Give your donor options
One of the unwritten rules of fundraising (although I’m writing them here) is to always give your donors options.
Options for everything:
- How much to give
- ways to make a payment
- Where your donation is spent.
And the McGrath foundation really does this. Their donation page has every possible option for how a donor can support their organisation. But it’s a lot to take in.
Donation pages that convert
But when website conversion rates are hovering under 2% and donation page conversions are under 5% in many instances, we need to keep it simple.
Donation amount suggestions are essential. And sure, give your donor options for how to pay, but don’t overwhelm them with too much.
For me that means giving them options for 1) how much they want to donate and 2) choice of how they want to make their donation.
And that’s it. Keep it simple.
Online payment options
To truly give your donors options, try to let them pay via their “usual” method – that means:
- Credit card
- PayPal
- Or from their bank account (Direct Debit or Bank Deposit).
Your aim should be to make it as easy and fast as possible for your donor to give you money.
And easy is what I know best and am comfortable with. So give it to me.
I don’t know about you, but I prefer to make payments online using my own money (mostly because I forget to pay off my credit card and have to pay interest and fees). So I use PayPal or a bank deposit (and I just recently discovered POLi).
But other people like to use their credit card – maybe they collect points or maybe it is just their habit.
My point is, I want options, but I have a usual way I like to pay.
Make sure your donation page allows me the option to use my usual way to pay.