A recent Blackbaud study called Online Marketing Benchmark Study for Nonprofits shows a 14 percent decline in non-profit web traffic from 2011 to 2012. It was released May 2013.
There seems to be numerous factors that could explain this drop:
Mobile: With the increasing use of mobile devices, websites not optimized for mobile viewing probably had fewer visitors.
Social Media: It has become so easy to stay updated and interact with an organization by social media but this greatly reduces the need to even visit the website.
Email: Click-through rates have decreased and may be partly responsible.
What can your organization do?
Start by monitoring your own traffic with a handy tool called Google Analytics. When choosing the date range, check the box “Compare to” and do a year-over-year comparison. Pay close attention to where you traffic is coming from. Keep in mind, email traffic could be labeled as “Referral Traffic” if it’s from a web based client (like Google) and “Direct Traffic” if it’s from a desktop client (like Outlook).
Optimize your website for all mobile devices. There are many ways to do that depending on your needs and budget including; a mobile website, a responsive design and/or a non-profit app. This will also be a great way be able to accept mobile donations!
Tweak your Facebook page a bit to make it easy to find your website. Include the URL in the “About” section and it becomes a clickable link on the timeline. Create custom tabs and post updates that also include links to your website.
These are just a few of the many ways to increase traffic to your non-profit website.
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