If you noticed more traffic to your organization’s website coming from mobile devices during 2013, you’re not alone.
Mobile is growing very fast, according to Clam Lorenz, director of nonprofit engagement for PayPal. The donations specifically on mobile a year ago was “almost trivially small,” he said, but now is almost 10 percent. Of the $633.8 million in donations processed via PayPal last year, $63.1 million were via mobile.
PayPal’s partners are increasingly adopting a mobile-first approach because that’s where web volume and transaction volume has been going the past few years, according to Lorenz. “The beauty of going mobile is it’s easier than ever.”
If your organization is looking for a payment-processing partner, Lorenz suggests choosing one that’s already mobile optimized. It’s also important to ensure that your donation page is optimized to be viewed properly on a mobile device. And if that’s something that a developer is getting paid for by the hour, make sure the page is first on the list to be done.
It’s also important to mobile-optimize your organization’s emails, Lorenz said, since more than half of all emails are now read on smartphones.
For nonprofits that already might be on mobile, Lorenz suggests rigorous A/B testing, everything from active versus passive voice, the color of a page of donate button, to the location of a donate button. “If there’s anything the last decade taught us, it’s that you don’t have to be big to be good,” he said. “Adopting testing mindset, any organization can do it in a very simple way.”
