Hearts, Minds and Online Donations

Wednesday 10th of March 2010Bristol Fundraising Group

Talk by Tickbox Marketing

Our agenda

1. Charities and the web

2. Planning your web marketing

(requirements, processes and functions)

3. Results – measuring & learning

4. Social Media Marketing

5. Live web user audit

Charities and the web

"The World-Wide Web (W3) was developed to be a pool of human knowledge, which would allow collaborators in remote sites to share their ideas and all aspects of a common project."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Wide_Web

Charities and the web

• The web is a place people come together for a common purpose, share and exchange

• Made up of groups/communities who can spread the word quickly

• This is what charities do, gain support, turn support into action

• The web is very relevant to the charity model and a powerful tool

Your starting point when planning your web strategy

• Purpose (of your website)• Profile (of web users/target markets)• Processes (that your web users need to do on

your site)

The web has a central role to play

• It is a volunteer, a fundraiser, a charity worker, a receptionist, a spokesperson, a meeting room, a library, a collection box, a guide, a trustee - and more.

• Write a job description!

The Purpose – top level objectives

• Raising funds • Raising awareness • Improving engagement • Educating • Attracting and motivating volunteers • Attracting membership • Providing support

Create a strategy for each - set goals and consider how the website will meet your key objectives

Planning your strategic marketing

website objective = the site user process= the site function

e.g.  Promote volunteering is your objective 

Use volunteering section, with enquiry link and use blog stories to promote the benefits of volunteering

The functionality is therefore a blog, allowing site to create sections, enquiry link

 

 

• If you run campaigns, does your website allow you to create and highlight campaigns, with call to actions and integrated with your other marketing channels?

Bath Cats and Dogs Home old website

Bath Cats and Dogs Home new website by Tickbox

FOWA website by Tickbox, now taking online membership, old site took 0 new members

Measure, Learn and Improve

• Set goals, measure and learn• Move resource from planning to ongoing

implementation of web strategy• Ensure site functions are maintained e.g.

refresh quality content

Social Media Marketing

• Strategic targeting• Building a community• Telling a story

Using Twitter to call in £ support when needed

Charlie’s story, it’s not just major charities using social media

Web User Audit

http://www.pennybrohncancercare.org/

Our Frame Work

• User Interaction (layout and IA)• Content• Technical

User interaction

Home page - shows the percentage of clicks links on your homepage got in February 2010

Encourage interaction with your community

Often the best support for people suffering serious illness can come from talking to others who have been through the same thing.

An online community (blogs, forums etc) can help make your site a place people go to get that support. It can also greatly help engagement with your target audience, through SEO (your site will be more easily found in the search engines as blog and forum posts will be rich in relevant keywords).

Calls to action

• Make helpline clearer (above fold) • Make donate more actionable

The donate now trigger

Make donate more actionable – ie, attach a message (ie “Your support helps us care for X number of people a year” or “Help us to help people with cancer ” etc)

Think about incorporating the donate button into the header, or somewhere where it can sit on every page.

Content – Homepage

• Who are you?• What do you do?• What do you want me to do on your site?• What questions are you answering?• How have you helped people?

Content - Who are you?

Content - what you do

Content - What you do

• Prominent What We Do and How We Can Help you links and promo areas on the homepage.

• You have also broken down the information on pages into simple, scanable links and text

Content -what do you want me to do on your site?

• Good use of home real estate – calling for donations, highlighting how people can support you, what people can do to contact you, download a starter pack etc.

• Teview what your priorities are in terms of what actions you want people to take on your site and tweak and update the homepage to reflect this.

Content - Copy and Keywords

Remember it’s not only humans who read your website, so do the Search Engines

Technical - URL Naming Conventions

1: SEO – the words in your URL are one of the most important factors in your content being picked up by the Search Engines. For instance this page, instead of appending page8.asp to the end of the URL using www.pennybrohncancercare.org/helpline will greatly increase your chances of being found for someone searching online for a cancer helpline.

2: Analytics: By not having extensions that reflect content, you make it hard to assess how you are doing in Google Analytics. For instance:

Technical – your shop

• One of the top 10 pages on your site is page8!• Very high bounce rate• Twice as many people left the shop page as

actually went on to visit the shop.• The shop as a separate site?• How does the shop work as part of your

business model

Useful articles

• http://www.tickboxmarketing.co.uk/articles/web_marketing_for_charities/

• http://www.tickboxmarketing.co.uk/articles/10_steps_to_web_design/

• http://www.tickboxmarketing.co.uk/blog/?p=44

• http://www.tickboxmarketing.co.uk/blog/?p=23