In The Hidden Cost of Complexity I noted that given a choice, the harder something is to use, the less people will use it. The more difficult something is to read, the fewer people will read it.

Our sector spends millions and millions on making things more complex and only a tiny amount understanding how these things are used. If ever there were a trade where the producer is disconnected from the consumer, ours certainly ranks near the top.

We also spend much time and effort waxing eloquently on fundraising trends. Or minutely analyzing campaigns and their transactional data to the point of paralysis. Yet we constantly turn a blind eye and deaf ear to the donor frustration and the consequent loss of response, retention and loyalty our complexity spawns.

It was in that context that I prepared a series of posts –“The Hidden Leaks In Your Retention Bucket” – to call attention to those functions undertaken by nonprofits that may seem rather unimportant, but are in fact real killers of donor retention and loyalty.

In preparation for year-end giving you might want to pay special attention to this one on Donation Pages and Payment Systems.

Never in my pontificating life did I dream I’d be down into the weeds exploring such minutiae. But hey, the life of a fundraising pundit sometimes simply must involve detail.

When it comes to gathering online contributions, all the great strategy and creative in the world is worthless if your donation pages and payment systems suck.

Few details are as important in affecting donor attitude, donor behavior and donor retention than the usability of your online donation forms and payment systems.

Yet few organizations bother seeking donor feedback on the usability of donate pages and back-end payment processing. That’s a BIG mistake. A BIG hole in the retention bucket.

Here’s why.

Very few donor experiences are more fraught and more frustrating to donors than the donate page and its connected payment processing system. Sadly, most organizations are totally ignorant of the trouble they make for their donors and the financial losses they make for themselves by not seeking feedback and measuring this.

Get the Donor’s Feedback

The sheer national percentage — 67% — of ‘abandoned shopping carts’ (industry jargon for those who never complete an order or a donation before walking away) should be enough to send us all scrambling to find out WHY?

Sometimes it’s the complexity of the donate form, requiring a donor to repeatedly key in the same information because a hyper-security conscious webmaster has disabled the auto-fill function as though he/she is running the backroom operations of a bank.

From real, live donor feedback:

“I’ve just spent a half hour trying to make a donation and can’t figure out how to do it. I’m old, I’m tired, and I’m medicated. I’m outta here. I’ll never give to you again.”

Sometimes it’s because PayPal is not included as one of the options or has been hidden by some horrible design. From real, live donor feedback:

“On one page, it said I could donate via PayPal – but on the payment page I was not given that option – I had to give you my credit card number.  What’s up with that?  I tried going back, but nowhere was I given that option”.

And sometimes it’s because the Matching Gift offer in the direct mail piece doesn’t appear anywhere on the donate form or anywhere else on the website for that matter. From real, live donor feedback:

The mailing we received let you check a box to double your gift “Twice as Much Good for the Holidays!”, but online that didn’t show up.”

I could go on and on with example after example. My point is that if you’re not measuring and monitoring the donor usability of your online donation and payment forms and systems, you’re not only losing money, you’re driving away donors.

[You can easily cure the monitoring and feedback part by downloading the Free Forever Feedback Widget from the Agitator Toolkit. It’ll take you 15 minutes to install, but then you’ll have to read and heed what your donors tell you about all this.]

Look At Your Online Forms and Practices

How much money are you leaving on the table? Consultant Beate Sørum, an Agitator favorite when it comes to a thoughtful, results oriented approach to online fundraising, is one of the few in the biz who actually backs up her advice with data. Data that she shares both on her own blog and on the web pages of SOFII.

Check out her Ten Easy Fixes for the Design of Your Donation Forms and then get busy. It’s well worth the effort.

Price and Payment Systems 

The final leg in this three-legged stool called online donations involves the shopping cart/donation cart mechanism, the gateway to the credit card processor and the price you pay for that processing. All in all, a real landmine of complexity.

But, it really is important to dig in and figure it out. I’ll cover price in a moment, but first want to point out that the lowest credit card processing price doesn’t do you any good if the shopping cart/donation cart you’re using is a donor nightmare.

In reality, minimizing your shopping card abandonment rate — taking all possible steps to make your check-out process as simple and seamless as possible — is more important than finding a cheap credit card processing rate. You’ll find a number of great tips (such as enabling donors to make contributions without signing in) included in this Hostway article.

Now, for those concerned with price I have great news. There’s a new service — sort of an Expedia for credit card processing It’s called MerchantNegotiators.com and it aims to make credit card processing more affordable and transparent.

For the first time you can find comparable information on the 40 largest credit card processors arrayed in a manner that makes it easy for you to compare features, terms and pricing.

You can also see a demo of how it works by clicking here. 

So … find some time, get down in the weeds, start digging, thinking and exploring the Hidden Leaks in your Donation and Payment systems.

Roger