User experience, or UX, involves the quality of the experience that users have when navigating and interacting with your nonprofit’s website. It’s a fairly broad but extremely important element to keep in mind whenever you’re updating your site. In today’s digital-first environment, UX can make or break your ability to convert new visitors into donors, and it plays a critical role in encouraging long-term engagement from existing supporters.

If you’re new to web design or the concept of UX, the easiest way to think about it is to simply consider your website from a new user’s perspective:

• Is your organization’s mission easily identifiable on your homepage?
• How easy is it to find your organization’s contact information, donation form, blog, or another main page that a visitor might be looking for?
• How long does it take to complete an action, like making a donation?
• Is your website easy to use and navigate, or do issues like broken links and poor mobile responsiveness make it a frustrating experience?

Questions like these are a great starting point as you begin reviewing your own website for potential improvements. However, there’s one element of UX that stands above all others in terms of importance: speed. 

How fast your website loads is the very first UX indicator that could cause users to abandon your site before they even fully land on it. As internet users, we’re more impatient than ever, and we’ve come to expect a lot from the sites we engage with. Studies have found that 40% of users abandon a website that takes more than 3 seconds to load, and even a delay of one second can drop conversions by 7%. 

Simply put, if it takes visitors a long time to 1) access your website and 2) complete the action that they came to complete, you’ll see higher abandonment rates across your site. 
At Cornershop Creative, we specialize in web design for the nonprofit sector, so we understand what the top nonprofit sites need to accomplish and what donors are expecting when they visit. We’ve seen firsthand the difference that even small UX improvements can make on a site’s ability to engage and convert donors, so we wanted to share a quick crash course on how to speed up the UX of your own site. Let’s dive in.

Basic Components of Fast UX

All sorts of factors, from design elements to page load time to SEO (search engine optimization), can have huge impacts on your website’s ability to attract and engage visitors. The statistics mentioned earlier illustrate the importance of fast load speed, which is where we’ll start first.

Page Load Speed

Your website must load quickly on any browser, desktop or mobile. 

The generally accepted ideal load speed sits around two to three seconds or less — anything longer and you’ll likely see larger and larger numbers of visitors bounce away. It’s essential to be familiar with the two most common contributors to slow load speeds:

• Large files. Large, high-resolution images, headers, animations, and other embedded visual files that need to load at the top of a page can seriously slow down your website. Website plugins can help you automatically cut back on duplicate files that might be clogging up your image library, as well. 

• Redirect chains. Chains of redirects between outdated URLs increases load time by bouncing the visitor from page to page, and it can even make them (and their browser) feel that your site can’t be trusted.

Page load speed is one of the biggest components of strong user experience, especially as more web traffic moves onto mobile browsers. Think about it: how long are you typically willing to wait for a page to load on your smartphone when you’re trying to look something up or casually browsing? With the current necessity of digital-only engagement, load speed should be the first place you look when improving your website’s UX.

Barriers to Engagement

This component of fast UX involves the actual barriers to entry that you may place on your site. Whenever you add new elements to your website that users will directly engage with, think carefully about how exactly they’ll impact UX. 

For example, requiring users to log in with a username or password is one barrier to engagement that sites will deliberately include for important security reasons. Users’ security should always be a top priority, but make sure that your own site’s login process is streamlined. The best way to ensure that visitors will have a positive experience and find what they need is by making it easy to enter your site and quickly engage with your content. 

Consider Amazon and Google, two web giants that prioritize making it easy for users to get started with their services. Amazon’s one-click purchase buttons and Google’s SSO authentication tools are both great examples of how removing unnecessary steps like an extra login or data input can streamline user experience.

Design Elements

Design can also contribute to a faster, high-quality user experience on your website. Of course, “web design” encompasses a number of different topics and specific elements. As they relate to fast user experience, there are three main contributing factors to think about:

• Navigation. Sites that offer strong user experience anticipate their visitors’ needs. Clearly-labeled navigation bars across your site and intuitive landing pages that don’t distract or bombard users with irrelevant elements are good starting points.

• Simple visuals. Minimalist design tends to perform well online because it’s less likely to distract or confuse visitors looking to quickly find information or complete a task on your site. Plus, using simpler layouts and fewer (but high-quality) images will improve load speed.

• Information placement. Websites should anticipate what their visitors are looking for, like contact information, and feature it in an intuitive spot. For instance, nonprofits can provide embedded donation forms to make the giving process easy and fast for visitors who will be more likely to donate while they still feel emotionally motivated.

These elements of web design can all contribute to a faster, more positive user experience, and they’re some of the first places that webmasters can begin to easily make improvements themselves.

Building a Faster User Experience on Your Site

As mentioned above, there are plenty of ways to speed up your site’s UX without the help of a professional web designer. Consider these additional tips:

Pagespeed Insights and Google Analytics

Google’s readily available tools are a perfect resource for staying on top of the quality of your website’s user experience. 

Google’s Pagespeed Insights tool is invaluable for a number of reasons, namely because it determines the time it takes for your site to load on both desktop and mobile browsers. It even indicates specific problem areas and offers optimization tips. Remember that load speed is central to user experience and increasingly important for Google rankings, too.

Google Analytics provides insights that can be crucial for your website’s overall health and performance. Most importantly, the platform makes it easy to track your abandonment or bounce rates, the first indicators of slow load times and poor user experience. Then you can look deeper to find specific pages that perform poorly and target your improvements in smarter ways.

Templates and Caching

Both of these techniques involve saving time and streamlining processes as you build your site and as your users engage with it:

• Create custom templates to use whenever creating new content on your website. By creating a template for a generic campaign web page, you’ll save time and ensure a more cohesive experience for users across your site. A template built with a streamlined layout and fast-loading elements will take the guesswork out of the process as you launch and promote new campaigns.

• Caching involves directing a user’s browser to save parts of your website that it already downloaded from a previous visit. This means your website will load much faster when the user returns to that page, which can result in a substantial improvement in user experience. Caching is more complicated to implement than other UX solutions, though, so do your research on the exact settings you can configure in your own content management system.

Streamlining aspects of your website on both the backend and user-facing side whenever possible can help to generally improve its user experience value.

Image Compression

We’ve touched on the importance of avoiding huge image files above. However, websites still need to include high-quality, attractive images to create engaging content. A full wall of text is unlikely to interest a casual browser, for instance.

Compressing the image files on your site will help you strike the right balance between offering attractive visuals and keeping file sizes low to prevent slow load speeds. 

Keep image file size in mind when creating new content, and use tools that help you automatically compress images as you upload them. Platforms like WordPress often come with this feature built-in. New image formats like Google’s webp image format can also help ensure that you’re offering high-quality visuals without sacrificing valuable storage space or the user experience.

With the current importance of digital engagement, it’s more important than ever that websites prioritize creating fast user experience. Pages need to load quickly, offer immediate ways to engage with content, and tell your nonprofit’s story swiftly and compellingly.

By using a few important resources, exploring additional tools to adopt, and building better habits, it’s easy to start enhancing your nonprofit’s site to improve its UX value! For a thorough audit or professional-grade improvements, working with a nonprofit consultant specialized in web design will often be your best bet for long-term value.

You know that cause marketing is a partnership between a for-profit and a nonprofit. Each partner has something to offer the other.

Cause marketing is certainly a potentially significant strategy in your overall nonprofit marketing plan. And some of you have a cause marketing program in place already. But for those of you who don’t (and that’s most nonprofits), how do you know when cause marketing is right for your nonprofit? And if it is, how do you bring the program to life?

These questions are more weighty than ever in light of the controversies surrounding the Komen-KFC deal (guidelines for productive partnerships here) and the more recent Nature Conservancy (and other major environmental organizations)-BP deal.

I interviewed expert cause marketer Joe Waters, Director, Cause & Event Marketing at Boston Medical Center, to answer these questions and more. There’s no better resource on cause marketing than Joe’s blog, Selfish Giving. Joe features case studies (with specifics), trends and news from the field – it’s a must read for all cause marketers, and those still considering jumping in.

Cause marketing basics

Nancy: How do you define cause marketing? There are so many definitions out there. Many nonprofit marketers are confused.

Joe: Cause marketing is a win-win partnership between a nonprofit and a for-profit for mutual profit, usually involving point-of-sale and/or percentage-of-sale programs. The “profit” for the nonprofit is visibility and/or money. For the for-profit, it’s an enhanced image and sales.

Nancy: How did cause marketing evolve as a major strategy for corporate support of nonprofit issues and causes?

Joe: American Express’ campaign for the Statue of Liberty in the early 80’s was the first major cause marketing effort. Since then, companies have slowly caught on to the value of moving beyond straight philanthropy. Frankly, many have had no choice because of the disappearing bottom-line that once made “charity” possible. Cause marketing allows companies to serve two masters: Consumers that expect them to give back, and investors who demand growth. It’s called cause marketing, but a more accurate name is “Cause Sales”.

Benefits of cause marketing

Nancy: What kinds of nonprofits are likely to benefit from cause marketing, and to solicit interest of corporate sponsors?

Joe: A company will sometimes partner with a small, unknown charity simply because it’s a worthy cause, but most look for charities that are well-known and respected by consumers. There’s a double benefit here because they’re supporting a worthy cause AND a reputable organization. Companies also favor charities with a large supporter base and, increasingly, marketing know-how.

For instance, the studio that released Charlotte’s Web partnered with Heifer International, an Arkansas-based nonprofit that provides livestock to poor farmers, because of a natural farm animal connection. What sealed the partnership was Heifer’s 160,000 person mailing list and ability to conduct grassroots marketing from a nationwide network of offices. The studio could have partnered with any organization that worked with livestock, but Heifer delivered advantages they could take to the bank.

Nancy: Who usually benefits most, the charity or the corporation?

Joe: People always seem to think it’s the company, but I disagree. For most companies, cause marketing is just one of the ways they’re building reputation and driving sales.

Their marketing mix is like a dish with 100 ingredients: If you leave one out, no one will miss it. But with fewer ways and dollars to promote themselves, nonprofits stand to gain a lot from cause marketing, especially if they land the right partner.

Take the partnership between Starbucks and Boston-based Jumpstart, focused on early literacy skills. Since 2006, Starbucks has raised money and given Jumpstart great visibility via its website and stores, especially in the northeast. Thanks to Starbucks, Jumpstart now enjoys national awareness. But what has Starbucks gained from this one partnership? Can we really say that Starbucks would be any less successful if they hadn’t partnered with Jumpstart? Nope.

Cause marketing tips and best practices

Nancy: What are a few “best practices” case studies?

Joe: Well, I think the Starbucks/Jumpstart partnership is a very strong one. It demonstrates just how much one company can impact a nonprofit. And Starbucks has benefited over time from its cause marketing partnerships with Jumpstart and others to forge a credible brand that has probably helped its business.

I also really like the point-of-sale cause marketing program A. C. Moore and Easter Seals recently completed. Even though it was a national program, it has some good lessons for local cause marketers like me (and probably most Getting Attention readers).

The breakdown of the program was simple. At A. C. Moore’s 136 stores cashiers asked customers to donate a dollar to Easter Seal’s Act for Autism campaign and together they raised over $141,000.

Great results, but here’s what makes this cause marketing effort noteworthy…A special in-store event. During the point-of-sale campaign, A. C. Moore invited customers to a Make & Take crafting event in stores that involved a jigsaw puzzle (for autism awareness). What a great combination of crafting and cause! I was thinking how great it would be if we did an in-store pumpkin decorating event at iParty stores during their October point-of-sale program for us.

Nancy: How should a nonprofit dive into cause marketing for the first time?

Joe: There are many steps, but the first is to honestly assess what you have to offer a corporate partner. Does your organization’s mission resonate with a company’s customers? Do you have an event that will provide great visibility for your partner? Do you have a relationship with a sports star or celebrity to feature in a joint advertising campaign? Do you have an extensive network of volunteers or local offices to help market a company’s products or services?

With my organization, Boston Medical Center, we started with strong relationships with just two Massachusetts-based companies, iParty and Ocean State Job Lots, which had been consistent supporters of the organization for many years. Since then we’ve inked over 50 cause partnerships with Mass-based companies.

Nancy: Whom on the nonprofit staff should be involved? Is this a marketing or development responsibility?

Joe: It’s both. But what’s more important is that everyone understands the value of cause marketing to the organization. If leadership and staff members aren’t committed, it really doesn’t matter what department you work for or how talented you are. It won’t work.

Nancy: OK, let’s assume that there’s a nonprofit that doesn’t fit your criteria for cause marketing success? What other kinds of corporate support are available?

Joe: I would tell them to stop worrying about cause marketing and just focus on opportunity. If you have something of value that you think companies will want, you don’t have to stay between the lines of cause marketing.

A friend of mine works for a Boston organization with lots of foot traffic. She does traditional cause marketing, but she closed her best deal when she convinced a company to sell their products in her main entrance area. That one deal raises her organization several hundred thousand dollars annually. Is it cause marketing? No. Is their money green? You bet it is.

Final thoughts on cause marketing

Readers, I’d appreciate hearing your experiences with cause marketing so we can share them with the Getting Attention community.

• For those of you still on the fence, what are the barriers keeping your organization out of cause marketing partnerships?

• For those of you whose organizations are recent entrants, what motivated the decision to develop such partnerships and how are they going?

• And for those of you who are long-time cause marketers, what is different (and more challenging) in today’s cause marketing arena?

Read Part One of this article series here.

You know that there’s no message more valuable than testimonials from partners, donors, members, volunteers and program participants on their experiences with your organization. Testimonials rationalize a prospect’s decision to support your organization as they back up your claims and vouch for the value of your work. As a result, these unbiased words carry more credibility than anything your organization’s staff has to say.

Questions to ask for compelling testimonials

It’s challenging to get the right testimonials from your network. But you can count on getting strong material when you ask this series of questions (via phone or an online survey) as soon as possible after an individual’s interaction with your organization.  This approach is vastly more effective than an “open mike” call for testimonials strategy.

You can ask the questions at an organization or program-specific level, depending on the messaging you’re working on. Beware that asking broad questions generates broad responses that tend to be weak testimonials.

Here are the questions to ask:

1. Why did you [join/give/volunteer with/participate in] our organization? This question establishes the interaction as “customer-feedback” rather than a request. A request for a testimonial is imbalanced, frequently creating a measure of tension and sometimes a resistance to responding. Customer feedback is an equal conversation; a two-way street.
2. Please list the three things you like most about your [membership/support/volunteer work/program] and why you like them? Implying ownership (“your membership”) personalizes the survey. Positioning this question as a positive (“like most”) increases the likelihood of generating a positive response. Requesting a report back on three distinct features (for example, a program’s relevance, workshop format and take-home materials) makes the respondent think hard and specifically on her response. As a result, the end product is likely to be more useful to your organization.
3. What do you see as the most valuable aspect of your [participation/advocacy/giving to us/membership/volunteering]? By asking your base to pinpoint benefits, you’ll learn which ones are most important (to them and to prospects).
4. Please tell us about any specific success that your involvement with our organization helped you achieve, and how. By asking for personal experiences, you’re likely to hear stories that map directly to the challenges faced by the rest of your network. Stories make information easy to relate to, and much more interesting.
5. How has your involvement with our [organization/program] benefited you or your community in terms of increasing quality of life or satisfaction? This is one of my favorite questions, leading the respondent right to the answer you’re looking for. It will motivate her to tell you how your organization or program has changed her life.
6. Is there anything about your [volunteer work/program/membership/donor communications] that you would like to see changed? This question emphasizes how much you care about feedback and gives you insight into problems that need to be addressed.
7. May we use your comments in our communications, with attribution? Remember that an anonymous testimonial has far less weight that one attributed to an individual cited by name, title and organization. If you can feature her photo, all the better. That increases believability hugely! But you do need to ask her permission on all fronts.If you’re conducting this interview via phone, send an email follow up to solicit a dated release.

How to polish nonprofit testimonials for ultimate impact

Once you have a few testimonials in hand, move on to editing. Editing is expected, as long as you don’t change the intention of the testimonial in doing so.

Here are the critical steps to take:

• Use only the strongest testimonials you have. It’s far better to have a few really good testimonials than several mediocre ones. Make sure the testimonials cover a range of benefits. Different things are important to different people. Your prospects are going to decide to get involved for different reasons. You want to cover all the main ones.

• Focus on a single benefit in each testimonial. Load too many in and you’ll deplete the strength of the message.

• A length of two to three sentences works best. However, testimonials can run longer if you’re telling a story.

• Positive messaging works best. Do edit out negative elements, such as slams on other organizations. And don’t use testimonials that have an overall negative tone. They won’t help your organization.

• Conversational is the way to go. You’re bound to generate some great raw material by asking these questions. But make sure you don’t overdo polishing what you get. Testimonials should be conversational in tone, just as you initially heard them. If you rewrite them formally, they’ll lose their impact.
• Send the edited version with attribution to the source for approval, showing them exactly how it’s going to look with the attribution included. Save the confirmation email you receive in return. In about 20% of cases, you’ll be gifted with a revised testimonial that’s even more glowing than the original.

What makes a compelling testimonial?

Start by identifying what doesn’t work. Weak or negative testimonials are worse than no testimonials at all. Here are a few examples that add little messaging value:

“Imagine standing and just looking at a stainless steel 1936 Ford.  It is great right?  Now imagine working on it!  EVEN BETTER!”
–Crawford Auto Aviation Museum Volunteer

So what? This testimonial provides little insight to the reader.

“I very much appreciate all of your time and insight.” (On a nonprofit news service)
—Anonymous, California, USA

Why is that effort and insight of value? And who is speaking? If I don’t know the speaker’s role and organization, there’s no way I can assess whether her take is relevant to me.

Nonprofit testimonials that work

Here are four examples of testimonials that work, and explanations of why they do so.

“The best part of camp is, without a doubt, the kids – their smiles, laughter, and maturity. I volunteer to help the kids, yet I always leave camp with a renewed sense of hope and life, which comes from the kids, and what they do for their fellow campers, the volunteers, and me. In my opinion, Camp Hope is the toughest vacation you’ll ever love.”
—Catherine Brown, volunteer

Catherine’s articulation of all she gets from giving her time and effort is moving and motivational.

“They are very consistent in their pick-ups. It’s very easy to arrange and I know that the things I donate will not be wasted and any money raised goes to a good cause.”
—Nora C., Bridgewater, MA

Nora C. donated goods to the Big Brother Big Sister Foundation and shares the practical features (reliable pick up, easy to arrange) and more spiritual benefit (any money raised goes to a good cause) that will motivate her to do so again.

“I credit meeting many of my career goals this year to my mentor.  As a result of my mentor’s invaluable coaching, I have been able to map out my job experience and determine my areas of concern, update my job application form and develop my interviewing skills.”
—Carolyn Ellenes

The specifics here make this testimonial a powerful one. Ms. Ellenes shares her experience in a way that highlights specific benefits (analyzing her career path and honing related skills) and value (meeting many of her career goals) of the mentoring program. We understand who she is and how program participation has made a difference in her life, making it easy for us to evaluate the relevance of this testimonial.

Finally, take a look at the Center for Media Democracy’s video compilation of testimonials from members and community producers. It’s three minutes of warm, fun, informational, and memorable marketing, that doesn’t seem like marketing at all.

Craft a compelling testimonial headline

It’s hard to overestimate the power of a headline. Remember that today’s readers skim at a fast clip. Headlines can stop them in their tracks.

Effective headlines frame a testimonial to capture attention, making content easier to absorb and increasing the potential for audiences to digest your full message. Feature a bolded headline for every testimonial (and include it when you seek permission to use the quote). Your headline should highlight the value of the testimonial, as it does in the three headline/testimonial pairings below.

Toughest Vacation You’ll Ever Love
“The best part of camp is, without a doubt, the kids – their smiles, laughter, and maturity. I volunteer to help the kids, yet I always leave camp with a renewed sense of hope and life, which comes from the kids, and what they do for their fellow campers, the volunteers, and me. In my opinion, Camp Hope is the toughest vacation you’ll ever love.”
—Catherine Brown, volunteer

Easy to Arrange, Reliable Pick Up
“They are very consistent in their pick ups. It’s very easy to arrange and I know that the things I donate will not be wasted and any money raised goes to a good cause.”
—Nora C., Bridgewater, MA

Invaluable Coaching Moved My Career Forward
“I credit meeting many of my career goals this year to my mentor.  As a result of my mentor’s invaluable coaching, I have been able to map out my job experience and determine my areas of concern, update my job application form and develop my interviewing skills.”
—Carolyn Ellenes

How is your organization developing or using testimonials?

Please leave your strategies for soliciting and using testimonials as comments below. I’ll be sure to share them with the other nonprofit communicators in the Getting Attention community.