By Jason Williams, Google Analytics and Google Ad Grants specialist and consultant
A person’s first impression of a charity can often be from its website, so it’s crucial to make it count. Think of your website as a digital museum, curated by you and open to the world to explore and enjoy, but like any museum, you need more than just high footfall.
As a charity leader, you don’t need to be a web developer, but here are three key questions you should be asking and where you can begin to look to get the answers:
Does it achieve any of your charitable objectives?
Are people visiting your website taking action, such as applying to volunteer, sharing key information, signing petitions, joining a help group or donating to your campaigns?
Consider your charity objectives as events (micro) and key events (macro):
- Events are small actions or interactions you want to track, such as a file download or a video view, but it’s unlikely they will determine your success
- A key event is a significant action that is more closely tied to the overall goals of the website, such as a donation, volunteer application, or support request.
In Google Analytics 4 (GA4) you can create these events and mark the important ones as key events. Then, when you look at your GA4 reports, you will be able to see if your website is achieving them. You will also be able to get additional information, such as which types of marketing achieve these key events and how often.
You could even take it a step further by assigning monetary values to these key events to act as a handy metric for measuring the value of various website activities. For example, a new volunteer could be worth £ 1000 to you, but it’s only the application stage, so giving a value of £50 might be more realistic. After 12 months, has your website delivered more value across all your key events than you have spent on it?
Are you reaching the right people?
Is your website attracting new supporters and expanding your reach?
Google Search Console shows you the search queries people type into Google if a page on your website has appeared in the top 100 organic search results for this query.
To see if the number of people searching for your organisation’s name or brand terms has increased, check it in Google Search Console. This will show you the last 16 months’ worth of data (but only if you have GSC activated for the previous 16 months).
If your website only appears for your charity’s name and branded terms, you are likely to be missing out on valuable opportunities to reach new people.
The next step could be to look at the landing page report in GA4 to see if the pages that appear most often in Google search results are helping you achieve your key events and deliver traffic with a high engagement rate.
Is your website in good shape?
Is your website easy to navigate, mobile-friendly, and up-to-date? Or is it in need of some serious repairs?
From your homepage, can you find what you’re looking for in two clicks? For example, try asking someone who has not been to your website before (I use my dear mum!) to find your charity’s latest annual report or job opportunities and watch where they go, making notes on where they click and how long it takes them. Don’t assume everyone visiting your website is web-savvy, especially funders.
A basic health check can be performed using PageSpeed insights. This will give your website a rating out of 100 on mobile and desktop for: performance, accessibility, best practices and SEO. Any score under 80, and you’ve got work to do.
Also, check the pages report in Google Search Console. This can show you if you have any missing pages i.e. “404 not found”, serious security issues or pages that need improving because they are not mobile or desktop-friendly.
Funders will look at your website as part of their due diligence, so make sure it’s up-to-date, correct and working properly; it might cost you that grant you have just spent days applying for, and you won’t necessarily hear that as feedback if you fail. More importantly, your website is a valuable asset that can serve the needs of thousands of people every day and has unlimited capacity to drive value, so make it a regular feature on your board meeting agenda.