For many nonprofit organizations, it’s easy to focus on producing content that only links to donation forms. But this can lead to dead ends for users who aren’t quite ready to donate.
That’s why landing pages play a critical role in the early phases of the digital donor journey. They serve as an ice breaker as a donor gets to know you and what your organization is all about.
But it isn’t as simple as throwing together a landing page with a few calls-to-action (CTAs) and calling it a day. There’s a certain science behind landing page optimization—and we’re here to share it with you.
Here are our top six tips for creating a compelling landing page that keeps donors engaged, educates them about your causes and primes them to give as they move down the funnel.
1. Share compelling content
It’s all about the right message at the right time. How do you that? Analytics. Spend some time looking at Google Analytics to learn more about what users are clicking on, engaging with, topics they’re interested in and types of content that are performing well.
Based on this insight, you can begin to build your landing page around content that users will find compelling and which will ultimately prime them for giving down the road.
2. Don’t create dead ends
When you’re driving traffic to a landing page, the goal is usually to educate users about your organization, moving them down the giving funnel.
If your landing page is a dead end, you take away the option for them to engage with you further. Whether you’re linking to a donation form, navigating to a how-to-help page or even just suggesting related content for them to consume, you’ll help them build a deeper connection to your cause.
3. Find the right balance of CTAs
If your landing page is full of CTAs and jumps from topic to topic, it will likely lead to confusion. In general, best practice is to focus on one primary CTA—this should be based on the overarching goal of your campaign.
Be intentional as you add other links and sub-CTAs. For example, adding a field to collect email addresses won’t draw away from a primary CTA.
4. Create a cohesive experience
Let’s use an example here. If you’re a cancer research organization, your ad may direct users to a landing page with the goal to educate them about the role research is playing in finding the cure for a particular disease.
Within the landing page, you have a CTA that takes users to a donation form. But the donation form makes no mention of the disease they were just reading about.
This disjointed experience could make the user think twice before hitting that donate button—ultimately impacting your conversion rates.
5. Get personal
The death of third-party cookies is going to ruin personalization, right? Wrong!
Donors still expect you to know who they are. If you send them to a generic landing page, they’ll lose interest quickly.
By connecting your first-party CRM data to your front-end donor experience, you can give users personalized journeys that show them where they’ve left off or suggest related content based on their previous engagement with you.
And it doesn’t always have to be one-to-one. For example, it could be based on geography, where you personalize content for people in specific locations so that they’re getting the most relevant information for themselves individually.
Sometimes even the simplest forms of personalization help give users that feeling of connection.
6. Have a plan for measurement
At the end of the day, the only way to really understand a landing page’s success is through measurement. Start by having a plan for what the KPIs will be for your landing page. Are you trying to collect emails, direct traffic to a donation form or educate donors on your impact?
After you’ve set your goal, you can implement appropriate tagging and tracking to properly measure and understand success. You’ll want to keep tabs on things like:
- What content is actually assisting donations?
- What content blocks are users clicking on?
- What’s driving the most traffic?
- What are people spending the most time reading?
As you collect more data, you’ll gain additional insight on what makes users stick around, engage and convert.
With these strategies in place, you’ll be able to circle back to the top of this list and continuously optimize your landing pages for the best results.
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