By Alan Sharpe, CFRE
The percentage of people who visit a website and get somewhere through the shopping cart process but eventually give up is around 59 percent.
So that means more than one out of every two visitors to a website has a credit card in hand and is ready to buy (or donate) but does not. They give up.
One of the culprits is distractions.
Different things distract different people. I suggest one thing you do not want to have on your donation page is a video or a video that people can watch that takes them outside of that page. If people get to your donate now page, you don’t want to have a video they can click that takes them to YouTube or MySpace or shows them another page on your website.
Consider the donation page for a human rights organization. On the left-hand side they have a link to News Releases, About Us, Publications, and Info by Country. They have all the Global Issues, like Torture, Women’s Rights, and Social Justice. Then you look further down, they have a Film Festival, Photo Galleries, and Audio/Video. They have all of these tantalizing things that a donor might glance at and think: “Oh, they have a photo gallery. I think I’ll click on that.” And they clicked right away from the donation page.
At the bottom of the same page they have a Bookstore, Press Contacts, and Financial Documents. They have all sorts of stuff that you can click on at the bottom of the page, and on the left of the page, and on the right of the page. Big mistake.
You want to remove anything that you think will distract a donor from making a donation. That includes graphics, videos, and navigation buttons that take them out of that page and somewhere else in your website, and any words, paragraphs, sentences, or phrases that take up the donors’ time and distract them from giving a gift.
If you’ve ever been involved in sales, you know that one of the cautions that you always receive as a salesperson is, “Don’t talk yourself out of a sale.” Some people do that. They give you the presentation, they show you what it is that they think you should buy, and then once you’ve agreed to buy it and you’re ready to buy they carry on talking and talking and talking and talking. And sometimes they’ll tell you something about the product that you hadn’t really thought about and hadn’t learned, and they talk you out of buying it.
Don’t to do that on your donation page. Ask for the donation. And only the donation. Then be quiet.
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