Is Your DONATE Button Super Easy for Donors to Find?

The Donor Attraction Letter

Wednesday, October 30, 2013

Your donors are busy people. And, for many, their attention spans are quite short, with this being especially true as the holiday season ramps up.

As marketing genius Seth Godin has pointed out, our target markets are often “lazy people in a hurry.”

We love our donors nonetheless, of course!

But, to better serve your donors and get them giving, you need to step into their busy, hurried and maybe even lazy shoes—–particularly as it relates to one of the most important parts of your website: your DONATE button.

When your donor clicks over to your site after getting your holiday appeal letter in the mail, or when she’s scrambling to make her year-end gift on December 31, you want to make it as EASY as possible for her to find your DONATE button.

If your organization already has a big, bold, beautiful DONATE button on the home page that’s well-placed and super easy to see, bravo! Your button is undoubtedly helping to convert more donors.

If not, I recommend you make this a TOP priority.

With a few simple changes to your home page, you can make sure that donors don’t abandon your site because of a buried, poorly-designed DONATE button. Here are some tips you can follow to make your button stand out, get lots of clicking action and increase your online giving:

TIP #1: Make it stand out visually.

When your donor clicks on your home page looking for your DONATE button, you want it to visually leap out off the page. Your site visitors should be able to find it almost instantaneously, within 2-3 seconds. Depending upon the design of your site, you can help make this happen by:

• Making it physically bigger than other parts of your site’s navigation. Research shows that size matters, with bigger DONATE buttons consistently converting more donors.
• Making it bolder with a different color than what the button is set against and putting the word DONATE in all caps.
• Using a larger and different font.
• Using plenty of white space around the button to set it apart from other site elements and make it more inviting to click on.

When your button stands out, it signals to visitors that your nonprofit needs and values individual gifts. On the flip side, if your button is small and hard to find, it can make a potential donor think that your organization doesn’t really need individual gifts all that much.

TIP #2: Place it prominently “above the fold.”

This means putting your button high enough so that it’s visible without any scrolling.

Based on eye tracking studies and donor behavior, you can get the best bang for your button buck by placing it in the top right header area. When we visit a site’s home page, we tend to first scan the top from left to right. Although some nonprofits use the left side, I recommend the right side since we don’t typically start on the left and stay there—–we usually keep going to the right, a better place for your donate call-to-action.

You’ll see many top-performing nonprofits put their DONATE buttons on the top right, including the Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson’s Research (a favorite site design of mine).

TIP #3: Keep it in the same place on every page.

Remember: Consistency is one of your best friends in donor communications.

Once you decide on placement of your DONATE button, keep it there. You want your donor to have confidence that she can always find that button easily every time she visits the home page.

And, when visitors are clicking around on other pages of your site, you want to make sure the DONATE button is right there with them. Place it on every page in the same spot as the home page.

The big takeaway is this:

Without a big, bold, beautiful DONATE button that’s easy to find on your site, you’re taking a risk of frustrating donors and losing online gifts. With your site likely to get a significant spike in visitors at the holidays and year-end, take time NOW to optimize your button so that your supporters can quickly see it, click it and make their donations.

Dedicated to helping you attract and keep your donors,

Jen Viano
Nonprofit Writer/Consultant
Editor, The Donor Attraction Letter

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