The last post I talked about a person needing help with converting visitors to donors and how taking a step back to look at the big picture was a great way to start. In this post, I wanted to expand on what other things you might consider to help you improve your conversion rate.
Identify critical pathways (donor’s funnel)
Every website has a purpose. The idea here is to identify the critical conversions you are trying to achieve and optimize for that. Your goal is to try to minimize the number of steps it takes for someone to get to that end goal. Whilst still providing all the necessary information they need to move down the funnel.
Not all traffic is equal
Below is data from M+R Benchmarks showing the cost per donation across different ad types. As you can see the cost per donation varied greatly across the different ad types. This might be because of ad pricing but also because people are receiving these ads in different stages of the donation funnel. Trying to have someone to donate before they even know who you are and what cause you support (like in Display ad) is much harder than say putting an ad on search where their intent is clear.
So where is your traffic source coming from? What pages are they landing on? What stage in the donor’s funnel are they in?
Put the person first
Put yourself in your ideal donor’s shoes and think about what it is like to be them. What options they have? What other causes they can donate to? What motivates them? How do they make a decision on where to donate? Using this knowledge play around with your design and layout. Test it with real people and get their feedback to ensure the right questions are being answered.
Test, test, test
If you are lucky enough to have enough traffic come to your website, testing your key pages is a must. A/B Testing allows you to make careful changes to the user experiences while collecting data on the results. As a result, helps you learn better why certain elements of the user experience impact user behaviour.
