A well-designed website increases donor confidence and facilitates online giving, helping engage supporters and increase material support for your cause. If you don’t have a smart, thoughtful web design strategy, you’re missing out on a prime opportunity to grow supporter relationships.
This guide explores the importance of intelligent web design for nonprofits and actionable steps you can take today to enhance your site for a better donor experience.
Why Do Nonprofit Websites Need a Smart Design Strategy?
What will your nonprofit organization gain from investing in web design? An aesthetically pleasing and well-structured website can drive a higher return on investment (ROI) for your online giving efforts. That’s because innovative web design offers the following benefits:
Your website serves as a first impression for your cause.
Web design influences 94% of visitors’ first impressions. A compelling website gives visitors a positive view of your organization and encourages them to stay on your site for longer.
Your website impacts your brand credibility.
75% of website visitors evaluate a company’s credibility based on aesthetics. A clean, trustworthy, and easily navigable website can enhance your brand’s reliability and reputation.
Your website drives your online fundraising efforts, especially monthly giving.
Revenue from monthly giving increased by 6% in 2023 and accounted for 31% of all online revenue. Your website provides a convenient platform for facilitating recurring gifts from donors.
4 Ways to Enhance Your Web Design to Boost Donor Trust & Giving
Consider these strategies as a checklist when evaluating your nonprofit website for donor experience and engagement.
1. Offer Transparency and Trust Signals
Your website’s design and structure should offer transparency into your nonprofit’s operations and showcase trust signals that indicate your credibility. Promote your trustworthiness with credibility markers such as:
Accreditations
Display any accreditations or awards your organization has earned from reliable third-party organizations, such as Guidestar or Charity Navigator. These certifications show donors that a credible organization has vetted your nonprofit in categories like transparency, financial responsibility, and security.
For example, look at how the CARE online donation page highlights certifications from Norton, Charity Navigator, and CharityWatch:
Testimonials
Include impactful stories from your nonprofit’s beneficiaries to give donors an insider perspective on your work. Ensure your storytelling is ethical and respectful by asking beneficiaries for their consent and allowing them to review the stories before publishing them on your website.
Check out the testimonials page on the Habitat for Humanity website for an idea of how to structure your impact stories. Each story includes an image, direct quotes from the interviewees, and information about how the nonprofit helped each individual or family.
External News Coverage from Trustworthy Sources
Donors will feel more comfortable giving to your organization when they know various sources have vouched for you. This phenomenon is known as social proof—it’s the idea that people will conform to the actions of others in a new or unfamiliar situation.
That’s why spotlighting your organization's external news coverage can be so compelling. When potential donors see that your nonprofit has received positive press in the local newspaper, radio shows, or TV stations, they’ll feel much more comfortable trusting you with their donations.
Staff and Leadership Information
Having information about the real people who power your nonprofit’s mission serves multiple goals. It provides more context for supporters and reassures them that a team of experienced experts powers your organization. Plus, it can give your website greater authority, helping enhance its SEO performance.
The Glacier National Park Conservancy website has an excellent example of a staff and leadership page. The page provides staff biographies, photos, and experience information.
2. Make It Easy to Find Personalized Giving Opportunities
Your website should be strategically designed to drive conversions. Donors should feel supported and engaged every step of the way, whether they want to give $300 once or register for your monthly giving program to contribute $15 a month.
Use the following design elements to spotlight personalized online giving opportunities for every donor motivation:
Calls-to-action (CTAs)
CTAs are buttons or links on your website that encourage visitors to explore your giving options. Not all donors will want to support your cause in the exact same way, so include a variety of CTAs across your site that speak to multiple donor motivations.
For instance, check out the homepage CTAs on the Doctors Without Borders website. These CTAs help visitors learn more about fundraising, attending an event, or becoming a recurring donor.
Robust Giving Page with Multiple Options Based on Supporters’ Interests
For example, let’s say you’re updating your healthcare nonprofit’s website for a streamlined donor experience. You might offer multiple ways to give, including one-time donations, recurring gifts, memorial donations, planned gifts, gifts of stock, and donor-advised funds. Include information about these giving options so donors can choose the one that best fits their motivations and giving capacity.
The “Ways to Give” menu item on the St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital website offers a great example of what this looks like in practice. The menu item highlights the vast array of giving options available, including memorial giving, workplace giving, wills and bequests, IRAs and stocks, and more.
Your CTAs and website menu can help potential donors choose options that align with their interests. Test your donor experience regularly by clicking your CTA buttons and reviewing your website’s menu from the user perspective to ensure the pathways you’ve created make sense and function properly.
You can even incorporate a short pop-up survey on your website’s homepage or after donors complete your online giving form to gather user feedback about the quality of the user experience. Ask questions about your homepage design, menu setup and style, and donation page information to understand whether donors had a positive experience.
3. Demonstrate Your Impact in Multiple Ways
Donors will feel more comfortable giving to your organization when you prove that you used their donations to positively impact your mission. Incorporate the following elements into your website to emphasize donors’ impact:
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Annual reports with charts and graphs that highlight impact and financial information.
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Videos, photo essays, and long-form blog posts that showcase beneficiary stories, provide program or project updates, and recap events or volunteer opportunities.
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Social media integrations that spotlight your nonprofit’s social media presence and posts that supporters have made about your organization.
The Covenant House website provides a look at one way your organization could approach impact reporting. The website’s “Our Work” page shows how the organization supports youth experiencing homelessness through outreach, crisis care, and long-term support. The bottom of the page offers the opportunity to dive more deeply into the organization’s impact by exploring key research and data, legislative priorities, and stakeholder testimonials.
4. Enhance Your Website’s Performance
Your website’s design must be backed by high performance, scalability, and flexibility. Users expect the following aspects when visiting your website that encourage them to stay on the site and put more trust in your organization:
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Fast load speeds. According to WPRocket, the probability of a user leaving your website increases by 32% as page load time increases from one to three seconds. Enhance your website’s load speeds by compressing image file sizes using a tool like TinyPNG. Also, review your website’s backend code to look for opportunities to clean it up and reduce unnecessary characters.
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Secure giving process. Data breaches can foster donor mistrust, so it’s essential to offer a secure payment process through your website that keeps donor information safe. Leverage a PCI-compliant payment gateway that encrypts sensitive data, protecting it from hacking attempts. Ensure your website uses HTTPS to encrypt sensitive communications and reassure donors that your site is secure.
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Frequent updates and maintenance. Stay on top of your website’s maintenance by running security and feature updates as soon as they’re available. In addition, review your nonprofit’s primary user groups every six months or so to ensure your CTAs and navigation still make sense for visitors’ needs. Evaluate the donor data in your nonprofit’s CRM to see if donors’ motivations or giving interests have changed.
A secure website gives donors the confidence that their gifts will be handled responsibly. Include a privacy and security policy page on your website that outlines the steps you take to keep donor information safe.
Allow donors to opt out of data collection if they don’t want certain information stored in your database. Additionally, send an email to notify donors every time you update your security policy so they can make informed decisions about their data.
Your website's aesthetic design choices should complement your efforts to increase donors’ trust and promote online giving. Using these tips, you can give donors the positive, dependable experience they’re looking for and encourage them to support your organization over the long term.