When it comes to creating and maintaining an effective donor development program, experimentation is key.

It’s easy to get stuck in old habits, comfortable with doing the same old thing day in and day out.

The problem is that you should never rely on “because we’ve always done it that way” as the reason you stay with a marketing appeal or fundraising tool, especially if you’re not getting the results you want.

You must try new things, test them, and apply the results going forward.

Last month, we looked at different elements of your email appeals that you should be testing. Today, we’re looking at the different elements of your landing pages that you should test. 

Landing pages are a crucial part of your donor development campaigns. Once you’ve got a supporter (or potential supporter) actually on your page, you want that visitor to stay, engage with your content, and respond to your call to action. 

Keeping your landing pages effective takes intentional evaluation of all aspects of the page. One way to do this is with A/B testing—creating two (or more) versions of the same page but changing up a section or an element. Send one page to half of your list; send the other version to the other half. See which page gets the most conversions, which will let you know what needs to be changed.

Some things that are good to test on your landing pages: 

• Tone of your copy: Is it light-hearted, inspirational, funny, serious, blunt, straight-forward?

• Length of the page: Long or short? How is copy placed above the fold/below the fold?

• Images: How many? What style—illustrations, infographics, photography, images of people, animals, landscapes, color or black and white?

• Video: Tone/style? Length of video? Is it informative, inspirational, humorous, testimonial?

• Calls to action: Placement (beginning, middle, end or all three)? Using buttons, text, or both? How is it worded?
• Forms used: How long are the forms? What wording is used? Colors? Bordered or borderless? 

Case Studies: Landing Page A/B Testing Helps Nonprofits Better Connect With Online Visitors

Kiva

Kiva is a non-profit organization with a mission to connect people through lending to alleviate poverty. They sought to increase donations through a landing page aimed at first-time visitors. One of the changes they made was adding more information for visitors to the bottom of the page (including FAQ, social proof and statistics). Kiva found that adding an information box to the bottom of the page resulted in an 11.5% increase in donations. 

The World Wildlife Fund

The World Wildlife Fund wanted to increase the number of registrants for their newsletter. They redesigned their landing page, added a photo, and moved the text to make it easier to read. Just these few, basic changes increased newsletter subscribers by 83%!

While it may be tempting to just “slap up” a landing page using a template someone created a few years ago, don’t do it. Take the time to really evaluate and test your landing pages. Then, implement your findings, in order to create the strongest and most effective tools that will resonate with your audiences.