David Balcom from Moovweb and I recently teamed up to present the Accelerating Mobile Charitable Giving webinar. The session focused on optimizing the ways in which donors interact with your organization on their phones, whether it’s through a website, email or app. Emerging populations of mobile-only users, coupled with the fact that a majority of email and web traffic now come from mobile devices make this topic relevant to any organization. It doesn’t matter if you already have a mobile-friendly website or you plan to implement one in the future, optimizing your donor’s mobile experience is crucial. We’ve broken down the top tips from the webinar in this blog, but if you missed the webinar, we encourage you to watch it on-demand.
A central theme of our presentation revolved around not simply ‘going mobile,’ but making sure that experience is tailored to fit exactly how your donors interact with your organization. Undeniably, more and more people are using their phones to complete tasks (smartphone purchases have actually eclipsed sales of desktops and laptops). In addition, users are feeling more comfortable with online monetary transactions. So if your donors are already on their phones and motivated to give, why not provide them the best possible user experience to do so?
Studies have shown that many users will switch between devices to complete a goal. They might read your email on their phone, google your website on their tablet and then open their laptop to actually make the donation. What this means for you is that each of these channels must be consistent and optimized. It goes further than just making sure the physical layout of your website will fit the variety of mobile screens, it means providing the user a visible call to action no matter where they access your site or view your email.
Another theme from the webinar is the importance of gathering and using your data. Your organization’s online presence will provide you with a wealth of user data, but how do you make use of all these numbers? Monitor how users interact with your mobile sites by starting with the total number of visitors, and then breaking this down by device type, then by conversion rates and even further to find those trends and opportunities that aren’t always immediately visible.
The webinar features many more helpful hints and detailed checklists to make sure your organizations mobile presence is moving in the right direction, but the main idea is about cultivating a relationship with your donors. They will associate their experience interacting with your website, app or emails with your organization as a whole, and that’s why it’s imperative to make sure your appearance is consistent, and that the experience is enjoyable. If you still need more proof, it’s been proven that improvement in mobile conversions will lead to an immediate and growing impact on your ROI. Get the whole story by watching the full webinar here.