Making the clicks = the gifts

As you might imagine, the issue that Scott describes below drives me crazy! We spend weeks agonizing over messaging, design, animation and pacing, photos, music. We send out a beautiful and powerful appeal that persuades recipients to click on the giving button. And then, the data shows that the number of gifts submitted is less than the number of clicks to the giving button. WHY!?

Like most things, I don't think there is an easy answer. The reason varies from institution to institution depending on your giving form and your constituent base. I agree with Scott - I don't think we've tricked people into clicking - they understand what "give now," "donate," "give online," and "make my gift now" means... but for some reason when they get to the form - they decide not to make the gift.

Even though Scott simplified his form and saw no change, I'm not sure that means this would be the case for every institution. For some, I think the giving form is too complicated and/or too long. The fewer clicks the better. The more information you can pre-populate - the less the donor has to do. Let's consider how easy it is to shop online - we'll use my most recent purchase at Baby Gap as an example. With an 8-month-old keeping me busy, I make quite a few quick purchases online. After putting her new romper and dress into my basket, I clicked to check out. It brought me to a login page where it remembered my username and password (i opted for them to be stored a while ago). After hitting submit, i was brought to one screen that summarized my whole transaction, remembered my credit card information, billing and shipping address, and summarized my purchase information. The only thing I needed to do was hit the purchase button. In just two clicks, a package was on its way to my house.

So let me ask you - is it that easy to make a gift to your institution? Are there ways to simplify your form? Can you pre-populate donor information? This would certainly reduce the number of keystrokes. And ... this is probably a stretch ... but should we consider those regular visitors to your giving page? It might be a welcomed surprise to be able to set up a login and password to store their address, billing, and credit card information.

Considering ease of use is just one place to start - I'm confident that it won't hurt to make your giving form easier to use. But for Scott, that wasn't the answer... so where do you look next? Consider the design of the page and extra "along the side" content about why your gift really will make an impact; also, is it easy to designate a particular fund, college or school? Try to look at your form through the eyes of your donor not someone who sees it day in and day out, and test away to see if you can bring the number of clicks to give and the number of actual gifts submitted closer together.