Online fundraising
The two most important things to get right when you are trying to raise funds online are the content and usability.
Not only must you have the right content - the information that answers the questions in the minds of potential donors, that inspires them to give and engages them to stay - but your site needs to be easy to navigate, be easy to find how to donate and then to give, with minimal clicks and no unnecessary fields to fill out.
The internet is fundamentally a direct marketing medium and it’s driven by copy (even if the content is then delivered as a video or in some other form).
So it’s worth getting your copy right.
Key principles include:
- Design your page to follow reader’s natural eye flow (there is a great deal of eyetracking research available on this)
- Make your donate button obvious and prominent on every page
- Write copy that is clear, relevant, content rich, emotional and inspiring
- Structure sentences so that the key point you are making is at the beginning of the sentence - people read differently on the web
- Don’t clutter your page
- Be clear what you want each page to achieve - then stick to it.
Here are some examples of online work by Praxis Fundraising:
Salvos 100,000 beds (Current)
NBCF Pink Ribbon Breakfast (2008, 2009, 2010)
Leukaemia Foundation World’s Greatest Shave (2008)