When building out your different menus one thing you should keep at the forefront of your mind is the user journey. You want to make the process of navigating your website as easy and clear for the user as possible. A couple of good questions to ask yourself when building your menus...
Do you have clear calls to action in your main menu?
You should have at least one clear call to action in your main menu (Give Now, Sponsosr Now, Start a Fundraiser, etc). The reason for this being that the main menu is visible across all pages on your site. So, if someone is on a landing page reading up about something you're doing, a program you're running or one of your fundraising campaigns and they feel compelled to give, it should be clear where they can do that.
Do all of the menu options scale?
E.g. When looking at your website on mobile, is the menu that your call to action link (Donate/Store/Sponsor a Child) is placed in still visible? Is your cart icon visible so there is a clear way for users to navigate to the checkout? It is a good idea to place the links to these important pages in the Main Menu.
Is there somewhere clear that the user can see to navigate back to the homepage of your website?
If a user has clicked through multiple links and finds themselves on a page they didn't want to get to, is it clear for them to see how to navigate back to the home page? This could be that when clicked on, the logo directs back there (however, not everyone would know to click the logo to go to the home page), so the recommended option would be to place a link in your menu along the lines of 'Home' or 'Return to Home' that links back.
We live in a very social media focussed age, so it's a good idea to have social media icons and links throughout your website. Having social media icons visible encourages engagement and inspires your donor's to take a next action and share about your organization with their friends and family. Some recommended spots to have these visible on your website is in the menu or top bar, in the footer, and on the thank you page that donor's are directed to once they have given.
In Givecloud we've created another great tool to increase engagement, called 'Impact'. It provides each of your donor's with a unique referral link that they can share on social media and use to track the impact that they are having - this includes seeing how many people have donated using their link and how many people have visited the website via the link they shared! Learn more about this feature here.
Good quality and correctly sized images are crucial for not only the look and feel of your website, but for the load time. Your home page, in particular, should have compelling images (or videos) that represent your cause. First impressions matter, and this is the first thing they'll see when they visit your site. If you have huge full resolution images on your page it's going to slow down your site substantially. Some handy tips...
Image Sizes
As a general rule of thumb, no images used on your site should be less than 255 pixels wide. You can generally use 400 x 600 as a rough guideline. If the image is being used as a banner across the top of your page, we recommend no smaller than 1920px wide.
Resolution
Save at 70 percent image quality - they look the same but load up to 20 times faster.
NB: If you don't necessarily have your own imagery, you can find free stock images at unsplash.com
If you are a registered charity, you should list your accreditations in your footer along with your privacy policy and terms & conditions. This shows that your organization is credible and builds trust with your donor's.
For more ways to build trust with your donor's, view our Trustraising blog here.
