Did you know that charities reportedly missed out on £1.5 billion in donations in one year due to high bounce rates on mobile? (Source: Charity Times)
Or how about a 2022 study that found only 18% of donors were willing to give, citing complicated processes as a key deterrent? (Source: Civil Society)
We sat down with our Head of Development, Luke Manuel, to answer the questions charities frequently ask about building impactful, high-performing websites.
With over 10 years in the industry and taking up development as a hobby at just 7 years old, Luke can answer anything in the development industry.
Let's dive in…
Q: How can charities make more money with their website?
A: When a user decides where to donate, some key elements set charities apart: easy navigation, device compatibility, and how quickly they can donate or contribute. Consider features like express checkout, direct debits, and other streamlined solutions to make the user's journey as swift as possible.
Reward users' engagement and ensure you convey how much their support matters. Follow up if the interaction was not successful, e.g., cart abandonment, to recapture their interest.
Those processes work better when personalised - suites offering automated stewardship with personalisation features such as macros and automatic calculations can exponentially increase retention and potential acquisition.
These factors directly contribute to the total revenue brought in via website fundraising.
Q: When a charity is deciding between functionality and aesthetics, what should they prioritise?
A: A visually appealing website creates a strong first impression and improves the user journey, making it easier to navigate and donate.
However, functionality is equally important—both on the front end, with smooth transitions and intuitive features, and on the back end, where tools like automation, analytics, and campaign categorisation enable effective operations.
The best platforms seamlessly blend aesthetics and functionality, keeping both streamlined and intuitive to avoid overengineering the user experience.
Q: What's your approach to ensuring a website can handle peak traffic, for example, during Christmas campaigns?
A: Managing peak traffic starts with building scalable solutions. Focus on reducing homepage database transactions and optimising large content like images and videos. Use tools like Azure App Insights to monitor traffic and adjust the server capacity as needed.
For websites that have an integration, such as with Raisers Edge or donorflex, implement appropriate data migration strategies based on traffic patterns. Some websites have a continual flow of traffic, while others get bursts - this can be an influential factor when deciding on your data migration strategy.
Implementing queuing systems to steady the flow of data can eliminate poor user experience and act as a safety net for your organisation. Such systems allow API stability.
As a developer, it's important to understand rate limits and quotas, which refer to any data caps and restrictions that may be in place. Add strategies such as exponential back-off, which means adding gradual delays to prevent systems from overloading.
This ensures peak traffic doesn't exhaust your API integrations, leading to bad data migration.
Q: With the growing focus on data security, what steps should charities take to protect donor information?
A: Compliance is a top priority. Keeping your website or platform up to date will help mitigate any breaches.
It is important to maintain high standards using the correct testing, quality assurance, and OWASP/Penetration reports. New vulnerabilities are often found, so it is important to keep all software within your infrastructure up to date.
Data security is vital when working with integrations. When interacting with APIs, we ensure everything is authorised to prevent bad actors from intercepting or adding data to your CRM. Likewise, data is securely transmitted with high-level end-to-end encryption (a bit like the Enigma machine) to keep everything secure and in the right hands.
By checking the latest versions regularly, keeping regular backups, maintaining hosting platforms, and ensuring high standards with data encryption and transmission, you can be confident that your data is well secured.
Q: What trends are you seeing in charity website design and functionality?
A: Charities are utilising more integrations to assist in their daily tasks. This is helping internally to streamline processes and get more out of the day-to-day.
Due to this automated environment, website forms are getting longer to collect all the information the NFP wants in their CRM. A recent trend to combat this and improve the user journey is to utilise libraries that speed up data collection, such as address lookup or express checkout using digital wallets.
We're also seeing charities improve their navigation and general aesthetic of the website—one of our clients has even introduced a classic element: seasonal floating bubbles and/or snowflakes to keep content exciting!
If you're ready to elevate your charity's website and want a knowledgeable digital partner you can trust, get in touch!
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