7 Form Placement Tips for More Giving Tuesday Donations

This year, get more Giving Tuesday donations when you optimize your donation form placement.

This year, get more Giving Tuesday donations when you optimize your donation form placement.

Your mission is important. The work you do makes the world a better place. Your website should showcase how you accomplish that, how your readers can access your services, and how donors can help fund your cause. The trick is to balance your message between outreach for your mission – and outreach for donations.

One way to do this is to strategically use your donation form(s) on your website and make it easy for donors to locate donation opportunities.

No time is more critical for this than during a major giving campaign like Giving Tuesday. So make sure that in your preparations for Giving Tuesday, your donation forms are easy to find and easy to use.

Think of your site as a map of your organization’s mission and goals, then make sure that the areas you most want to be found are well-marked.

Map

1. Have a donation page that outlines why you need donations.

Many organizations make the mistake of creating only a PayPal button for donations. The issue with this is that once a potential donor clicks a PayPal button, they are directed off of your website.

When donors are directed off your website, several things may happen. You might see more abandoned donations, lost opportunity to collect donor information, and (if not configured correctly) your donors may not be returned to your site after they complete a donation.

Instead, make sure to have a form on a page dedicated to donations and fundraising. For Giving Tuesday specifically, take the time to make this page robust and visually appealing. If you need help, we’ve provided some tips and templates for your Giving Tuesday donation pages.

On every donation landing page you create, take the opportunity to:

  • Create an impelling appeal for donations.
  • Collect donor information with an appropriate opt-in, of course.
  • Suggest donation amounts.
  • Process donations onsite.
  • Thank your donors after their donation is completed.

Being able to collect donor information gives you the opportunity to thank them and to send future appeals or newsletters to them.

Every donation form created with Give generates its own dedicated donation page with a featured image. Your donation form pages can also be added to a menu or embedded into an existing page or post using a shortcode.

2. Add your donation page to your main menu/navigation.

I’ve heard organizations lament that they aren’t receiving as many donations as they thought or hoped they might receive, only to discover their donation link buried in their site’s footer. The form was only viewable from a tiny link at the bottom of the page.

footer donation link

If you want to receive more Giving Tuesday donations, make sure that access to your donation form or page is at the top of your site in the primary navigation.

Instead of hiding your button in the footer, place it at either end of the menu, but not buried in the middle. If your menu includes “Home” and “About” as well as other menu items, then consider adding your donation link all the way to the right in your menu.

Changing out your menu items on WordPress is easy and presents a unique opportunity to direct more traffic to your everyday donation pages or your Giving Tuesday Landing Pages. Simply change the link to this menu item for the day of Giving Tuesday to increase traffic to your Giving Tuesday campaign.

3. Name your link something obvious.

What might seem obvious to you, is not so obvious to others. There are many sites that either bury their link in a drop-down or call it something that isn’t a clear donation link.

To make your donation link obvious, use words like:

  • Donate
  • Give
  • Support
  • Contribute

Don’t use words or phrases that are too ambiguous, as they aren’t clearly a call to action to donate. Avoid the following when talking about donating:

  • Get Involved
  • Volunteer

4. Add an image to the navigation link.

Heart next to "Support this blog" navigation link

Did you know that you can add images to your navigation?

Upload the appropriate size image (usually around 20-25 pixels high) into your media library. Then copy the direct link. Place that link with HTML tags in the navigation label on your menu in front of the label itself.

<img src=”your image link”>

menu settings on wordpress dashboard

If you want to change this image to something specifically for Giving Tuesday. The Giving Tuesday campaign resources website provides you with the generic heart logo that you can shrink down for your purposes. Just make sure you follow the Terms of Use.

5. Add color to your navigation link.

Maybe you’d like your donation navigation link to have a different color background, like a button. We can do that with some simple CSS and the navigation label number.

Use the “inspect” feature of any browser to determine the menu-item number.

chrome inspector screenshot

Then target your donation link with CSS like the example below:

#menu-item-324 a{
background-color: lightgrey !important;
color: red !important;
}

When you use both an image and a background color, it might look something like this.

"Support this blog" navigation link with background color.

If you need help with this process, we have a quick video tutorial dedicated to walking you through it.

You might even consider changing out the color of this navigation link for Giving Tuesday to call attention to the special campaign. After Giving Tuesday you can change it back to the original color and link it back to your everyday donation forms.

6. Give donors more than one place to give.

If one link is good,  sometimes two or more are better. Consider adding a link to a footer menu and other places on your website. Put a Give button in your sidebar to open in a modal, making it easy for donors to complete the form.

You might not want to change out ALL of your links for Giving Tuesday, but it would be helpful to direct stray traffic to your Giving Tuesday forms.

7. Display your forms in different ways.

Remember that your Give plugin makes it easy to create multiple forms to be used in multiple ways:

  • A form grid can include all of your forms on one page. In the form grid, your forms can be set to open in a modal to be completed without redirection to another page.
  • Use the Give Donation Form Widget to put your form in a sidebar or another widget area.
  • Use the Give Form’s shortcode to embed your form in a page or post with other information. This is helpful when you’re building a Giving Tuesday landing page separately from your Give Form page.
  • Experiment with Give buttons, modal forms, and more.

Are you ready for Giving Tuesday and other major fundraising campaigns?

If your donation pages/forms are easy to use and even easier to find, you’re halfway there.

Need some inspiration? See our article on 5 Inspiring Giving Tuesday Campaign Ideas. If you haven’t started planning for Giving Tuesday, it’s never too late. Be sure to download our Giving Tuesday Workbook!

Free

Giving Tuesday
Workbook

Get everything you need to launch your Giving Tuesday campaign for FREE.

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