5 improvements to your website that will make a difference

User research by the Nielsen Norman Group shows us 5 Tips to Get Donations on Nonprofit and Charity Websites:

1. Clearly Explain What the Organization Does. ("On average, it took users about 6 minutes to locate information about the organization’s purpose, which was far too long. A task time of 1 minute for this crucial task would be a more reasonable goal....")
2. Disclose How Donations are Used. ("Those who couldn’t find the information were aggravated and thought the organization was inefficient or trying to bury those details.")
3. Display Third Party Endorsements.
4. Provide a Noticeable and Clear Link to Donate. ("...25% of the homepages included in our study failed to provide a Donate call to action.")
5. Streamline the Donation Process. ("Although the donation process requires less information than a typical e-commerce checkout process, it took longer for users to complete, on average.")

I don't think too many nonprofits would be surprised by these tips. But the number who don't achieve these best practices is discouraging.

Number five, especially. Over-complicated donation forms are the graveyard of online fundraising.