Some Personal News

39 ways I evolved my LPs that drove more digital fundraising dollars... and, why not 40.

Nov 27, 2023

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Today’s SPN includes the following:

39 ways I evolved my landing pages that drove incremental revenue.
Why I had 40 but held one back.

I’ve kept today’s SPN a little shorter as many are heads down during a heavy fundraising week. And we can all benefit from a little less screen time once in awhile!

As with every edition of SPN please reach out with any questions or comments. I respond to every single one.

Let’s dig in.

The List

Most of these can easily apply to Donation pages, Homepages, About Us pages, and also your Ad creative. If you’re not sure how UX (user experience) design plays a role in creative, this is it!

To state the obvious, the goal of any landing page (LP) is to show a donor the light at the end of the tunnel.

Quick Mental Model

When a Supporter clicks on an ad and they’re visiting an LP for the first time - they’re basically lost. They’re in a dark tunnel, looking for the light, and trying to understand your mission and how it solves a problem they care deeply about. They don’t know you, they don’t trust you (yet) and they don’t know what to expect or how to navigate the world you’re presenting to them.

Your landing pages are the metaphorical train tracks that lead them out of the tunnel and to the light (i.e directly to your mission that can improve the status of what it is that they care about).

When it comes to fundraising, you never want your Supporter to take the scenic route. You want to get them on the express line to see the light as fast as possible! Each section of your LP should actively be getting your Supporter closer to the light to complete their journey (aka to donate to you). Apply this mental model and you’ll be creating better LPs in no time.

In no particular order, here’s the list of 39 (and dissect them with friends in B2B marketing and ecomm too because the cross-over is real):

Leverage more social proof from real-world humans, not just news anchors and paid creators.
Get punchy, get savvy, and focus on benefits, not only your value props.
Design for mobile first. 70% of your traffic will be from mobile devices.
Write copy for mobile first, as well. At Unicef, we wrote all of our landing page and website copy for mobile first, then fit it for desktop after.
Make your Holiday Match number or “offers” more noticeable. Do anything that you can to make your fundraising ask pop. Use a different color, font, or make it bold, use highlights, a sticker, etc. Use colored CTAs as they outperform black and white CTAs.
If you sell or donate a consumable, include your price per use. i.e. “$1/vaccination when you donate X”, or “Less than $1/day for access to Y,” for example.
A picture is worth a thousand words. Use a lot more of them. Also include illustrations, icons, graphs, charts, etc. Explain visually.
Make your pop-up email subscribe form simpler. Don’t ask for their first name, last name, email, birthday, and location. Just ask for their email address.
Make your pop-up subscribe form a value-added experience. Enter them into a raffle for a chance to win free brand swag in exchange for them entering their email.
Make sure everything you do is ADA-compliant. In short, ensure your site is accessible to anyone. Make sure that your fonts are the appropriate size and that you don’t have a white font on a light background, etc. For more info on ADA compliance, read this.
Simplify and edit your checkout experience. A donor should not have to make more than 5 clicks to donate.
Put your very best “offer” at the top of the page. This could be a donation Match in a banner bar or just the first product bundle that you show being your current best offer on the site.
Always have a comparison chart! I have never seen a comparison chart on a site that didn’t make me feel more educated about my donation after seeing it.
Elevate your design. If your landing page doesn’t look beautiful, you’re not building trust. Why spend money to drive traffic to a poorly designed experience? First impressions really matter.
Answer these questions: If I donate today, when do I get to make a difference? When does my donation or product that I bought to solve X arrive?
Channel the “influencer unboxing” play and tell donors what’s inside the box. Better yet, show them what’s inside the box with a photo or “unboxing” video on your LP. Watching a thing receive a thing is powerful. It helps the donor visualize their impact.
There’s a reason why H1, H2, and H3 text exists. Use variations in both font sizes and styles to create a visual hierarchy on your LP. It should be easy for someone’s eyes to follow where to look, and in which order.
Add quotes that call out the benefits, not just the features i.e. a good quote about the features of a product like a Coat would say “I love that it has a hood and that it’s machine washable.” A great quote would say something like “Upgrading to a 3-in-1 layered thermal-blah coat changed my life. I walk more miles a day with my dog today than I ever have before. I feel much healthier and have more energy and sleep better because I’m properly warm and dry while wearing this coat.” In this context, the great quote speaks to a “lifestyle” change, not just the features.
Don’t default to “Donate Now” without testing “Add to Cart”, “Rush Aid” and “Make a Difference”.
Explore the heat maps from Clarity or Hotjar to see where Supporters are bouncing and falling off. Change or remove that section to boost CVR. Watch the user sessions of your site and see where Supporters scroll, what they read, where their mouse goes, etc. (It gets addictive - you’ve been warned)!
Organize a product page like you would organize a physical storefront. What items do you want donors to see first? What is the associated photo and sign? How would you merchandize this product in a physical store? You should be thinking the exact same way on your site.
Whenever possible, reduce the amount of text. How can you say the same thing, with fewer words?
Study dead clicks and “rage clicks” i.e where Supporters click multiple times on your site expecting to go somewhere but they aren’t redirected. Where are they trying to go? Why isn’t this section clickable? How can you fix it? This is also on Clarity.
Whenever possible, use real images, not icons or illustrations. Donors want to see the real product or service in use.
Build community. Encourage donors to leave a review of their donation experience or why they brought your product, tell me what they bought or donated to.
If it’s truly a limited time Match offer, highlight that!
Tell me how many donors have donated to a program or purchased a product. Similar to the “285 people love this product!” line some e-comm stores use.
Want to know what’s better than images? Videos! Showing your product or mission in action in a UGC video can raise conversion rates a ton.
Optimize your text and visuals for your most visited screen size.
If a fourth grader or your Grandma can’t understand your Match offer and how to checkout and donate on your landing page, the journey is too complicated! Go back to the drawing board and simplify it.
Never forget an FAQ section. It’s one of the best ways to answer questions and ensure confidence right before a donation. It’s typically the last section I check before I hit “Donate.”
If it sounds cool in a brand book but it doesn’t make sense to a Supporter, cut it.
Don’t hide the refund or cancel information. If donors want a refund or to cancel a monthly sub make it really easy, really quick and really painless.
Spare a thought for the persona reading the copy on your landing page and where they’ve just come from. A flat, copy-heavy, static landing having just been in the buzzy, short form environment of TikTok is unlikely to convert well.
Make your donation page load in under 1 second. Many Org’s have multiple forms taking 2-3 seconds to load. This is not fast enough! Supporters will bounce. And you’re losing money having to retarget them.
Test upsells and cross-sells. Test them both pre-donation and post-donation.
Add social proof directly to the donation checkout screen, i.e as someone is checking out can it say “500 generous Supporters also donated this today!” or similar there.
Test variations! The single most important thing that you can do is to make duplicates of your page and split test copy, images, offers, etc on the same traffic source to see which converts better. The only way to dramatically boost revenue over time is to test and iterate at scale.
Also, things break. This is the most stressful time for every single piece of your tech stack, so things will break. Be constantly testing things to make sure they still do what they’re supposed to.

Okay, that’s it for now!

Did I have 40 and then delete one? Yes! “Donate now, pay later”. Is it a thing? Should it be a thing? Is there a crushingly high APR involved somewhere that puts the donor in a sticky spot? Who’s responsible if the donor defaults on the “pay later” part? I haven’t explored or tested it, let alone proven it works. Have you? Do you have a perspective on the concept or any donor feedback on it? I’d love to hear any thoughts.

I hope you found at least 10 things on this list that could be easy conversion drivers for your Org. And I hope too that you enjoyed today’s SPN and that it was as fun to read as it was to write. It’s Sunday, so I hope you get those 9 hours of sleep tonight and have an amazing Giving Tuesday. EOY season has arrived!

I’ll see you next Sunday!

Thanks again to Feathr for sponsoring this Quarter’s SPN!

Now onto the fun stuff!