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If you test everything from envelope color to live stamps on your direct mail, why wouldn’t you take the same care with your Web site?

More and more prospective donors visit Web sites to help make donation decisions, and you shouldn’t treat your Web site like a second-rate channel, according to Nick Allen, CEO, and Dawn Stoner, senior account executive, both from Donordigital in Berkeley, Calif., and Milo Sybrant, online fundraising manager for Amnesty International USA. They shared some results of Amnesty International USA multivariate Web site testing at the NTEN’s 2009 Nonprofit Technology Conference.

Buttons. Bigger and colorful buttons catch eyes on the page. Try to draw their attention to important tasks, such as donation actions or signing petitions.
Copy matters. Good copy will help make your case. Remember that audiences get to your organization in a variety of ways. Think about breaking out pages for segments of your audience. For example, a Web site about a disease might have a different message for a patient than a caregiver.
Think about scrolling. A horizontal gift string layout converted more donors than a vertical layout. The more the potential donor has to scroll, the less likely you may keep their attention.
Approach non-donors conservatively. Gift string values that had conservative gift asks converted more non-donors than broader string asks.
Gut feeling. Have an urge in your gut? Chalk it up to indigestion and start testing. A gut feeling can’t compare to actual numbers and results.
What you will need. Find a testing software platform. You need roughly 100 conversions per page variation to have significant data you can work with.
Do it yourself. Just because certain variables worked for Amnesty International USA doesn’t mean it will work the same way for your organization. That’s why it is extremely important that you test variables for yourself and make adjustments to your site accordingly.

This article is from NPT TechnoBuzz, a publication of The NonProfit Times.

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