Donors Know Best

If your nonprofit is considering a web site redesign, it might not be a bad idea to take a little guidance from the American Heart Association. The Chronicle of Philanthropy (requires subscription) recently reported that the Dallas charity’s redesign of their web site’s donation section has yielded some considerable results. “Nearly 70% of the people who start to make a gift online end up following the process through to completion, compared with only 12% before the changes,” says the charity.

When it came time to redesign the web site’s donation section, the American Heart Association turned to their donors for help. “Everybody came with their own ideas about why donors were going away,” says Mr. Christian A. Cadwell, who oversaw the redesign project, “Instead of getting into the argument about what the donors’ intentions were, I said,” Let’s just take it right to the donors, and try to get them to tell us.”

And so they did. In addition to analyzing how donors used the web site, the charity asked donors who interacted with the donation section of the web site to answer questions about their experience. Charity officials discovered that some of their own internal terminology for gifts was confusing donors (like understanding the difference between a memorial or tribute gift). With this and other keys findings, the charity created a more user-friendly donation section (with better defined gift terminology) and then thoroughly tested these changes with users. Both the average donation size and the total online donations for 2006 (up 22%) saw an increase as a result.