“How can I make the case to my boss that my nonprofit needs a responsive website?”
A participant in my recent School of Nonprofit Website Excellence* asked me this question during our Google Analytics conversation. She asked it right after I mentioned that every single nonprofit website I work on has an increase in the percentage of visitors using smartphones or tablets.
(* If you missed out on the School webinar series, make sure you’re subscribed to my email list and get ready for some new goodies over the summer.)
My answer to her question?
Make the case with website analytics.
It doesn’t matter what your boss’s title is (executive director, vp of external relations, board chair), s/he wants to understand the value and benefit that a responsive website will have for your organization. Whenever possible, s/he wants to see this value/benefit expressed in dollars.
Here’s how to do it.
Show your boss how many potential X your organization is turning away with your outdated website. I recommend choosing either “donors” or “email subscribers” for your X. You’ll be able to associate value to each of these audiences with the size of your average online donation or your average dollars raised per email subscriber.
Here’s how your pitch might go:
“In 2013, 1,000 people visited our donation page via a traditional laptop or desktop. Ten percent (or 100) of those people made a donation.
In 2013, 400 people visited our donation page via a smartphone or tablet. Only two percent (or 8) of those people made a donation.
If our site was mobile-friendly, donations from visitors on a smartphone or tablet would have reached closer to the 10% rate we saw on laptops and desktops. That means we lost 32 potential donors. Our average online gift is $75. We left $2,400 on the table in 2013.
Let’s not turn away any more donors!”
If you don’t have true conversion rate data, you can refer to bounce rates. Here’s how that pitch might go:
“In 2013, 1,000 people visited our donation page via a traditional laptop or desktop. Only 65% of those people left our website. That means 350 people keep reading the page or looked at another page.
In 2013, 400 people visited our donation page via a smartphone or tablet. Over 98% of those people left our website. That means only 8 people kept reading the page or looked at another page. We turned away 392 people who were interested in making a donation.
Let’s not turn away any more donors!”
Do you need help getting this information out of your Google Analytics account? Watch this SmartCause Academy video about website analytics. But do it now! The free video is only available until March 31.
