Recommendations from Dick McPherson, CEO, newdonorstrategies.com
When a listener wants to make a gift to a station, one of the greatest tragedies (from a fundraising perspective) is if the gift never happens because it's just too hard to get the money from the donor to you.
Completing a gift should be an effortless experience. And it's up to us, of course, to remove as many barriers as we can to make it so.
Giving on a phone or tablet can be especially fraught. The gift conversion rate (percent of givers who succeed in making a gift once they've visiting your giving form) on mobile devices is half what it is on laptops.
Ideally your mobile conversion rate should hit the average and be half of your desktop conversation rate.
Here are four ways you can improve your mobile giving conversion rate:
You've heard this before, but it's not just using a "phone-friendly" version of a long, complex online form. Your mobile form should not contain extensive premiums or requests for non-essential information. Instead, create a strictly mobile-optimized form, or use one from NPR Digital Services or another provider.
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This includes the first page people see. Some “mobile-friendly” versions cause the donate button to disappear, but you can fix this.
Buttons should say “next” instead of “click here,” for example. Small things damage gift conversion rate.
If you still have a “captcha” as part of the giving process, drop it. It reduces gift completion.