15 Ways to Enhance the Online Giving Experience

By Melissa Ezarik. Bringing a shopping cart experience to online donors so they can give to multiple areas but only check out once is a big step for institutional advancement offices to make. Yet, as involved a project as that is, there are always enhancements that can be made to the shopping cart itself and to other areas of the giving website. Here are 15 ideas and actions worth modeling:
1. Choose your words carefully.
When describing specific funds to entice donors within a site with a shopping cart, using the right tone is key. "[The donor is] not really buying a product and you don’t want to cheapen the perception of that donation," says Rae Goldsmith, vice president of advancement resources at the Council for Advancement and Support of Education. One site she has seen "talks about the investment—that’s the tone to take." Read more...