The Story of a Great Landing Page
Your church website is one of the key tools for your Digital Lane for building and sustaining a culture of generosity. The following post gives great examples and ideas of how to tell your story. It was reposted from https://www.onlinegiving.org/support/the-story-of-a-great-landing-page.
If you have ever visited the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals website, you know immediately what they are about: taking care of animals. Right on their home page, they show you pictures of sad-looking cats and dogs and then ask you to donate money to help these unfortunate animals. You’ll find a similar use of pictures at nearly every non-profit site you visit. For instance, the non-profit Charity: Water shows a picture of a woman with a glass of clean water. The ASPCA and Charity: Water boldly ask you to contribute financially to support their work. They make it easy to figure out what they do and make it easy to give in support of what they do. Their landing pages tell their story and make their appeal.
What story does your landing page tell? Non-profit organizations know the value of a picture to tell their story. They know the power of a picture and use it to tell their story to gain gifts. I have found that a well-designed giving landing page can be the gateway to beginning a journey of generosity.
Sadly, most churches never give any thought to their landing pages. I believe there are two major reasons why. First, few have ever considered using their giving landing page to tell a story. That shouldn’t be a surprise, as few churches understand the importance of connecting giving to the vision of their church. Here is a great post about how vision can increase generosity: https://www.onlinegiving.org/support/using-the-power-of-vision
I think the major reason churches don’t personalize giving pages is that most don’t feel they can build their own landing page story. For OnlineGiving.org church partners, our Custom Giving Pages make customizing your Giving Pages for special giving initiatives quick and easy. Our admin control panel allows our church partners to create and manage Custom Giving Pages for every giving season in a church’s life.
Our Custom Giving Pages are designed to allow churches to create supplemental giving pages with designated funds and sub-funds. An example of a popular custom-giving page would be “Mission Trip Giving.” Giving pages can have the same layout as the primary donation form. However, custom-giving pages allow church administrators full control over the page title, page labels, header text, payment types, and other features. Custom giving pages are designed to be used in addition to the primary donation form. Custom giving pages can be public (visible in the giving website navigation) or hidden (accessed via direct link only).
For years, I have advised church leaders to utilize special landing pages for particular types of offerings. I like to set up special landing pages for seasonal events like end-of-year appeals, Easter offerings, mission trip appeals, and other special offerings. A brief story with pictures can help potential donors see the value of their gift in making a difference for the Kingdom. One of my primary goals with any offering is to see new people begin their generosity journey at your church. While your regular donors are interested in a quick process, new donors need more information before they give. This is where the story behind your appeal can be a powerful tool to motivate people to give. You must get the first gift before moving donors to a lifetime of support. Your story can be the trigger that starts that lifetime of generosity.
Custom Giving Pages vs Custom Form:
A popular question we are often asked is the difference between a Custom Giving Page and a Custom Form. Custom Giving Pages are useful for scenarios where the church wants select funds to be displayed on a secondary donation form. Custom Forms are useful for collecting additional information, allowing the church administrator to organize sections for additional questions and input. While Custom Giving Pages and Custom Forms allow the church to accept payments/donations, we strongly advise always using a Custom Giving Page over a Custom Form for anything related to giving. Custom Giving Pages have the advantage of using the same layout as the primary donation form, which has been tailored (designed specifically) for streamlined giving.
If you want to see great giving landing pages, look at one of our client churches’ sites, Northridge Church in upper New York State: https://www.northridgerochester.com/give.
To read more about the importance of your landing page, read this post: https://www.onlinegiving.org/support/design-your-giving-page-for-growth.
One last reason why I think most churches ignore this kind of advice is they think it will take massive amounts of time. However, you will find that we do most of the work for you. We have guides, videos, and other coaching to help personalize your landing pages quickly and easily. If you run into trouble, call us, and we will spring into action to help answer your questions and solve your problems. We lead the industry in customer service and support, which is one reason our turnover rate is so low. With the platform, tools, and help we give you, your story can and will motivate the financial support needed to carry out your mission.
Contact us today at (615) 206-4000 or at support@onlinegiving.org for a free demonstration of our customizable landing pages.