Donations – let the people pay!

It's a simple concept, so why make it difficult?

As a general rule in life, if you want someone to do something for you for, make it easy for them - especially if it involves them giving you money.

In recent years charity organisations seemed to have jumped on-board and embraced the social marketing bandwagon: raising their digital profile with media-rich content. But this seems to have had the effect of bullying-out the simple message of what's at their core - using donated money to help those in need. This is surprising, especially considering the effects of the economic downturn will be likely felt for some time within the NfP sector.

In a recent in-depth usability study performed by Nielsen Norman Group, it was found that users really just wanted charities to answer two questions:

What are you trying to achieve?

How will you spend my money?

Regardless of what content is deemed to ensure 'sticky' user engagement on any given charity website, the key message and calls to action must be staring-you-in-the-face obvious. The latter does appear to have been achieved by the increasingly omnipresent and whopping great 'Donate' button positioned on homepages and in global navigation. However, once selected user experience still varies greatly, but we'll address this in a moment.

What about the two killer questions? People want to contribute to a cause that share their ideals and values, not just be told that £20 will help build a well - that's great, but where's the detail, where's the ethos? Truth is, it's often there, but buried, or lost in verbiage. Fast-tracking the user to this core content, co-related to the call-to-action to donate should be real estate priority no.1.

Now that they’re hooked in, don’t lose them to a painful payment journey. Keep it as smooth, as clear and as consistent as you can. If your donator was in two minds whether to give at the outset, a confusing and misguided payment process will most-likely result in ‘cancel’ rather than ‘confirm’.

UX best practice tips for online donations:

Short & Simple

One page, explaining the cause, how the money is used and the option for where you'd like it go, regardless of amount. Then, when the big button is pressed, manage the flow and keep it in-house as much as you can - I'll explain:

I mentioned earlier that the signposting of 'donate' buttons has improved, but to be honest, adding a fat button to your site is a no-brainer - it's the resulting journey that counts. In many cases a third-party e-commerce provider is used to capture user data and process their payment, but with little regard to consistency or management of the users expectations along the flow they’re about to undertake.

Build Trust

It's crucial to develop a trusting relationship with your user base when asking for cold hard cash to be imparted. Therefore it's worth the effort in taking steps to develop your digital authority and personality to win the confidence of your donors.

Consistent Flow

Wherever possible, try and include the entire donation payment process within the same website. This will greatly improve the level of consistency and eradicate those unpleasant 'oh, where have I gone now?' moments.

Manage the journey the user will have to complete: clearly state the number of stages and what they will involve. It's a well established convention in most checkout processes, so there's no reason for exception here.

Think of all your audience

If at all possible, don't force the user to register - fast track the process in a one-off visit, thus reducing the barriers to payment completion. If authentication is required, leave a decent amount of time before session time-out and ensure data capture is stored and re-presented on re-authentication. This can be particularly frustrating for users with accessibility issues who take longer to complete online tasks.