From Click to Gift: A 25-Minute Nonprofit Website Audit That Drives Results

Speaker 1 0:08
Alrighty, well, welcome everyone. My name is Amanda Tadrinsky, and I’m a senior DonorPerfect training specialist. And welcome to Kevin’s session from Click to Gift, a 25 minute nonprofit website audit that drives results. A little bit about Kevin Ken Miller is Read More

Speaker 1 0:08
Alrighty, well, welcome everyone. My name is Amanda Tadrinsky, and I’m a senior DonorPerfect training specialist. And welcome to Kevin’s session from Click to Gift, a 25 minute nonprofit website audit that drives results. A little bit about Kevin Ken Miller is the founder and CEO of Denali FSP, a nationally respected and fundraising consultancy and Evolution, a pioneering form that merges AI with global virtual talent to streamline operations for nonprofits and businesses alike, with over two decades of experience and the prestigious CFRE credential Ken brings both authority and authenticity to every engagement. Ken is an AFP Faculty Training Academy instructor and has spoken in more than 25 states, trained 1000s of professionals, and helped raise over 200 million for admission-driven organizations. I’m a former former AFP global board member and founder of Men of Color in Development. Ken is deeply committed to the sector, whether he’s mentoring emerging leaders, guiding nonprofits through transformational change, or delivering powerful keynotes. He leads with purpose, impact, and heart outside of where Ken mentors young men and explores opportunities with passion and intentionality. Before I turn it over to Kevin, with just a few housekeeping items, please submit your questions in a Q and A tab, so we can address them during the sessions. And all sessions will be recorded and available on the Donor Perfect website after the conference. With that said, I’m going to turn it over to you.

Speaker 2 1:41
It sounds like a winner. I’m very appreciative of DonorPerfect, and very appreciative of the opportunity to present to this wonderful group. So, let’s get started. We got 25 minutes, we have about 14 slides, and there’s a lot of information to cover, but we’ll try to do our best to work on website audits for fundraising success, so as you know, you have my introduction, and I always do this. I present 3035 times a year, and every time I present, I always thank. That’s what I start with, and that’s what I’ll end with, is a thank you. Thank you for taking time out of your schedule, out of your capacity to be here today, and thank you for your investment in self and your investment for your organization that you represent. So, with that, there’s some information on there, you’ll see on the last slide too. But let’s get started, because a lot to cover. Okay, so your website is the key to your online donations. I mean, that’s that’s a no brainer. What we want to do is, we want to audit the website, and we’re going to talk about that. So, when auditing the website, the first thing I want you to do, and the first thing I want you to think about is checking all links, and there’s also a company that, it, I believe it’s free, and it’s really wonderful, it’s called Broken Link Check com. You just put your website, or any website, literally put your website in there, and broken link check.com and it’ll check and see if any of the links are broken, which creates what we call a 404 error, and we don’t want that, and so we want to go there. Number three is look at on a mobile platform, you will hear a term that I will use, and it’s called, is it thumbable, and replete that, is it thumbable, because people are looking at it on their iPad, or on their phone, or their Android, and can you thumb not some little small URL that’s that’s a clickable link, but can you thumb it, so we want to look on our mobile platform, make sure that it’s thumbable. Have a best practices landing page, which we’ll talk about. Have a best practices donation page. Okay, the website is, as we know, is the key to our online, and so let’s look at what are we going to physically look for in a best practices website, address and phone in the header. Why address and phone in the header? The reason we want to address and the phone number in the header. And let’s talk about our website. Our website is divided into three portions. There is the header, the body, the footer. So just remember that header, body, footer, and the header is the top third. The body is usually the middle third, and the footer is approximately the bottom third. But what we want in that header is the address and phone number, and the reason is this: very simply, many donors are going to go to your website, just get your address, they want to send you a check, and they have to literally look through your whole website or different pages to find out what is the address. All I need is a mailing address and or a physical address, and then they also want to talk to you about either concern, a challenge to make a donation, and so I always want the phone number and address in the header. We want a. Donate button button fumble button, and we’re going to see an example, but we want a button in the header. We want a tagline, which is optional, but what is a tagline? A tagline is a sentence or group of words that evokes emotion. People donate predominantly because of emotion, and what we want is, we want to give the people another reason to make that donation, to make that support, and so we want to create a tagline, something that’s a soft sentence that evokes emotion. Then, and this is optional, have social media buttons, I want to have as much connection, so that I can build relationships and steward that donor by having social media buttons. Again, we’re not talking about underlined words with a clickable URL. We are talking about buttons again.

Speaker 2 5:56
I’ll say it many times, is it thumbable when we’re talking about website design for fundraising success, we’re talking about is a thumbable and another one that is missing many, many times is email sign up. You want that on your website, you want that either in the header or in the body. You can put it also on the footer. I just want it to be seen. How can they sign up easily to grow your email list? Okay, in the footer, so you’ll have the body, which we’ll talk about. The body’s disinformation, that’s that middle third in the footer. We want trust marks. What are trust marks? Another term we use for them is bona fides. What it is, is it’s a third party that will evoke trust in the donor or funder because they know the third party, charity navigator, greater giving guidestar, better business bureau. Three, I can just think off the top of my head. We want those trust marks, and they’re usually a logo that you earn and or ask for that are in the footer, and you’ll see those both on the footer and also on our donation page. Updated copyright date. I cannot tell you how many times I’ve worked with over 140 clients, and I can’t tell you how many times I work with a client, and the copyright says, like, 2017 I’m like, have you not updated your website, or at least update the copyright date? You just do it on january 1. You have your web designer, or you go in there into WordPress, go into the back end, and update the copyright date again. What happens is, when the copyright date isn’t updated, what it does, it doesn’t evoke trust. People are like, why is the copyright date six years ago? Okay, tax ID, you want your tax ID, or what we call the EIN, employee identification number, in the footer, in the footer, it’s usually 92 dash seven digits, but you want that again, that lets them know that, hey, I have a nonprofit, I have a 92 dash, if that’s the one that you have most of the time, there are, it could be a 46 dash, but you want your IRS tax ID in the footer, and then in our header header, we want what is called Google Tag Manager. Talk to your web designer. I don’t want to go too much into that, but what it allows you to do is by putting a tag in the header. When we go to Google Analytics, we can look at each page, how many people are coming, how many people are falling off, how long are they staying on, dot dot dot. Especially, I want it on the homepage, and I want it on the donation page. Let’s talk about that real quick. What is a home page? A home page is wherever an external referrer is, what we would call it, sends the individual to. It could be sent to the donation page, it could be sent to the to the home page, it can be sent to your about us page. It’s usually sent to your first page of your website, or it’s sent to the donation if you have a choice. And if you are using an external refer, such as email, such as social media, please send them to the donation page. If they’re going to make a donation, they don’t need to see your homepage, they just want to go there, make a donation with the least amount of friction. Okay, so here’s an example of a best practices header for a website that I helped design. Number one, you see the address, I have both the mailing and the physical. You see the social media buttons: Facebook, Twitter, back when it was Twitter, YouTube, Pinterest. This is super important. The donate button, and I spent a lot of time looking at colors. This is one of the most effective. Effective colors you can use, which is burnt orange, is what it’s called. You can use red, but in some cultures, and some people, red is a negative, means stop, or means negative. So, we, a lot of times, we don’t, but it can also be effective. But that is, and you can do your own research, just run into AI, you know what’s the most effective donation page button color.

Speaker 2 10:23
Okay, then we have the title of the nonprofit Beans Cafe. This is a tagline: Feeding the hungry and sheltering those in need since 1979 It’s almost always in smaller print, it’s many times italicized. Then you have your, your tabs, and then we always, always, and look at your, make sure you have a visual on your homepage or on your first page of your website, because again, a visual evokes emotion, that’s what we want to do. Okay, now, if you have any questions, please put them in the chat, or questions or things that you comments, please put them in the chat, or what you have on the side. Okay, let’s go to the body and the footer. Here’s the body. I have two videos, super effective, super, and they’re short. Please make them short. They’re like 120 seconds, two minute videos, one for one organization, Children’s Lunchbox, the other one for the adult Dean’s Cafe. Here is that newsletter email sign up. I keep it simple, your name, not first name, last name, just the full name. I can always concat it, I can always pull it apart later on an Excel spreadsheet, and then just your email address. I don’t need your phone number, I don’t need where you live, that’s all I need, because I’m trying to grow that email list. Then it has just some information, but here you see bonafides and trust marks. We have here Charity Navigator, we have Guide Star, better known as Candid today, United Way, Catalyst Kitchens, Better Business Bureau, and then at the bottom you have the EIN is in here, and down here at the bottom, and then you have a couple other useful links, but the key component is that we have our modifiers, we have the email signup, and we have visuals of some sort, I have video, and then I had a static image up higher. Okay, so now let’s talk about our donation page. So everything really is to push people toward the donation page. We talked about this. Make your donation page your landing page. So, how do you do that? All you do is a forward slash donate page, you know, whatever the page has a name to it in the URL, and it’s usually donate, or whatever you may want to call it, and so you send from Facebook, you know, Beans Cafe forward slash donate, and it would take him to the donate page as landing page, with or without a lead paragraph, and I’ll show you that, and what that means. Those are two modes of thought. Whatever one that you are most comfortable, you can do. I pretty much teach now without a lead paragraph. I just want people to make the donation as quick as possible, as simply as possible. Course, we talked about our trust marks. You’ll see those look at on a mobile platform. This is a super important one. Those individuals listening, please make a donation to your website, and I’m saying, make it for $5 We call it a dummy donation. It’s so we can, and I wonder how many people have done that, and it’s to test it, test it. How does it look to the donor? And also, because we also want to see what is our communication after they made a donation, because in the digital realm, we can do an auto response, an auto thank you. Super important, horizontal asterisk, start at 50. Please start at 50. We’ve been using 25 for 30 years. I stopped doing $25 to start my horizontal ask string. You’ll see this in 2011 15 years ago. I was the only one in Alaska that I knew of, and I was like, why? So I did an A/B test, and I had just the same amount of donations, but my average donation went up $17 and I got more major donors, which was $500 single gift, because it was listed on there as a second to last. You’ll see it, PayPal Merchant Pro, if you use a back end that’s not a part of your CRM, use PayPal Merchant Pro or equivalent, and then auto zip the address. What does that mean? When you auto zip the coding, all you do is tell your web designer, I want to auto zip the website, and they’ll be able to do that. Auto zip the address, and I’ll show you what that means.

Speaker 2 14:56
Okay. All right, so here is the donation page. Page. This is what they call a lead paragraph. You can do with or without. If this didn’t have a lead paragraph, it will go directly into the donor information that you’re requesting. Then you can see some bonafides here. Okay, trust marks. Okay. And then in the footer, which we’re going to look at, let’s talk about reverse print. No, how do I feel about reverse print? No, it looks cool. Webs designers love it, because it looks cool. No, why? No, because your donor is older, and older individuals, older people have a hard time with reverse print, that’s why, and it’s about the donor font size. I go to these websites and they got 11 or nine, and I’m like, what font size? Try to keep your font size 14 and above. Again, you have older individuals are trying to make a donation, and here you are with a reverse print website with like a nine point font in honor and memory of, please put that on there, make them optional, but please put those on there, because again it allows people to honor or put in memory of and involves them emotionally, have a comment box that was one of the first things I would always do as a development director. As a leader of a team, I would go to the comment boxes, and because I would always put the in honor and memory was put into the contact relationship management software, but I was looking at the comment box to see if there’s anything I needed to deal with or anything that we could touch them because they made a comment, and I’m talking about to either take care of a challenge, a concern, and or inoculate contact information for donation questions. Please have contact information. I’m a big one. Put a first name, contact Beth at dotted dotted dot. You’re not gonna put your full name, but at least give them the courtesy of a name and a phone number, and then auto generated thank you. Your system, and talk to your individual that handles your website, or you, and make sure you have an auto generated thank you. We auto generate a digital thank you, and then I always send out within 24 to 48 hours a written thank you. Okay, all right. Here we go. So, look at this first and last name, one box. What we’re trying to do is have the minimal things they need to fill out to actualize the gift. I had one client, true story. I had one client that said, you know, we don’t get a lot of online donations. I was like, okay, let me check out your site. I went to their site, you had to fill out 36 different boxes to make a donation, and they were wondering why people weren’t donating online. 36 boxes, okay? And then there’s a one that says, just give them like four or five, there’s, you know, two schools of thought, and then there’s one. Get more information that you can put into the contact relationship management software. I’m more in, like, the middle. I try to keep it probably more toward the leaner. So we have first and last name, one box, we have address, one box. They put in their zip, and it will auto fill the city state, that’s what I’m talking about. Auto fill, just talk to your web designer, it’s easy thing to do, it auto fills. So now all, and they’re looking at this, the phone, I never make, I never make that mandatory, because some people do not want to give out their phone number. Period. And they will not do the donation, learn that the hard way, and then, of course, I need the email, so I can thank them. It’s a part of the digital realm. Here’s the horizontal. We make it one time a recurring horizontal ash string. $500 was my major donor, single gift 500 Before this was the last one, a lot of people, this is what we call anchoring. We anchored it’s behavioral science.

Speaker 2 19:03
We anchor with 50, and then what people don’t want to do is they don’t want to seem like they’re inexpensive or cheap, so they’ll do something in the mill, and I always get a lot of these instead of 2550 102 5500, and then if they want to donate $1 they can put in other, no problem, and then the rest of information, credit card, paypal, these are all mandatory. Here’s the in memory of, and then below that, there’s an in honor of, and there would be a comment box. Okay, please, this is so important. I’m going around the country speaking on DAFs, literally at many of the AFP chapters. DAFs are the future, they’re well, I’m the future, they’re here now. So, if you have the opportunity, this is free. Put a DAF widget on your website, please, because many people are donating through their DAF. I mean, it’s incredible, the numbers, it’s in the billions that are donating through their DAFs. Okay, so, and this is just go to DAF widget, and you can do that now. Let’s talk about some of the advanced timing. Is good, we have five minutes. AI is awesome, awesome, awesome. I have a company that does AI, artificial intelligence. It’s the future of web design. You can go in there now and literally have AI design your website, but we’re talking about audits. Also, we have blogs on our website, we can use it for content creation. Great, but the key one that I want you to do is website page analysis through AI. All you got to do is go to this last one. What can I do to improve this website? Put in your website, and it will give you a list, or give me the top 10 things I can do to improve my website for online donations. And then you put in the website URL. Any tabs I can should consider in addition for this website, and then go to your website donation page. What can I do to improve this donation page to increase the increase in number and the amount of donations I get from this page, and it will tell you, give me the top five awesome. I’ve done this. It is awesome. So use AI to literally audit your website, and then I want to say, thank you. Here’s any information anybody can get all in. Just it’s free, just contact me. I answer questions that from presentations I made 10 years ago, and then if you, my favorite blogs, Nonprofit Tech for Good is phenomenal. Future fundraising, Jeff Brooks, good friend of mine, phenomenal. And then Roger Craver with The Agitator. Thank you, any Any questions? We got three minutes. Yeah, we have

Speaker 1 22:06
three minutes. I think we can pull at least one question out of here. So, let me just see. Let

Speaker 3 22:16
me see. Going through,

Speaker 1 22:33
so Nicole was asking, is it better to have a form at the top of your page or to have a donation form pop up on the donate page, mm. you

Speaker 2 22:43
just have what you want is a donate page. It’s a tab, it’s a tab, and it’s also the button. Remember, on the on the homepage, you have a button, because what people will do is they’ll get their phone, because remember, 50% of our donations are coming on the phone now, or you know, or a tablet, and they’ll, they’ll hit the button, it’ll take them to the donate page, and they’ll fill out the six or eight, you know, tab buttons, and you’re good to go. So, what I don’t particularly care for is what we call a splash page. I don’t want to go too much in depth, but a splash page, which then pops up on the homepage, come to see the homepage, come to see the about us page, and you get this splash page that you can’t see, and then people have it on there too long, and it gets people upset. So have a donation page and send people directly to the donation page.

Speaker 1 23:40
Nice. Alrighty, so then I think I’m going to have us wrap it up for today, because we have just about a minute left. So, thank you all for attending Kevin’s session. Next up is stage one is Julia Patrick with Unlocking Next Gen Donor Behavior, and on stage two we have Scott Ross and Krantz from Donor Search, discussing beyond using AI, predictive predictive generation, and agnetic, and fundraising. We’ll see you guys in a few.