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Fundraising
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DMAW - Direct Marketing Association of Washington
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Your online conversion rate — the percentage of Web visitors who join, give or take a desired action online — is the critical measurement of your organization's online success. Your conversion rate tells you how well or how poorly your Web site is serving the needs of your prospective donors or members — and your organization.
Think of online conversions as the equivalent of direct-mail response rates. In direct mail, the number of total pieces mailed is divided by the number of responses to yield your response rate. It's the same formula for the online world, except "total mailed" is "unique visitors" (number of individuals who visit your site) and "responses" are "online actions" (donations, memberships, e-mail subscribes, etc.).
Average online-conversion rates for retail Web sites are in the 2 percent to 4 percent range, even with top retailers such as QVC and Land's End seeing 12 percent to 16 percent, according to a recent Nielsen//NetRatings report.
Shocking, isn't it?
That means 84 percent to 98 percent of most Web visits do not result in a transaction.
You'd want to set your goals for a double-digit conversion rate. But since most nonprofit Web sites don't have a singular focus on membership or fundraising, as do retail sites selling products, you should look at your specific program's online conversion rate, too.
For example, what percentage of donors who visit your online donation form end up completing their donation? Use the same formula for memberships.
Among nonprofit organizations, I've seen donation-page conversion rates from a low of 0.5 percent (the site had problems) to a high of 17 percent for optimized sites.
For relief organizations collecting donations for the recent Indian Ocean tsunami disaster, that number shot up to 30 percent. While tsunami fundraising was certainly a special case, it shows us the potential for online fundraising.
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