Tips to create the perfect donation landing page

Quality charity landing pages have a very strong connection with donation conversion rates and they need to be precisely built to be appealing, easy to use and instantly informative. Crafting the perfect donation landing page is a critical issue as so many potential donors abandon the charity at the landing page and that could deny you thousands of interactions and thousands in charity income.

Building a perfect landing page is rather tricky, though, but it mostly revolves around optimising the information and images you have. It’s not so much about adding more and more stuff, but instead about balancing the most important elements in tandem with each other to build a page which is optimal and focussed towards fundraising.

1) Optimise the page’s layout – keep it clean

The format of your page needs to be clean, precise and uncluttered. If there are too many distractions or too many objects to draw the eye, then people may not click through to the next donation stages. Cleaner formats are more appealing, allowing your images to breathe in their own space without conflicting in the space. An awesome example is Unicef’s website, which displays the key information over an emotive backdrop.

2) Use images optimally

The old cliché always rings true, because a picture really does speak a thousand words and through powerful imagery you can indicate your cause in a real, emotive manner. Communication through imagery has always been a strong medium for online pages as according to many studies, images captivate us more quickly than text. Images tell us a story in an instant, one which you’d need a whole paragraph to describe. On the whole, images are just far more evocative than text, so use images well to communicate your ideas in seconds. From Oxfam to Shelter, you’ll always see a powerful image on a landing page.

3) Make it easy to donate

The modern-day internet is so streamlined, just about everything is as quick and easy as possible. The sole purpose of this is pretty much to prevent us from intervening with ourselves when making a purchase! On Amazon, one click ordering means that you’ve ordered something before you’ve even really considered it and many sites are similar, removing every possible hurdle between you and clicking buy.

Chief product officer at e-commerce software provider BigCommerce Pty, Jimmy Duvall says: “Amazon’s one-click checkout provides a significant competitive advantage for its marketplace with an unparalleled customer experience and a near frictionless checkout experience.”

Of course, charities should apply this tactic too, and for greater ethical good than e-commerce sites! Streamlining the donation process means more people click through and it is really that simple. Crisis’ donation page is a great example, it displays donation amounts clearly and obviously and displays key information about the donations alongside for easy comprehension.

4) Include short, informative statements

Text is important but only in moderation. A charity makes an emotional appeal and text, though informative, is not the best medium to communicate this. Pages with too much text detract from their core message. Of course, some will want informative texts to read through, but this can be displayed on other pages rather than the landing page.

Parkinsons UK is a strong example, as it includes a strong and powerful statement ‘Our work is totally dependent on donations’. This instantly reinforces the idea that charities are formed by communities, for communities, and totally depend on the positive interaction of the public. It is the public which makes the difference through the charities stream and re-enforcing this positively is important. JustGiving’s landing page includes this statement ‘Make good things happen,

Join over 22 million people supporting charity and personal causes’ – it’s simple and effective at capturing community spirit, urging people to join positive movements that do make real differences.

Other informative statements might capture your charity’s current focus. For example, Age UK is currently working on getting the elderly to and from hospital and their landing page displays the text ‘Painful journeys: The Government needs to urgently review how older people travel to and from hospital.’ It’s a hard-hitting statement for sure, putting immediate context to the issue at hand which brings it right into focus.

5) Be direct

There is no point in shying away by making vague statements on your page that are airy fairy or lofty. Charity is about action and echoing this through direct statements urge people into donating more. Statements like ‘I want to give a monthly donation of’ uses simply directive language which urges people into action. Water Aid provides another direct statement, simply ‘Donate to WaterAid UK, Give to WaterAid – the UK’s dedicated water charity.’ it quickly sums up the charity’s focus along with an instruction to donate.

There is plenty of inspiration out there for creating the perfect donation landing page and with just a few steps you can transform yours into one which is focussed and hard-hitting, capturing potential donors. Charities must use every trick in the box to urge people to donate to good causes as charity giving has unfortunately gradually fallen in recent years.

Streamlining processes online is the only way to keep up with the competition, so optimising your landing page like the best do is key.