Eight practical tips to design online donation journeys that actually convert

Online donating is a fundraising route that continues to grow. If your charity takes donations via online channels, an optimised user experience is essential for conversions.

The priorities for how the journey is built include mobile optimisation, accessibility and speed. Alongside this, content and design should focus on building trust and confidence with potential donors. By understanding users’ goals and designing in line with their expectations, charities can help donors support a cause that matters to them.

Our team has designed, built and tested many successful donation journeys. Here are eight tips based on what we’ve learned.

1. Show donors exactly how their money makes a difference

The journey for a potential supporter starts long before they reach an online donation form. They may be prompted via direct mail, social media or word of mouth.

Whichever route people take, they want to know their donation will actually help. It sounds obvious, but this understanding is crucial to how likely people are to complete a donation.

“Where your money goes – that’s what everyone wants to know.”
― Usability testing participant

Potential donors can be sceptical about how much money goes directly towards a cause versus running costs. Being explicit about this builds trust. If 100% of donations go directly to beneficiaries, state this clearly. If not, be transparent about how donations are spent.

Use real stories from people you’ve helped alongside broader impact data. Consider the breadth and diversity of stories and whether you’re sharing enough detail for people to connect with them. Short videos with beneficiaries can be an effective way to do this.

“The more you feel connected to the individuals, the better and you’d feel compelled to give.”
― Usability testing participant

If compelling impact information is hidden away in annual reports, pull it out for your landing page. Revisit this regularly to keep your examples and data current.

“I would like to know what’s the last thing they’re proud of, that was made possible through donations? Something more than just the generic ‘we’re a charity; we need donations’.”
― Usability testing participant

2. Give donors real choices about how to support you

Supporters are likely to have a personal connection to your cause.

The UK Giving Report 2025 found that, “For most donors, their last donation was prompted by someone they know personally.”

In these cases, giving the option to donate to a specific area of the organisation gives a meaningful and personalised choice. It’s also worth including an option for ‘where it’s needed most’.

It also helps if you can connect suggested donation amounts to specific outcomes. Potential donors might be undecided about how much they will donate, so these examples can be helpful prompts. If you can, include these in your donation widget, as not everyone will scroll down to read more.

Considerations for using suggested donation amounts

• Use donation data to help inform the options you include.
• Ensure that you offer a wide range, so you don’t put off people who want to give smaller donations.
• Be wary of AI-powered suggestions (that are built into some donation widgets) and check how closely these align with your actual donation data.
• Always offer the option for donors to tailor the amount.

Offer clear routes for other ways to support

Not everyone can donate financially, so offer clear routes for other support like volunteering or fundraising. These signposts tend to work best in the early stages of a donation journey, as well as part of the donation confirmation or thank you page.

“Volunteering is really useful to see, especially for times in your life that maybe you can’t donate, but you would like to help in another way.”
― Usability testing participant

3. Make regular giving convenient for donors

A recent charity benchmarks study found that, in 2024:

• revenue from cash giving declined by 6%, while revenue from regular giving rose by 8%
• regular giving accounted for 48% of all online revenue

A regular donation is obviously more of a commitment for supporters. We’ve found that offering meaningful choices and control can encourage regular giving.

For example, let donors choose which date payments will be made. There are so many variations in people’s financial circumstances. While it might not be possible or preferable to offer every day of the month, giving multiple options can be a huge help.

“I get paid on the 28th and prefer to have all my bills going out on that date.”
― Usability testing participant

It can also build trust with regular donors if you offer them the option to manage their monthly gifts themselves. Being able to increase, pause or cancel their donation without needing to contact the fundraising team gives donors agency.

While testing participants are always pleased to see contact details (particularly of a named person), in this case making them contact you can create a barrier. One testing participant shared that in this scenario, they wouldn’t necessarily want to speak to a person. They might be embarrassed about their change in circumstances and would prefer to have a login where they could easily pause or reinstate their monthly donation.

“I would like to see reassurance around pausing or stopping the donation and instructions of how to do that, as it’s not something I would like to do, but it could be outside of my control.”
― Usability testing participant

4. Use tried-and-tested design approaches

If you’re creating a new donation form or journey, start with tested design patterns such as those used by GOV.UK and the NHS. Adapt these for your audience, based on what you know about their behaviours and preferences.

It can be tempting to include everything on a single page to minimise the steps in a journey, but this is likely to be overwhelming. It works better to break long forms into manageable steps and show people how far through they are.

The Nielsen Norman Group recommend organising content logically, communicating requirements upfront, making interactions clear, and providing helpful guidance throughout. The more that your form design aligns with what people expect and are familiar with, the more likely they are to complete it.

“Users spend most of their time on other sites. This means that users prefer your site to work the same way as all the other sites they already know.”
― Jakob’s Law of UX

Another factor in how easily people can move through a form is error messages. These should be helpful and meaningful. ‘This field is required’ is rarely enough information and can be frustrating. People might have skipped something because they needed more guidance, not because they missed it.

Clear and descriptive error messages are helpful for everyone, particularly for people with cognitive disabilities and those who are neurodivergent. GOV.UK has guidance to create accessible error messages.

5. Only ask for information you really need

When you’re considering which fields to include in your donation form, less is more. It can be tempting to gather data that could be useful, but every field introduces more complexity and cognitive load and can slow people down.

Ways to be more user-centred

• Never ask for data unless you know exactly why you need it and how you’ll use it.
• Consider whether there are fields that could be optional rather than mandatory.
• Question whether you really need data such as titles, phone numbers, or how people heard about your organisation.
• Use help text to explain why you are asking for data and how you’ll use it.

Analytics and tracking

Understandably, fundraising and marketing teams are keen to know which channels and campaigns are most effective at driving donations. Rather than asking donors to fill in more fields to help you understand this, think about other more reliable methods of tracking.

Google Analytics and UTM tracking (detailed web links that include details about where visitors came from) can be useful to understand how people found your donation form. As our product management lead Ewan describes, a multi-step analytic approach can also be helpful to understand where people have dropped out of the journey.

If your donation platform is on a different domain from your main website, cross-domain tracking (that works across different websites) might also be necessary to track the entire journey.

When you have an agreed set of fields:

1. Test a prototype with users.
2. Review the collected data regularly.
3. Update your form based on what you learn.

6. Help people understand Gift Aid

Be wary of the assumption that everyone knows what Gift Aid is or how it works. The UK Giving Report 2025 found that, “While most donors are aware (and in favour) of Gift Aid, many younger people do not understand how it works.”

As well as younger people, this could apply to anyone who hasn’t made a charity donation recently. A Gift Aid request and its connection to tax can cause uncertainty.

“I’m self-employed and that immediately puts me off because that implies I have to do something more than just send a thing for Gift Aid. So if there was a link or explanations about what Gift Aid is.”
― Usability testing participant

Ways that you can help potential donors understand and opt in to Gift Aid include:

• be specific about how much more their donation will be worth at no extra cost
• use simple language alongside the legal statement
• provide a GOV.UK link where people can learn more about it

Also, avoid using percentages if you can as they can be challenging, particularly for people with dyscalculia and low numeracy. Numbers are more likely to be understood by everyone.

7. Make donors feel secure and confident

Similar to an ecommerce site, users must feel confident that their transaction is secure. Some trust signals that can help with this are the fundraising regulator logo and the familiar payment methods and Direct Debit guarantee logos.

Giving clarity throughout the journey about the donation details can be a helpful reminder about the commitment being made. Ideally, this should be visible throughout the process, with the option for changes to be made. As a priority, the donation amount confirmation should be shown again before people submit their payment.

Another aspect of building confidence is ensuring supporters feel in control of their donation. Beware of any deceptive or confusing design patterns that could mislead, trick or trap people. This includes automatically ticking boxes that opt in to covering transaction costs, or it being unclear that supporters are signing up for an ongoing commitment.

8. Keep branding consistent throughout the journey

Donations are often taken via another platform such as JustGiving, CAF Donate or FundraiseUp. This platform might be embedded into your main website, or it might involve handing users off to a subdomain. In either case, make sure that every step looks and feels like your brand. When people feel like they’ve been taken to a different website, particularly during a financial transaction, they can lose trust.

“The payment screen feels very much like it’s gone into a separate website, and you can tell from the URL that it has. It feels markedly different from what we’ve just looked at.”
― Usability testing participant

This includes all brand elements; colours, fonts, spacing and also your tone of voice. Adjust any microcopy such as field labels, help text and error messages to sound like your organisation.

Also, ensure that the move into another platform feels seamless for the user. Pass data between platforms to avoid asking people to enter the same information more than once.

Test, test, test

Above all, test your donation journey with real people who might actually donate. Quality assurance (QA) and user acceptance testing (UAT) are important internal steps for exploring different criteria and trying to break the form. However, there are always scenarios we haven’t considered and lessons we learn when testing with users.

This can be done before launch to catch any usability issues. It’s also fruitful after launch when you can incorporate any initial feedback or data about where people are dropping off. Use these to form hypotheses to test, learn and optimise your donation journey. Analytics and unmoderated testing can be helpful to inform conversion rate optimisation (CRO), but the benefit of moderated testing is that you can find out why users do, think and feel the way they do.

How we can help

We help charities create donation journeys that work for both charities and their donors. Our team has designed, built and tested many donation journeys, both as part of website redevelopments and as standalone development and integration projects.

If you’re looking to improve your online fundraising performance with evidence-based design, we’d love to discuss how we can help.