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Drawing inspiration from the “Moneyball” philosophy in baseball—where success is achieved through meticulous analysis of key performance metrics—nonprofits can similarly leverage specific digital metrics to optimize their fundraising strategies. This is something we have spent years doing for our clients, uncovering new intel to move the needle with acquisition and cultivation without drastically increasing fundraising spend.
By focusing on three core areas—visitor volume by channel, traffic progression to donation forms, and donation form conversion rates—organizations of any size can develop a winning digital fundraising strategy.
If you’ve read the book or if you have seen the movie “Moneyball,” you recognize the few scenes where Peter Brand helps Billy Beane, General Manager of the Athletics, to fill their roster full of players that are highly efficient, but less noticed because the traditional stats aren’t as flashy.
This is the same case for nonprofit organizations when it comes to fundraising. All too often, we talk with teams who are in search of the single home run fundraising concept. While those are fun to brainstorm, we find that the longevity of those campaigns is not nearly as impactful as iterative, strategic approaches to improving their website performance in ways that are overlooked every single day.
Understanding the sources and engagement of your website traffic is fundamental. By analyzing visitor volume segmented by channels such as organic search, social media, email campaigns, and paid advertising, you can assess your site’s visibility against projections and identify gaps.
Once visitors arrive at your site, it’s crucial to guide them toward your donation forms. Analyzing the progression rate—i.e., the percentage of visitors who navigate from various content pages to the donation form—helps identify which content effectively drives donor action.
The final step is ensuring that visitors who reach your donation form complete the process. The conversion rate of your main donation form, from direct traffic and other unpaid visitors to the site, indicates the effectiveness of this critical point in the journey.
The analysis of traffic volume goes beyond the simple number of site visitors. There are a few key areas to explore that may uncover opportunities.
A good baseline to always measure each month is the breakout of traffic by channel and the level of engagement for each. This allows you to quickly gain intel behind any areas where you are performing strongly, and other areas where you may need to optimize either content or channel mix.
This is where we always see a gap with organizations. Understanding traffic share broken out by every piece of content allows you to see where visitors are engaging during their visit. You’ll want to note those that are high visibility already, and still keep track of other pages that may not have as high of a share.
These metrics will come into play with the next layer of analysis: Visitor Progressions.
interactive posts. Donors love content that resonates emotionally and visually. Think outside the box and keep them captivated.
The key nuggets to look for with site traffic and volume is to evaluate how the high content share pages are performing with the next step of the funnel: the progression to the donation forms.
Conversely, evaluating any low content share pages that may have high progression rates is also an area to focus.
We worked with a large hunger relief organization in New York City where they launched a new site to match their new branding, but performance fell off significantly. After diving into content, we identified a number of pages that were prime for progression rate optimization.
After the optimization was executed, we measured the impact the following month. While traffic to those pages saw almost a 2% decrease in engagement from visitors, the progressions from those pages grew 406%. The progression rate grew more than 490%.
Revenue drastically increased to the global form and helped overcome some losses seen through other outbound channels.
A blog post with modest traffic but a high progression rate to the donation page is a hidden gem. Uncovering that your About page or your Leadership page is driving a high rate of visitors to the donation form immediately after engaging with those pages is another gold nugget. Once these hidden nuggets have been discovered, amplifying this content through paid campaigns, social media, or featuring it on high-visibility pages can amplify the volume of visitors who advance to the donation form.
Great campaign concepts come and go. Unlike direct mail, repeating a campaign in digital the next year is not something that is often a good practice. If you have an annual match opportunity, you still cannot expect great results if you rinse and repeat the messaging angle each year.
The progression rate across core pages on your site lives on regardless of any specific campaign. Visitors reach your site for any number of reasons. Ensuring the highest progression rate possible and amplifying the visibility of those with high rates is your way to win now and in the future.
This is the area that almost any digital fundraiser has heard of and has focused on over the years. We call these table stakes. The optimization of the form is for those who advance to the form. Meaning, the universe can be limited if the other two metrics above are not optimized prior to these efforts.
What comes into play for conversion rate optimization of a donation form? We’re glad you asked.
First, you want to explore desktop vs mobile conversion rates. This can impact your approach to donation form optimization.
You’ll also want to understand any particular channel with higher or lower rates of conversion. By doing so, you can then amplify direct CTAs to donate through those high performance channels while decreasing focus on the others.
Below are several other components to consider:
We believe in the science of fields and their layout when it comes to donation forms. All fields are not created equal. We’ve increased conversion rates by several percentage points just by eliminating a few fields to minimize donor friction.
The photos you choose for the global form on your site matter. Can a donor feel the emotion when visiting the page. Do they feel confident that their gift will impact what they see on the page?
The layout needs to be mobile-optimized while also ensuring that donor confidence elements are seen on the page. This includes logos of organizations that show you are a legitimate nonprofit using your funds wisely. Links in the footer or within the body content that lead to extraneous content should be eliminated.
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