If you’re a non-profit webmaster, you probably look at your website all the time. After awhile, your eyes may begin to gloss over the details, including your Give button. For example, at a statewide non-profit, we had a Give tab in the main navigation of the website and a Give link in the footer of the page. I decided to review every page of text and include a PBS-style request for donations within the content of each page. For example, “This program is support by donors like you…Please make a gift today.”
But my eyes eventually landed on a strip of white space on the left side of our page templates. It included secondary navigation links, but seemed really underutilized. I wondered what would happen if I put a second Give button (and a third or fourth option to give, depending on the page) in that space.
Here’s what happened:
During the slowest time of year for online donations, revenue increased 182% period over period and 54% year over year. For a human services non-profit, these numbers were meaningful.
Here are some more stats:
Period over Period, which means, for example, this week over last:
- E-Commerce Conversion Rate: 120% improvement
- Transactions: 75% increase
- Average Order Value: 61% larger donations
Year over year, which means, for example, this week this year over this week last year:
- E-Commerce Conversion Rate: 24% improvement
- Transactions: 40% increase
- Average Order Value: 10% larger donations
I learned several lessons from this experiment.
First, that it’s always worthwhile to try to squeeze more conversions out of your website. The worst case scenario is that you test something like this for a week, see donations go down, and take down the additional Give button. The best case scenario is that you see all of your metrics go up and you serve more clients.
Second, that I needed to always be testing and looking at my digital assets with critical eyes. I needed to continually ask myself what can be tested, improved, utilized better, made easier for users, etc. I saw a number of Give options on each website, but our users obviously responded to an additional nudge. Now I know.
Have you tested something like this on your website? How did it go? Comment below – I’d love to hear your story.
