You’ve done the hard work. The campaign is live, the emails are out, and people are clicking through to your website. And then, quietly, not much happens.
Before you rethink the campaign, it might be worth taking a closer look at the page people land on.
Your page might be harder to use than you think
The Nielsen Norman Group, one of the world’s most respected UX research organisations, has tested real nonprofit websites with real donors. The findings are worth sitting with.
On 17% of the sites they studied, users simply could not find where to donate. Not because they didn’t want to give. Because the page made it too hard to figure out how.
Only 43% of the sites clearly stated their mission on the homepage. And just 4% answered the question donors most want answered before they give: “How will my money actually be used?”
Perhaps most telling of all: donating on a charity website is measurably more difficult than buying something from an online store. Think about that for a moment. The very act of giving, an inherently generous thing, is being made harder than online shopping.
And most of them are doing it on a phone
Here’s something that often gets overlooked. Raisely, a fundraising platform that has processed hundreds of thousands of donations, reports that 65% of those donations came through mobile devices. Funraisin, another fundraising platform, puts peer-to-peer mobile donations at 66%.
More than half of your donors are probably visiting your page on a small screen, with one thumb, and limited patience. If your donation form requires pinching, zooming, or excessive scrolling, you’re not just creating friction. You’re creating a reason to close the tab.
What you see and what your donor sees
There’s another layer to this, and it’s subtler.
When your team reviews a clean, professionally designed donation page, you tend to see exactly that: clean, professional, polished. When a donor lands on the same page, they often read something closer to a marketing brochure. Something to scroll past, not act on.
Research from digital fundraising consultancy NextAfter, drawn from more than 1,500 online experiments with not-for-profit organisations, consistently shows that donor-centred pages outperform organisation-centred ones. The shift isn’t complicated. It’s the difference between a page that says “look at what we do” and one that says “here’s what your gift will change.”
Clarity, it turns out, is more persuasive than polish.
Less friction is not the same as less story
The instinct to simplify is understandable. Fewer fields. Less scrolling. Get people to the button. All reasonable goals.
But there’s a difference between reducing friction and removing the reason to give. A minimal form with no context gives a donor nothing to feel before you ask them to act. Strip out the story, and you’re left with a transaction. And transactions don’t move people. Stories do.
Research from organisations that have collectively raised over a billion dollars online points to something straightforward: most donors give because someone asked them to, clearly and directly. Not because they stumbled across a donate button. The ask itself matters. The way it’s framed, the words around it, and the confidence with which it’s made.
Trust is earned before the form loads
Donors also want to know they’re giving to someone credible. Relevant accreditations, honest impact statements, a face behind the cause, and a form that looks and feels secure. These aren’t nice-to-haves. For a first-time donor deciding between your organisation and another with a similar mission, they can be the deciding factor.
Good design earns trust quietly, before a single field is filled in.
Small decisions, meaningful results
You don’t need a full rebuild to see a difference. A clear mission statement, honest impact language, a visible donate button, a mobile-friendly form that doesn’t ask for more than it needs. Each one is a small decision. Together, they’re the difference between a page that converts and one that politely waves donors goodbye.
This is exactly where design and strategy stop being separate conversations.
Peace of mind starts with the page
If you’re directing supporters to a donation page and hoping for the best, that’s a plan of sorts. But getting that page right, visually, structurally, and emotionally, is one of the most valuable things you can do for your fundraising program.
A fresh set of eyes helps. Get in touch with Simon Bailey Design and let’s take a look at what your donation page is really saying.
Sources: Nielsen Norman Group, “Donation Usability: Increasing Online Giving” and “5 Tips to Get Donations on Nonprofit and Charity Websites.” NextAfter, “The Web as a Living Laboratory,” Tim Kachuriak. Raisely, “7 Ways to Optimise Your Online Donation Forms.” Funraisin, platform updates and event fundraising research.