With CauseVox
Your donation page and donate button have so much potential to improve your online fundraising, and we want you to feel excited about both.
CauseVox is here to help you create a donation page that converts more donors and raises more money, without a hassle or a headache.
Learn more about using CauseVox for your donation page.
Editor’s Note: This post was originally published in December 2019 and has been updated for freshness, accuracy, and comprehensiveness in May 2022.
