Nielsen Norman Group Releases a New Study of Nonprofit Web sites and Estimates that Organizations Could Double Online Donations

Nielsen Norman Group studied 23 representative non-profit websites covering a range of initiatives from animal rights to youth education programs. Test subjects were observed performing two tasks: Choosing a recipient and making a donation. By far, the thing the users sought first was an understanding of the organizations' goals and objectives. Only 43% of the websites studied put their mission on their homepage and only 4% stated on the homepage where the donor's money would be applied. This information was often provided inside the website, but users had trouble finding it and this affected their donation decisions.