I am so excited to be talking to you today about donation form design.
It might seem like a really silly topic to get excited
about, but it is one of my favorites,
and I have a lot to share with you today.
So let's just go ahead and get started.
If you are not familiar with me, my name is Abby.
I'm part of the team at Neon One.
And if you're not familiar with Neon One,
we are a software platform that provides fundraising tools and
services to nonprofits.
We have a lot of different tools and features that can
that are all aimed at making you a better,
more efficient fundraiser.
And one of those that we're gonna kinda touch on today is
our donation form, builder.
So just wanted to let you know whether you are using Neon One
and our donation form builder or whether you use something
completely different,
everything we talk about today is gonna be applicable to you,
and you are hopefully gonna leave today,
with some ideas for how you can make your donation page even better.
Before I really dig into it, though,
I do wanna lay out just a couple little housekeeping things.
I do hope you talk to me and ask questions.
I'm gonna be talking to you.
I'm gonna ask you to talk to me in the chat.
And the chat sometimes can move pretty quickly,
and I love that.
So do talk to me.
If you have questions, though,
please drop those questions in the q and a box.
When the chat really gets going,
I can frequently have a hard time keeping up with questions,
and I wanna make sure. I answer those for you.
So talk to me in the chat, use the q and a box for questions,
and I will do my level best to get to them at the end.
I do frequently get the question,
are am I gonna get the slides?
Can I have a recording? Can you send me a link to the resource?
The answer to all of those questions is yes.
I am recording this.
You will get an email from me tomorrow morning with a link to everything.
So if you have to leave today or if you wanna share this with
one of your colleagues, you'll get that email tomorrow,
and you will have access to everything right away.
Okay.
So who am I why am I talking to
you about donation page design and optimization?
I've been working in this industry,
in the nonprofit tech industry for a little over eleven years.
And most of that time, I have been focusing on donor
behavior, what donor preferences are,
and how they prefer to do things like donate to nonprofits.
So I'm gonna share a lot of different tools and tips with you.
And I am first, actually, before I get into that,
going to ask you
kind of where you are in this process.
How do you feel about your current donation page or your
donation pages if you have more than one?
So So let me know in the chat,
how do you feel about your current donation page?
Do you feel like they belong in a museum?
Are you like Tom here?
You just go marvel at how wonderful it is.
Should I have included it in this presentation?
Do you wanna make some updates too? Let me know. Okay.
Fairly good. Needs work. Basic. Good.
Needs a complete overhaul.
You know, I love a complete overhaul sometimes.
I like
okay.
Great.
So we're all on,
most of us here feel like there are some some opportunities to
make the donation page is a little better.
I have a couple chat,
that,
like,
you really are happy with what's going on,
you like your chat that you really are happy with what's
going on, you like yours, you just overhauled it.
Desiree, don't wanna talk about it.
If you have insights to share,
something that's worked with you,
please drop that in the chat too.
I wanna know about it.
What's working for you is gonna be useful to other people.
I love seeing that kind of collaboration. So okay.
We're all in in different places.
A lot of people here are ready to kind of make it a little
more aesthetically pleasing or aesthetically pleasing or just
overhaul it completely.
So
if you are in that camp,
I have a resource that I put together for you that you can
use after you leave this session and build your new page
or update it or completely start from scratch.
Let me copy this and drop it in the chat also.
And again, this resource is going to be included on the page that you
will receive a link to in tomorrow's follow-up email.
So I hope this is significant, to you.
I hope it makes your life easier.
I love doing a going through a checklist. I hope you do too.
So now let's talk about why this is such an important topic
and what you can do to make your donation form more compelling.
So
it sounds kind of silly.
Right?
If someone decides that they wanna give to your organization,
won't they just make a gift regardless of what your page looks like?
And the answer is possibly.
But not every person who lands on your donation
matter of fact, in twenty twenty,
some research from M and R. Benchmarks found that eight out
of ten people who visit a donation page won't actually
complete a gift.
So that's, you know, not the best statistic.
And, honestly, if we're being frank,
that number will never be zero.
Right? People are always gonna land on your page accidentally.
They're gonna land on your page because they're exploring your
your site, and they're just checking you out.
But you can take some steps to make your donation form more compelling.
You can take some steps to make your donation form,
useful to someone who's kinda deciding if they wanna give a gift,
Or if they are one of the people who has landed on your
page and they are a hundred percent ready to give,
you can use your donation form to reinforce that decision
and make it an enjoyable process.
So we're gonna look at some tips that you can do or use to do that.
The first thing we're gonna look at are some design choices
that you can make to improve your conversion rate.
If you are like me and you're like, I'm not a designer.
I don't know about doing any kind of design.
These are straightforward enough that I can do it.
I promise you can do it too.
Alright.
So to illustrate some of these best practices,
I'm gonna use this example donation form that I created.
So here are some,
key elements on this page,
and then I'll go into each of them in a little more detail.
The first thing to notice is up here,
the primary navigation has been removed.
So if you land on this, fictitious organization's website,
you can use the navigation menu to move through the website,
learn a little about this organization.
But when you land on the donation form, those links are gone.
There are also, if you notice, no links away from this
donation page anywhere else.
There is no newsletter sign up widget,
so there's no competing call to action.
There is no link to check out my Amazon wish list.
There is nothing on this page that would distract someone
from what I want them to do, which is to finish a gift.
When someone lands on this page,
instead of seeing those competing calls to action and
outbound links, they see one call to action, and it's this.
It's give the gift of the outdoors.
There's also a little short statement here about whoops.
There's a little short statement here about what their
gift will achieve when they give,
And that messaging here is reinforced by this image of
the kids that they'll support with their donation.
So this image lets them know not only that their gift will
have a measurable impact,
but it also helps them connect to the people who are going to be
generated
donation amounts with impact statements that are included on the form.
And you'll notice that this form is only part
of the of the complete donation form.
It's only the first step.
The rest of the steps will come later in the process.
So when you land on this page, you choose your gift amount.
You can enter your own.
That's very important.
And then you can click this next button to move on to the
rest of the donation form.
So let's take a little bit of a closer look at each of these elements.
So these are all significant choices for a few different reasons.
Like I kind of mentioned,
if someone is already committed to making a gift,
the design of this page, which in in your case,
the your your donation page will hopefully look and feel
like the rest of your website.
It signals to them that they are indeed in the right place
to make a donation.
If I had a really beautiful website and then someone
clicked on my donate button and they are just dropped on a
plain plain white page,
that doesn't have any kind of imagery or the logo or the
brand colors or anything like that.
That could be a little jarring.
It feels a little disruptive.. It's disjointed feeling.
So using the look and feel of the rest of your website on
your donation page will create a sense of continuity that is
really reassuring for your donors.
So the words and images on this page,
including those impact statements with the suggested
donation amounts I showed you a minute ago,
those actually will help you achieve a few goals.
So if someone has already decided to give or if they're
not a hundred percent committed, but they're, like,
eighty percent of the way there,
Those design elements reinforce that instinct to make a gift.
If someone is undecided, if they maybe read, an appeal
on, I don't know,
maybe your Facebook profile and they click over to your donation page,
they haven't a hundred percent committed to making a gift,
that these elements make a pretty compelling case for support.
That may be the little push they need to really finally
make that decision to to to complete a gift.
And if someone is completely unfamiliar with your
organization, maybe you they saw an ad and clicked over to it, or,
maybe one of their friends or family members posted about
your work and then included a link to your donation page.
If someone is very unfamiliar with you,
these elements help them understand who you are and what
you do and what will happen if they decide
to give to you in the future.
So these elements are really simple.
The the I didn't include a ton of content, on the page.
I didn't include a whole slideshow of pictures,
but they're very thoughtfully chosen small elements that can
make a big impact on someone regardless of where they are in
their donor journey,
and regardless of how familiar they are with your organization.
Now there are some less obvious ways that you can use design
elements to improve your conversion rates.
So one that I kind of alluded to earlier,
the donation page that I put together doesn't include
outbound links, so links away from from the donation page.
And it also doesn't include design elements that could
distract someone from completing a gift.
So those are important.
We wanna keep people focused on the task at hand.
Another is that instead of showing the entire
donation form with all of the form fields at one time,
you're gonna walk the donor through the donation process in
a series of smaller steps.
Now that bit is really important.
How many of you have been, fundraising for more than,
like, five years?
I'm just curious. Let me know.
And the reason I ask is because when I began working
in this industry eleven years ago,
it was best practice to let someone complete a gift
all at one time without having to click through multiple steps.
So do you remember that being best practice? Because I do.
So okay. Cool. We got some people on the same page. Great.
That best practice has changed.
Today, splitting a donation form into smaller steps is more effective,
and your conversion rates will be better if you choose to if
you choose to use that format.
And the reason this is the case is because seeing a long form
all at once can feel intimidating or overwhelming.
Or if we're busy, it can just feel like it's too much,
and I'll just think like, oh, well,
I'll just I'll do that later,
and then I forget and never come back to it.
When I pay my electric bill, the form is all one page, but
nothing bad happens if I decide not to to complete a donation form.
I have to finish my electric bill submission form.
So when you break a long form into
pieces, it doesn't make the process shorter necessarily,
but it does make it feel shorter,
and that feeling is what matters.
So keep people focused on the task at hand by removing distractions,
and then split your form into smaller multiple steps so your
donors don't feel overwhelmed.
Okay.
We're gonna talk a little more about that form.
So having the multiple step format is an important part of
optimizing the donation form that lives on your page,
and there are some additional steps you can take to give your
donors an even better experience.
Right? The first is to give people options.
So suggested donation amounts are one that I would really
encourage you to to try including on your form.
And if you can, use some impact statements or some descriptions
along with those suggested donation amounts.
When you do that, you will help people understand how
their gift will actually make a difference.
And if you'd if you are thoughtful about it,
you can even introduce newcomers to your organization,
a little bit to some a little bit more to the work that you actually do.
So that's an important one.
Yes, Danielle. The the slides will be shared.
You'll get an email from me tomorrow with a link to the
recording and the slides and and all the other resources.
So when you've got the suggested donation amounts there, there,
I'd also encourage you and I didn't highlight it in this image.
I'd also encourage you to enable recurring gifts on your donation form.
If you have been listening to me much recently or if you
are getting me on one's emails,
you may have heard about the recurring giving report that just came out.
If you haven't, the driving message of that study is that recurring donors
are really, really valuable supporters,
and doing everything you can to recruit recurring donors will
benefit your organization.
So as you're building your donation form,
do try to remember to enable recurring donations.
You may even be able to choose,
unique suggested donation amounts and impact statements
for your recurring gifts.
Some other options you may want to include are maybe the
ability to offset processing fees.
So, you may have seen it in the past or on other organizations pages.
You can give a little extra to help offset the cost of
processing that that transaction.
You may also want to add some of the more popular payment methods.
So if you're accepting donations online,
you probably are already set up to take,
credit and debit cards.
I would also encourage you to consider enabling, ACH or eCheck.
And, you may also want to, if your donors will use them,
include services like. PayPal or digital wallets.
We are starting to see more and more people give that way.
So if it's something that you know your donors are interested in,
those are options you may wanna consider including on your donation page.
So I just talked a lot about options,
but as you're adding these options,
really focus on choosing a few thoughtful selections
instead of giving people a lot of different choices.
This is because of something called decision fatigue.
If you have ever found yourself standing in the cereal aisle at
the grocery store,
getting really overwhelmed by all of the brands and flavors to choose from,
you know that having too many options can be really overwhelming.
This is actually very top of mind for me.
I recently had to go buy toothpaste,
and they were out of the brand that I buy.
And I was paralyzed by indecision.
I don't know why there are so many toothpaste options, but there are.
So your goal in adding these options is not to overwhelm your donors.
It is to help them make decisions more easily,
not to overwhelm them.
So as you're choosing, which options you're going to enable,
do be intentional about choosing a handful of
thoughtful ones instead of adding lots and lots and lots
of different options.
Okay.
This is actually one of my favorite parts of donation form
optimization because it's very subtle that
it can have a big impact on your donors.
So a really important element of donation form optimization
is signaling very subtly to your donors that you are
keeping them safe after they give.
People are very conscious of online security.
If you've ever had a credit card compromised, I have
recently, or if you've been caught up in DataLink,
you know how important it is to feel safe when you are plugging
in personal information and financial information,
on an online form.
You can typically have a few subtle
elements on your donation form that signals to people that you
are keeping them safe.
So one is to make sure that you have
your donation form on an encrypted page.
The easiest way to tell if you have your form on an encrypted
page is to look at the. URL up in the URL bar.
If it if your URL has the HTTPS prefix, you are you're good.
You have your donation form on a secure page.
Most online fundraising platforms will do that for you,
but it is nice to look because your donors are going to be
looking to make sure that they are giving to you on an encrypted page.
Another element that you may already have included on your
donation form, I have it circled down here,
is this little, padlock icon.
I wanna say it was next after some some agency did a study
where they looked at conversion rates,
and found that on forms that have a little padlock icon here,
the conversion rate was much higher.
So based again on the system that you're using,
you probably already have something like this included on your page.
If you don't, if you are using a system that does not have this kind of
security indicator on there,
see if you can add some verbiage to your donation form
to tell donors that you are keeping them safe.
That's a really a really significant it's a small but
significant way to let people know that you're keeping them safe.
Yes, Jeremy.
This is something that is automatically included in,
any donation form that's built in NeonCRM.
I would go look for it.
The the way that you can just make sure it's reflected on
your page is as you're building it, just look at the preview.
It should be right there.
Another element that you may want to include are things
like, data and privacy policies.
I've seen nonprofits go the extra mile and add some other
trust indicators like,
badges that they get from. GuideStar or Charity Navigator.
It's a great way to signal to people that,
you're a trustworthy organization that will use
their money well.
So what I would encourage you to do,
because it looks like some of you haven't necessarily seen that option,
regardless of the the online fundraising platform that you're using,
this it this is probably already built in to your system
and is probably already happening automatically without
actively enabling it.
What I would encourage you to do is pull up your donation
form and look to see if it's there.
If it's not, you may want to add some verbiage yourself
if your donation form,
provider is not already doing that for you.
So just go double check.
I have also seen some people get really creative with, like,
custom CSS to remove some of those elements.
I don't know how many of you coding wizards are on this
call, but if you're tempted to use custom code to override
some of these choices,
I would really encourage you not to do that,
because even though the secure payment icon is not
necessarily, you know,
an eye catching design element.
It is an important way to signal to your donors that
you're keeping them safe.
So, now we just talked about the actual donation page and the
form that is housed on the page,
but a donor's experience isn't over once they they have
actually clicked this donate now button.
I would even argue that their experience with you has just begun,
and what happens after that person donates can be just as
important or even more important than the donation
process itself.
I say that because of something called the peak end rule.
The peak end rule is a really cool psychological phenomenon
where people don't necessarily remember the and then the
entire experience that they're having,
whether it's making a donation or going on vacation.
The way they feel at the peak of the activity, in this case,
the way they feel when they're inspired to give a gift to a
favorite cause and at the end of that activity.
So in this case,
what happens after they've completed their gift to you is
more important and more memorable than the way they
feel during other parts of the experience,
like going through and filling out a donation form.
So when you take steps to make your people, your community,
your donors feel really good about their decision to give
after they have completed that gift,
they will perceive you and your organization and their
experiences with you as being more positive than they would
if nothing special really happens after they click that button.
Now as you're designing your donation page, then I would
really encourage you to to spend some time designing the
confirmation page that people will see when they complete their gift.
I would also really encourage you to go in,
and I'm this will be a little different based on the system
that you're using.
I really encourage you to update the the automatic
receipt that is triggered when someone makes a gift.
It'll, of course, have some transaction details.
Those transaction details do need to be in there.
But simply adding a really heartfelt and, like,
nice thank you message and even a couple of images can turn a
very cold transactional feeling,
engagement into something really special that makes
people feel good about their their donation and celebrates
the fact that they're an important part of your community.
You can also write a follow-up thank you letter and then have
your donor receive that letter in the days after their gift.
So they they gave to you.
You gave them a nice experience with that that updated receipt,
and then you're giving them another great experience in the
days following their gift.
A lot of of nonprofits don't do that, and it's a really
straightforward way to make a big impression on donors when
you're still top of mind.
It's a great tone donor attention exercise.
It sets the stage for future engagement.
It's a really good really good move.
Again, based on the platform you're using,
you should be able to set all of this up one time and then
kind of schedule it to happen.
So you're not going through and sending batches of emails every day.
What you can do then is periodically go back into your
system, not not every day,
but go back into your system and update those communications.
Give your receipt a face lift, tweak your thank you message,
update some pictures.
And that way, when repeat donors come back and make additional gifts,
they aren't getting the same messaging over and over.
Okay.
I just gave you a ton of information in a short period of time.
This is pretty high level,
but I did include in the follow-up email that you're
gonna get, links to this reporting, links to the slides,
and then some links to,
the the donation form checklist and some other resources that
you can use to learn more about this.
But I wanted to leave a couple of minutes to answer some
questions, and it looks like we have a few.
Okay. Let me pull up this q and a box.
I like our form,
but I'd like to remove the constituent login prompt to our donation form.
I can't figure out how to do that.
The toggle is not selected on the form.
Kurt, without looking at your specific instance,
I don't know what recommendations to make off the
top of my head.
Would you please email me?
I will
send you my email address in the q and a box.
If you email me, I will get you an answer,
to that question.
Okay.
If,
let's see.
How do you set up a multiple step form?
Jackie, the answer to that question depends almost
entirely on, which system you're using.
Now I'm very familiar, I think, at this point with
two or three different online fundraising systems.
In each of those,
you should be prompted to choose the format that you want
to use when you go and create the donation form.
So when you go into your system and you click the button to
spin up a new form, it should guide you through,
the process of choosing the format you would most like to use.
So I would I would take a look there.
It depending on the system you use,
you may not be able to retroactively
apply that.
So if you have a a single step form, the system may
not give you the ability to choose the multiple step form
and then just have it updated.
You may need to create a new form and then retire the old
one and replace it with the new one.
Let's see. Desiree just asked, what is a digital wallet?
Is it Apple Pay,. Samsung Pay? Thank you.
That's exactly what that is.
The most common digital wallets are, Apple Pay and Google Pay.
And based on your constituents, they may be popular options.
They may not be used at all.
Definitely something to look into.
We generally found that,
very few people do tend to use digital wallets right now,
so it may be worth enabling it to see what happens.
But they are becoming more popular.
So if they're not being used now, keep an eye on it.
They may become more popular in the future.
Let's see. Sharon has a great question.
When you say not too many,
about how many donation amount options do you recommend
putting on your form?
How many is too many?
That is one of those questions that there isn't a hard and
fast rule or data point that I can give you.
You kind of have to follow your gut.
So my guiding rule of thumb would be
that I would choose,
I don't know, five to seven or eight, and I would
base those suggested gift amounts
on the totals that your donors are giving you.
So for example, if the average online donor gives twenty
dollars on your form, start at twenty and then maybe go up
to whatever the upper limit is.
Maybe you have someone who's giving you two hundred dollars
on your donation form.
That's a good array.
If your average gift on your donation form is twenty dollars,
I wouldn't start at five dollars and then go up to five hundred.
I would kind of I would keep it short,
and I would base it on what your donors are actively doing,
and kind of go from there and then just experiment and see what works.
I have this from Kimiko.
I want to add an enews sign up box to the donation form.
How do I do that?
So, Kimatilo, that will that will depend largely on the system you're using.
The most common situation that I can think of,
would be to make that a field in your donation form,
not a widget on in the sidebar.
You don't wanna distract people from,
completing the donation form.
What you can do and this is a this is as far as I know, as in
any system that I've ever used or seen, including Neon CRM,
there is the ability to make a, like,
a checkbox option.
So, as someone is donating, they can say, like, yes.
I'd like to receive updates from this organization.
So you should just be able to enable that.
If you are using a system that doesn't have that as a a
feature that you can just turn on or off,
you can probably set it up using a custom field.
Let's see.
Erin just said, I made it an account form option and set it.
So if it gets checked,
it automatically adds them to the newsletter.
Erin, that's perfect.
And, Kimiko, if you're using Neon forms,
you should be able to do that pretty easily,
while you're setting up the page.
And then you can do what Aaron has done and make sure that if that is checked,
that donor is automatically subscribed to your newsletter.
Yes.
I see you know,
I'm just gonna drop my email address in the chat because a
few of you have asked me for it.
That's my email address.
If you have a question that I can't answer, today,
I will do my level best to get back to you with an answer.
So we we do have a lot of questions.
So if nothing else,
one thing that I would really encourage you to do if you are
a Neon CRM user and you do have questions about,
setting up a donation form or building a donation form.
We do have really extensive documentation.
So if you go into the support center,
you should be able to find articles that walk you through
how to do a lot of these specific things.
I reference our help documentation all the time.
I did it while I was setting up these these forms.
It's really helpful.
Okay.
Let's see. I think we have most of these answered.
This moved really fast.
I am really thankful that you guys are asking all these questions.
Oh, someone did ask. Okay.
Is there a way that donors can select attribute types such as
person or animal?
Many people select donate in memory of past animals and in
order to send an acknowledgment.
It asks them to enter first and last name.
Kateri, I, off the top of my head,
would need I don't know how to answer that off the top of my head.
I would need to look at the back end and kind of figure that out.
So you also can email me.
Yes. There should be a way to do that.
It may be a situation where you can update
the default settings now, in the in the tribute area,
or you may be able to figure something out using a a custom field.
I'll have to look.
Okay.
You all, thank you so much. I know that it is after our time.
I appreciate you hanging here with me.
I do wanna thank you so much for spending half an hour of
your day with me.
I know how busy you are.
I know how intense fundraising can be,
and I know that dedicating a ton portion of your afternoon
to come listen to me and share ideas and ask questions is a is a big deal.
So thank you so much.
Keep an eye on your email.
You will get an email from me tomorrow.
It usually goes out around ten o'clock in the morning,
eastern, with the link to the recording, the slides,
the checklist, and and a few other resources.
So thank you so much.
I will keep an eye on my own inbox for those of you who are
going to email me with questions.
You guys are the best, and I will talk to you very soon.
Alright. Bye.