Your website is the central hub for all important information about your nonprofit. It should grab users’ attention and direct them to take action that furthers their involvement with your organization—such as donating, volunteering, or attending events.
However, if you’re not seeing the results you’re hoping for with your website, it’s time to get to the root of these issues so you can properly engage your supporters online. By tracking web engagement data in an analytics tool like Google Analytics 4, you can better understand how visitors are interacting with your site and how you can improve it to foster even more engagement.
For example, as Cornershop Creative’s best nonprofit websites guide explains, “If the most beautiful website in the world takes forever to load, then visitors will still leave.” When you identify issues like low engagement rates using data, you gain better insight into underlying problems (like slow page load speed) that you can easily fix to increase site interactions.
In this guide, we’ll review the top five web engagement data points to watch so you can optimize your site for a more positive, engaging user experience. Let’s get started!
Understanding how users found your site is the first step in enhancing site engagement. You likely use a variety of different marketing strategies, and by pinpointing which are most successful in driving website traffic, you can prioritize those methods. As a result, you’ll direct more interested users to your site.
Common website traffic sources include:
In addition to discovering which marketing channels drive the most traffic to your site, traffic source data also helps you identify which methods you need to focus on to increase relevant visitors to your site. For example, if your email marketing isn’t driving as much traffic as you’d expect, create colorful call-to-action buttons that grab users’ attention and make it clear what next action to take once they land on your site.
Engagement rate measures the percentage of users who interact with your website. These interactions may include clicking a button, filling out a form, or viewing multiple pages. A low engagement rate may signal that your content isn’t relevant or informative to users, causing them to leave your site without meaningful interaction.
A good engagement rate is typically around 60-70%. However, the important thing to know is your current engagement rate for the key pages on your website and to work to improve it over time.
To keep users around and increase your engagement rate, follow these tips:
If you notice your engagement rate has been consistently low, you may want to take larger action to combat this issue. For instance, consider rebranding your site to make it more fresh and innovative. Then, compare your website’s engagement rate before and after the rebrand to test its effectiveness.
Page views count the number of people who have viewed a specific page on your website within a set period of time.
Identifying the ideal range for page views depends on the size of your audience and the purpose of each page. However, the best rule of thumb is the more engagement and views, the better.
To increase page views, you can implement search engine optimization (SEO) techniques, which NXUnite by Nexus Marketing describes as “fine-tuning your nonprofit website to perform better on search engines like Google so that more people will see your website and be able to engage with it.”
Here are a few tips to get you started:
Although it may take some time to see an increase in your website traffic, optimizing your website for search rankings makes your site more likely to reach the people who are most interested in your work, therefore increasing page views.
Session length (referred to in Google Analytics 4 as average engagement time) is the duration of time that a user spends on your website. The average time spent on a web page across industries is 54 seconds, but ideally, users will spend at least two to three minutes exploring your entire site.
Here’s how you can increase session length for any type of visitor to your website:
The longer a visitor spends time on your site, the more they’re going to learn about your work. By creating engaging content that appeals to your users, you can ensure that visitors stay interested in your nonprofit from the second they click on your site.
Conversion rate (now referred to in Google Analytics 4 as key event rate or session key event rate) details the percentage of users who complete a desired action. These actions will usually be form submissions, successful online donations, or call-to-action completions like button clicks or PDF downloads.
Ultimately, most nonprofits’ most important conversion is donating. The average donation page conversion rate is 12%.
Here are our top tips for increasing your website’s conversion rate:
Remember: you should always design your website with user experience in mind. The easier it is to engage with your site, the more likely visitors will enjoy their interactions and continue to engage with your work. If you’ve built a trustworthy brand and a user-friendly site, you’re already on your way to increasing your conversion rate.
Understanding your web engagement data can help you optimize your website, broaden your audience, create better content, and deepen website engagement. Paying attention to these five data points will set you on the right track to providing the most positive user experience possible so each click turns into a lifelong supporter.
Self-described as a “non-profit junkie,” Sarah has dedicated her career to serving the needs of the non-profit sector. Her project management experience spans a variety of non-profit management disciplines including strategic planning, community engagement, capacity building, fundraising and research. She has worked both in and for the non-profit sector at the Feminist Majority Foundation, the Sadie Nash Leadership Project, and the consulting firms The Lee Institute and The Curtis Group. With her ever expanding non-profit tool belt, Sarah joined Cornershop Creative to tap into her techie, creative side, while developing meaningful partnerships with her clients to help them more effectively achieve their goals.
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