Is Your Homepage Donor-Friendly?

Your homepage is often the first direct contact the public has with your organization. With one look, a potential supporter gathers information on your work, your brand, and where they fit in. Optimizing your homepage to attract and engage donors can set the tone for your entire relationship with supporters.

Having a donor-optimized homepage starts with knowing what information and content belong there. Learn how to achieve the right balance of evidence, branding, and calls to action to make sure anyone who arrives at your website sticks around and gets involved.

What to Include on Your Homepage

To create an effective homepage, you need to know what information to include. You only have so much room on the screen, but fortunately, you don’t have to squeeze every bit of info into that space. You can always create more pages with details about specific programs and campaigns.

So what do you need to show people on your homepage?

• What you do – Many people come to your website to find out more about your organization. Make sure they know what you’re all about. Don’t try to tell them everything, but use wording and images that make your cause apparent.
• What’s going on – Keep your homepage updated with the latest event, campaign, or breakthrough. To make your nonprofit appear relevant and engaging, you want to convey a sense of progress and activity.
• How to help – This is key. Visitors to your homepage need to see how they can get involved and support your work. If you don’t ask for help, people might not know you need it.

Branding and Images

Along with the actual content and information on your homepage, design and branding is also extremely important. Your site should make use of your brand colors and display your logo or signature imagery prominently. You want a visitor to be able to quickly glance at the page and know it’s yours.

Use images from your cause and programs to quickly convey the purpose and voice of your organization. Don’t crowd the page with a bunch of pictures, though. If you want to put several key images on display, use an automatically scrolling image carousel. This allows you to feature several programs or campaigns without making your homepage too busy.

Your homepage should show off your most compelling impact pictures to evoke an emotional response from visitors.

Calls to Action

This is how you show people visiting your website that they can make a difference in your cause. While your homepage shouldn’t be covered in appeals, donation and fundraising CTAs should stand out on the page. This can be as simple as making them a different color than the rest of the page.

It is also a good idea to have a tab or link to a webpage showing all the ways people can get involved with your organization. Here you can give more details on peer-to-peer fundraising, monthly giving, and volunteer opportunities. Just make sure anyone visiting your homepage can easily access this information.

Another way to incite action from your homepage visitors is to include social follow and sharing buttons. This allows supporters to get your updates with just the click of a button.

Feature Supporters

Finally, to drive home how important donors and fundraisers are to your nonprofit, you can feature them on your homepage too. While the work your organization does and how to get involved should take center stage, making room for a donor testimonial or a thank you to an outstanding fundraiser can go a long way.

Celebrating your supporters sends the message that your nonprofit partners with regular people to do good. It highlights the opportunity to make a difference.

For most nonprofits, your website’s homepage is the best opportunity to make a strong, positive impression on potential supporters. Investing some time in optimizing your homepage can help you engage these visitors and guide them toward donation or other forms of support. By combining a clear presentation of your work with branding, impact images, and CTAs, you can create a homepage that invites people in and asks them to get involved.

Keep Donors Coming Back