In this blog post, we will discuss 5 tips that will help you achieve better results from your website. Marketing is essential for any nonprofit organization, and having a high-converting website is key to success. So read on for our top tips on how you can optimize your website for better conversions as a nonprofit!
Before we get started, you might be asking, “what is a conversion?”. So let’s start there. A conversion is simply a goal that a visitor completes on your website. This could be anything from signing up for your email list to making a donation. And conversions are important because they are the key metric that you can use to measure success on your website.
Now that we’ve answered the question, “what is a conversion?”, let’s move on to our first tip.
#1 Tip for Optimizing Your Website: Make sure your website is mobile-friendly
In today’s day and age, more and more people are using their smartphones and other mobile devices to access the internet. On most nonprofit websites that we work on we see over 70% of users browsing from a mobile device! If your website is not optimized for mobile, you are likely missing out on a lot of potential traffic and conversions. What does, “optimized for mobile” mean? I’m glad you asked. Mobile optimization means that your website is easy to use and navigate on a mobile device. This includes things like having a responsive design, large font sizes, and clickable buttons. The last thing you want is to make someone’s experience on your website difficult or frustrating. That will pretty much guarantee that they wont convert, and most likely, won’t ever come back to your website again.
If you’re not sure if your website is mobile-friendly, you can use Google’s Mobile-Friendly Test tool to check. Simply enter your website’s URL and Google will tell you if your site is mobile-friendly or not.
Making sure your website is mobile-friendly is an important first step in optimizing your site for better conversions as a nonprofit.
#2 Tip for Optimizing Your Website: Use Strong Calls To Action
Your website should have strong calls to action that encourage visitors to take the desired action, whether that is making a donation, signing up for your newsletter, or anything else. You would be surprised how often we find a nonprofits website has either very few call to actions on their website, or the opposite, and everything is clickable and screaming at someone to donate. Both of these “strategies” are not very good.
It is important to have a clear and concise call to action that stands out on your website, without being too “in-your-face”. The best way to do this is to use eye-catching colors and shapes, as well as white space around the call to action button.
If you want someone to take action on your website, you need to make it easy for them to do so.
Here are a few other tips for using strong calls to action:
– Use persuasive language that encourages people to take action
– Use first-person pronouns such as “I want” or “I can”
– Keep your call to action short and to the point
– Use an active voice
By following these tips, you can create strong calls to action that will encourage more visitors to take the desired action on your website.
#3 Tip for Optimizing Your Website: Use compelling visuals
Humans are visual creatures, so it’s important to use visuals on your website that will capture attention and convey your message effectively. It is also important for these visuals to not only represent your organization well, but they need to resonate with your target audience.
There are a few different types of visuals that you can use on your website, such as images, videos, infographics, and charts or graphs. All of these can be effective in conveying your message and encouraging conversions on your website.
When choosing visuals for your website, it is important to keep a few things in mind:
– Use high-quality visuals that are properly sized for the web
– Optimize your images for faster loading times
– Use images and videos that are relevant to your message
By following these tips, you can choose visuals for your website that will help you to achieve better conversions.
#4 Tip for Optimizing Your Website: Keep your content fresh
Stale, outdated content is a major turn-off for website visitors. Make sure to keep your content fresh and up-to-date so that people will want to keep coming back for more. We normally tell nonprofits that if they are not updating content on their website regularly, they should not use timestamps of any kind. The last thing you want is for someone to come to your website to see how relevant and active you are only to find the last time you updated your website was 4 years ago. Notice how I didn’t say 2001…because that would have dated this article. Instead, I said 4 years ago so that it is relevant to when the person is reading the article.
A few other things to keep in mind when it comes to fresh content:
– Write for your target audience
– Use keyword-rich titles and descriptions
– Make sure your website is easy to navigate
By following these tips, you can ensure that your website’s content is fresh and engaging, which will help to encourage conversions.
#5 Tip for Optimizing Your Website: Use analytics to track your progress
Analytics are essential for understanding how well your website is performing and for making improvements as needed. Without analytics, it would be very difficult to optimize your website for better conversions. Without proper analytics to evaluate on a weekly or monthly basis, you are shooting in the dark. You are completely guessing at what is working and what isn’t working…which means if you change anything, you could just be making it worse!
There are a number of different analytics tools that you can use, but we recommend Google Analytics because it is free, easy to use and pretty much the industry standard. Once you have set up Google Analytics on your website, you will be able to track things like how many people visit your website, how long they stay, what pages they visit, and what actions they take. This information can be very valuable in understanding what is working well on your website and what needs to be improved.
If you are not using analytics on your website, we highly recommend that you start doing so as soon as possible. It can make a big difference in your website’s performance.
There are a number of factors that can affect your website’s conversion rate and every website and scenario can be different. However, by following these five quick tips, you can be in a much better place than you were yesterday. Either way, if you want to survive in today’s market you have to optimize your website for better conversions as a nonprofit.
We hope you found these tips helpful! If you implement them on your website, we are confident that you will see an increase in conversions. If you have any questions or need help with anything, feel free to reach out to us. We’re always happy to help!