Six essential steps for optimising your online donation form

One of the best ways to increase charity donations online is by creating a good donation journey. An optimised donation journey makes it easy for donors to give as and when they want to, providing multiple payment options, simple signposting, and personalisation to meet individual supporter needs. 

Meeting donor needs is not a case of one-size-fits-all. Rather, charities must understand the motivations and online habits of their donors in order to offer them more options, more flexibility, and more convenience that convinces them to give. 

The donation form creates the crucible of your online fundraising process. Having a clear donate button on your charity website is great, but if the donation page itself turns people away due to lack of clarity, inaccessibility on different devices, or other issues, the donation conversion comes to a halt.  

But by simplifying and improving online giving experiences, charities can boost their fundraising revenue by significant amounts. By testing two different donation pages, in partnership with online donation solutions provider goDonate, the NSPCC increased regular giving by 28% and single donations by 13%. The charity also experienced a 90% reduction in communications by donors with questions and concerns about their online donation.   

Reviewing and adapting your donation page can seem like a daunting task. But there is help available. Adopting platforms such as goDonate enable charities to streamline their donation forms and improve the overall online donor experience without the need for large investment or in-depth technical knowledge.  

As the first online donation platform to launch Apple Pay for charities in the UK and voice donations through Amazon Alexa, goDonate understands the importance of continually innovating to give donors a seamless donation experience. Charities can find out more about how to optimise online giving at the ‘How to simplify donor journeys’ panel at Charity Digital’s Digital Fundraising Summit on 7th November.

Below, we explore six key tips from goDonate to help charities optimise their donation pages and raise more funds for their cause.  

How to optimise your donation page 

Making the donation process simple is the easiest way to boost the volume of your donations. Disability advocacy charity Scope, for example, saw a 40% increase in conversion as a result of streamlining their donation form through goDonate and also subsequently including digital wallets like Google Pay and Apple Pay. Two in five regular donations are made by methods other than Direct Debit, according to the 2024 goDonate Online Donations Insights report, meaning that offering a variety of donation options is crucial to help increase conversion success. 

Donors, just like consumers, have so many demands on their time and a quick, painless donation process will not only make it easier for them to donate the first time, but also make them more willing to return to give in the future.  

Factors charities should consider to make their donation page simpler and speedier include: 

More than half of all web traffic comes from mobile devices, according to Statista. This is particularly true of younger generations who use phones for socialising, consuming content, and various other aspects of everyday life, such as banking and healthcare. And indeed, many prefer to donate to charity digitally, too.  

Making donations easier via mobile is about striking while the iron is hot, helping donors of all ages to give at the time they are inspired to do so, and not making them wait until they can get to a computer. In a world where many of us use our phones to shop, to pay for public transport, and much, much more, being able to donate to a charity easily on a mobile is now essential.  

Having your own donation page via your website puts you in control of that experience. Being able to direct donors to your website donation pages – knowing that it’ll work on mobile too – encourages them to donate immediately. This will also help them to resonate with your charity and promotes onward supporter engagement, as they are far more likely to remember your cause at a later date. 

Personalisation is an incredibly helpful tool to help charities boost their fundraising. It helps charities reach donors according to where they are in their donation journey, interacting with them at the right time and creating personalised approaches that prioritise their experience and circumstances. Charities can target particular audiences with specific donation amounts according to, for example, their demographic information or previous giving history, or use certain wording or imagery that is known to resonate particularly with certain groups.  

It’s all about understanding your donors. Creating multiple campaigns to test or target groups more effectively can make your fundraising far more efficient and cost-effective. Creating campaign specific journeys, for instance, have a higher rate of conversion, according to goDonate. For example, a donation journey from the landing page to the thank you email should match the advert, email, or post they originally saw or clicked on, rather than, say, a campaign at Christmas raising funds for hot meals going through to a page talking about raising money for buying blankets. 

A/B testing is also a very useful way to determine what works well for different supporter groups, as we saw above for the NSPCC (goDonate has its own built-in A/B testing tool to make this easy).  

Perfecting the donor journey isn’t a finite exercise. Donor behaviours and motivations change over time and charities should track the right information to ensure their donor journeys are still performing as they should. Tracking donor motivation, such as which appeal or campaign donors clicked from and donor marketing consent, can be done by integrating donation data in your CRM system. CRM systems make it easier to get the full picture of your donors and inform your future fundraising strategies and campaigns.  

Platforms like goDonate offer Google Analytics tracking and CRM integration to ensure you have full visibility over supporter actions and can make informed improvements to the donor journey as needed.  

5. Reduce drop-off with thank you pages and emails 

Thank yous are a significant part of the donor journey. It gives donors confidence that their gift has gone to the right place and gives charities the chance to acknowledge the difference the donation will make to their mission. It also encourages donors to return to donate, knowing their donation is appreciated while giving charities a chance to reengage them with content about the cause.  

Automated, branded thank you emails can significantly enhance the donor experience, ensuring donors feel valued and reducing drop-off rates for future campaigns. Platforms like goDonate allow organisations to create customisable thank you emails that fit in with your brand and improve charity recall later down the line.  

6.    Trust and reliability 

The final step is one of the most important – trust. A donation to charity is an investment in helping your cause and the act of giving is an act of trust that the money will be used responsibly for those who need it most.  

When it comes to online payments especially, trust is essential. Donors want to be confident that their transactions are secure, trusting your organisation to look after their details. A branded, clear, smart-looking, and simple donation page can go a long way to building that trust but more needs to be done behind the scenes to protect the payment process.

Fundraising platforms can be helpful for this, with robust security measures in place to keep donors and charities protected. For instance, goDonate uses advanced payment technology to simplify the donation process while maintaining top-level security and taking away the headache of securely processing payments through a charity’s own website.