Having a website that supports your non-profit’s fundraising efforts, increases volunteerism and helps to grow your audience is essential. When creating a website or revising an existing site, the following are things to take into consideration to ensure that your website functions as needed.
Make sure your donation button is in multiple locations on your website
Having your donation button in only one location on your non-profit’s website isn’t enough. While it can seem like overkill to include your donation button in many different locations on your site, it’s NOT! Website visitors will look at different areas on your site, so you want to ensure that wherever that is, there will be a donation button. Great locations to place a donation button are in your site’s header, sidebar, footer and after each blog post.
Use a responsive theme
More and more people are using mobile devices and tablets to access websites. In fact, mobile traffic is up 222% over the last five years and accounted for more than half of web traffic in 2018 (source). It’s a necessity to have a website that mirrors what your desktop looks like, but with images and other effects that are compatible with mobile screen sizes. All of our WordPress website designs are responsive and we test each site extensively.
Make sure you have enough white space between elements
White space is your friend. There is nothing more overwhelming than landing on a website and not being able to focus on any content because your eyes are drawn all over the screen! White space helps to focus the website visitor on your content and imagery— where their focus should be! It’s important to leave space between site elements, but also in text.
Paragraphs in online content should only be a few sentences long to break up passages for easier reading. Pictures and video also help to break up text flow and keep the reader engaged.
Tell a good story and support it with compelling visual elements
In the non-profit sector, it’s vital that you have a story (or stories!) to tell that help your potential donor to connect to your cause. The goal of your website is to form a connection with each visitor and personal stories are a great way of doing this. Think about the people your organization serves and the people involved with helping to run the non-profit. How can you weave these stories into your site through the use of text, photos and videos.
If at all possible, develop some video content that you can use on your site and also for your social media profiles. Video is a very effective way of quickly forming a connection with a viewer. Longer form video can be used on web pages and shorter snippets for social media posts.
Make sure you include a call to action on each page of your website
Every page on your website should serve a purpose and therefore have a call to action. After viewing the page, what do you want the website visitor to do? Do you want them to donate, sign up to volunteer, sign up for a newsletter, etc.? Make sure that you are clear in what you are asking. Most visitors are happy to take action, you just need to ask them to do it!
Hopefully you can take these tips and apply them to your non-profit’s current (or new) website design. At Seaside Digital Marketing & Design, we are happy to help your non-profit with any of the above, so please reach out to us to schedule a call to discuss your website needs!