The landing page is often where online fundraising goes to die. You need to pay a lot of attention to getting that page right, and you might be surprised what "right" is.
Here's a start, from the KISSmetrics blog: 50 Ways To Seduce Your Web Visitors With Persuasive Landing Pages.
Here are some of those 50, the ones most suited to fundraising:
- Observe the rule of one. Do just one big thing on the page.
- Don’t be clever. Clever headlines often fail.
- Be urgent. Encourage people to act now by providing a deadline.
- Use the word you.
- Reduce your text.
- Use symbols of trust.
- Remove sidebars. When Conversion Rate Experts removed their right sidebar sign-ups increased by 25.9%.
- Remove top navigation. Removing your top navigation bar can increase sign-ups by 100%.
- Reduce barriers. Research suggests that fewer form fields increase signups.
- Stand out. Make your call to action button bigger, use a contrasting color, and increase your font size.
- Have your form above the fold.
Go check it out. They're all good.
Jeff Brooks has been serving the nonprofit community for more than 30 years and blogging about it since 2005. He considers fundraising the most noble of pursuits and hopes you'll join him in that opinion. You can reach him at jeff [at] jeff-brooks [dot] com. 
