Testing user experiences on your nonprofit website provides valuable insight

We write a lot about using social media to help your charity but consider how easy is your site to use for visitors?In 2014 essentially all nonprofits be they large or small have a website of some sort, after all it’s your window to potential donors 24 hours a day, seven days a week. While websites all have their unique features when did you last ask yourself how well it is functioning for and helping the user – would it pass a usability test? The ease of a website helping a visitor to perform expected tasks is critical to the user experience and in turn the success of your organization.

Now is the ideal time to test the ease of your site via a number of user performance measurements, start by getting together a list of five or six willing participants to test the site. Ideally choose friends or associates who are not familiar with the website so that you can conduct the analysis appropriately, these ‘testers’ will represent your target donor audience – those who are likely to be visiting the website for the very first time.

Make sure your nonprofit website is not frustrating your potential donors

When considering those who can test the site try and select people you can sit with as they visit the site and provide verbal prompts and then observe their reactions, another alternative would be to to plan a free screen with the tester and schedule a call with them so you can observe as they navigate the site and complete planned tasks  – a  site such as joinme.com would work perfectly for this and is easy to use. If the first two options aren’t practical, provide a list of tasks to complete to your partner and plan to call the tester immediately after the visit and testing so you can detail their immediate impressions.

What to measure?

Give deep consideration to the specific goals of your website and try and consider everything that is likely or possible to be achieved via the site. Ensure that you give thought to the smaller/less frequent goals along with the major ones. In a nonprofit environment these measurements might include but not be limited to:

• Completing an online donation / ease of use and understanding
• Registration for a Newsletter / RSS feed
• Interfacing with social media, including the following accounts on different platforms, checking feeds etc.
• Registration to volunteer for your organization
• Requesting assistance / submitting a question to your organization
• Determining who the key contacts are
• Accessing a calendar of events
• Downloading additional resources

Depending on your site some of these tasks might not be applicable or there could be others but this will form the basis of the website user analysis. If you’re able to share the visit experience with your volunteer compile a list of instructions that you’ll give to the volunteer while they are exploring the site. For example you might say ‘Go ahead and as if you wanted to make a donation of $25 via the site’ and ask them their thoughts during the donation process – or ‘register to volunteer for the upcoming event this summer’. Make note of which elements of the site caused any layers of confusion or any tasks which took longer than you had been anticipating.

When forming your testing group try and get diversity among the visitors, particularly in terms of age and computer know-how to best represent the cross section of donors that you are looking to appeal to. Compile as much feedback as possible in real-time and don’t explain the site unless they reach a dead-end (hopefully they won’t) but allow them to use the information provided housed on the site to complete the tasks on your list.

With this testing completed, you can ensure your website is easy to use for all of your visitors or find out where improvements would be most helpful.

When you have finished testing you’ll have a greater understanding of which elements on your site are working perfectly for all users and which ones could be greatly improved. If most of the users have trouble locating information or completing forms or downloads then chances are an overhaul of that part/functionality of the site is necessary. So often when we’re used to looking at our own sites on a daily basis we take for granted our own knowledge of the navigation and functions of the site, few things are as valuable as having numerous fresh pairs of eyes giving your site a test drive and providing feedback to improve things where needed.

If you have any other tips or experiences about road-testing your website I’d love to hear from you.

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Miratel Solutions is a Toronto call centre, eBusiness, and letter shop mail house specializing in professional fundraising services including inbound telephone fundraising, outbound telephone fundraising, online fundraising, lottery fundraising services, donation processing and receipting and direct mail fundraising services. We are committed to our CSR business values in all our business decisions and advancing the missions of the nonprofits we proudly serve.