Church Development shares a key factor to helping people give online through your church website.
Last time I shared a study from the Chronicle of Philanthropy on how many charities have failed to make the transition with online givers. In studying the top 400 charities, they discovered that nearly two-thirds (65%) required visitors to click through 3+ pages to reach a donation link.
There’s a valuable lesson here:
Although there are many others factors as to what creates a good online giving experience (more on that next time) we do know that we have to work around people’s ability to easily get distracted. Although people spend a lot of time online, people leave the average website within 10-20 seconds. While that number is higher for websites that people are familiar with (and hopefully your congregation is familiar with your church website), the issue still stands. So what can be done about it?
First of all, minimize the clicks it takes to get to the online donation page.
The easiest way to do this is to have a large “Give online” button on your homepage. Make sure that it’s easy to see, that you don’t have to scroll to find it, etc. You can link to an intro page if you’d like—covering that online giving is secure, which company handles online donations, and a list of frequently asked questions (including tax benefits, why to give, what funds are used for, etc.)—but get to the giving page as quickly as possible.
For everything else we can cover in online giving through your church website, streamlining the process is key.
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Denis Greene is the Founder and President of Church Development. He is the author of The Stewardship System, Stewardship-Based Capital Campaigns, and How To Ask For Donations as well as numerous articles on stewardship. Denis has helped over 200 churches across the USA raise more than $200,000,000.
A complete list of Church Development’s services (including capital campaign management and consultation, feasibility studies, and year-round stewardship ministry programming) is available here.