Six tips for charities to optimise online donations and boost income

goDonate’s annual analysis of more than £30m of UK donation data, collected across 12 months via our online donation platform, shows that optimising digital donor experiences is more important than ever.

At present, however, M+R Benchmarks’ 2025 report shows only 11% of visitors to charities’ donation pages using mobile, and 12% using desktop, actually go on to donate. Or, put another way, roughly 9 in 10 fail to convert.

The good news is that there are many inexpensive and efficient ways to boost your donor conversion rates and revenue via digital channels.

Those tactics can work wonders. For example, if your annual income through digital donation is £500,000 and your conversion rate is 12%, pushing it to just 20% provides an online income of £833,333. A 30% conversion rate would garner £1.25m. In tough economic times those are significant gains. At goDonate we regularly achieve conversion rates of between 30% and 65%.

We constantly evaluate how to optimise online donations for charities that use our fundraising platform.

Here’s a summary of just six ways you can improve the performance of your digital fundraising strategy.

1. Streamline journeys: Cluttered, complex, lengthy donation forms are a common problem. Anything you can do to reduce the number of questions and fields to fill in reduces friction. There are obvious non-negotiables to include – such as understanding motivation, is it a standard or in-memory donation? – and a balance to be found between capturing useful data and having too many steps. Overall, strive to reduce the amount of information and effort needed to donate.
2. Keep sites consistent: Another source of confusion is a lack of ‘matching luggage’: when the online donation pages don’t match other digital and offline comms. The donation funnel should sit within your site but feature consistent imagery, copy, and overall look and feel, especially if someone is seeking to support a specific appeal. This builds certainty and trust among donors.
3. Optimise for mobile: Giving via mobile accounts for 58% of single donations, according to goDonate data, while 67% of monthly donations are made on a mobile device. Ensuring forms work on smaller screens is vital. It’s about striking while the iron is hot, inspiring people to donate while they’re spending time on their phone or tablet. They expect the same speedy and smooth experience as they’d get on a computer.
4. Offer payment innovation: Donors’ use of digital wallets – the likes of Apple Pay and PayPal – has increased year on year. Across all devices we now see 49% of all single donations are made via a digital wallet. Donating in this way is rising for both one-off and regular giving, so it’s crucial to offer a wide choice of convenient payment methods within supporter journeys to streamline and increase conversion.
5. Prioritise personalisation: Personalised donation pages significantly increase conversion. A NextAfter study revealed a 22% uplift through the use of personalised rather than generic messaging; HubSpot notes a 200% rise in conversion in some instances of personalised comms. Try delving into your CRM system to discover data from previous donations that can help you to set smarter donation prompts, in line with what supporters might expect.
6. Test, learn, repeat: A/B testing is a very useful way to understand donors and determine what works well for different supporter groups. Test different donation amounts, along with images and wording on forms, to guide supporters through the donation process. Donation platforms such as goDonate have built-in tools which help you to experiment.

As online donation continues to grow in popularity small tweaks to your strategy can make a big difference. To discuss the six tips above and learn more about ways optimise online fundraising for better donor conversion, contact a member of the goDonate team on [email protected].