Is Your NFP Website Mobile Friendly?
5 July 2012 at 12:09 pm
Charities worldwide, including Australian Not for Profits, could be missing out on donations because they have not optimised their websites for mobile devices.
UK marketing and fundraising experts Yoemans said as the world becomes increasingly mobile, websites must be mobile user-friendly and to continue to be a successful portal for an organisation’s products and services charities have to be user-focused.
Mobile phones currently browse the standard version of a website unless it is redirected to a mobile version. The big difference is in the screen size because most images on a website are likely to be too large for the small screens.
Website optimisation for mobiles means an NFP website is easy to navigate and fast loading and allows the browser to get where they want with just a few clicks.
Yoemans delivers some UK statistics which it said shows how important is it to have a mobile-optimised website.
- 52 per cent of UK mobile phone users have a smartphone.
- 28 per cent of internet usage is from a mobile phone.
- 28 per cent of people in the UK have purchased something using their phone
- Smartphone sales overtook PC sales in 2011
- eBay sells something via a mobile phone every two seconds
- Mothers day 2012 – 50 per cent of all online sales came from mobile devices
In 2011, in the US, $1.3B was donated online with nine per cent of people having texted a charitable donation from their phone, according to the Pew Research Center and in 2011, the UK’s Comic Relief charity raised £15 from text donations alone.
According to the experts most website designs in Australia are not optimised for viewing on mobile phones.
Australian social media expert, David Cowling, the founder of the Social Media specific website Social Media News said that according to his research and looking at tracking analytics system – StatCounter, roughly 72 per cent of mobile browsing in Australia occurs on iOS devices such as iPhones, iPads and iPod touch devices.
“Coming in second are Google Android devices, which account for about 21 per cent of Australian mobile browsing. In third place are Symbian devices (Nokia phones) which accounts for about four per cent of total mobile browser usage in Australia,” Cowling said.
“The remaining browsers are made up of BlackBerry, Windows Phone and other smaller manufacturers.”
And according to the experts, making donations by mobile phone available and accessible is part of the new fundraising mix.
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“With literally millions of iPhone and Android devices being used in Australia, and with many people relying on these smartphone devices as their primary internet connection – it is important that organisations optimise their website and provide the best possible mobile browsing experience.
“If you are building a new website this is a key piece of functionality you should spend time on.
“When people browse on their mobile they are often looking for contact details, addresses, basic information – you don't need to replicate the desktop experience onto a mobile – you need to provide a mobile specific version of your website.”
In Victoria, the Royal Children’s Hospital Good Friday Appeal produced a mobile version of its website in time for the 2012 Appeal which raised a record $15,820,640.
A feature of the mobile version was a running ‘ticker’ of the donation tally throughout the day as well as the ‘donate’ feature. Phone users who searched for the Appeal were automatically redirected to the mobile version.
The Good Friday Appeal said that, on the day, its website had 46,000 unique visitors and the mobile phone site had 26,000 unique visitors which translated to 3470 donations, adding to the Appeal's record result.
But statistics on how many Australian Not for Profit organisations have optimised their websites for mobile devices are not readily available.
