How do you know if the money, time, and effort you poured into a new website is actually working out?
We at Web 105 frequently come across this question from clients. Our role is to build mobile responsive, clean websites for government agencies, nonprofits, and healthcare organisations. While they love the visual effect of a digital facelift, everyone wants the hard numbers as to whether the website will perform as intended.
Clients want to know if more visitors will stop by or if donations will get an uptick in activity. The problem is there is no hard and fast direct answer.
What you’re looking to study are the website metrics available through a number of different tools. These will tell your team if you’re getting enough engagement, traffic, conversions, and ROI for your new website. Here is a quick overview of these tools so you can start tracking.
Understanding Website Traffic and Engagement
Before you can make any adjustments to your website or try out a few A/B tests on new images and donation campaigns, you need to know how people are currently interacting with your digital presence.
To start, you’ll need a way to monitor website traffic. This is the measurement of how many people are coming to your website. You’re measuring total sessions (hits), unique visitors, and traffic sources (where they come from).
The most popular tool for measuring website traffic is Google Analytics. You can integrate this through a simple code snippet in the header or something like a plugin in WordPress.
Let’s provide a scenario. Say you have a fantastic site about saving the Koala population. You install Google Analytics and run it for a month or so. When you review website traffic, you see you get a ton of visitors, but they all come from social media posts and PPC ads.
What this means is your organic traffic is low. It indicates your website is functioning and popular, but you need to spend time introducing SEO keywords into the content, so you rank higher on Google search engine page results for the terms your local audience is using.
What About Engagement?
Website engagement is different than traffic. With this metric, you’re measuring:
- Bounce Rate: The percentage of visitors exiting your website after one page.
- Visit Time (Time on Page): How long they stay to interact with your content.
- Pages Per Session: The number of pages on your website they visit.
Let’s look again at our Koala NFP. If your bounce rate is upwards of 70%, something is off. It means your content doesn’t resonate with what your target audience expects. That could be because of bad layout, navigation, or simply uninteresting information.
You use a tool like Hotjar to measure visitor behaviours. There are heatmaps that tell you what elements or content users spend the most time on so you can figure out what it is they want to read.
Social Media – The Simplest Visitor Metric
Installing all kinds of plugins and extensions into your website’s backend function is extremely valuable, but don’t forget social media. A modern NFP website must include some form of social platforms like Facebook, TikTok, Instagram, X, or LinkedIn.
You can measure things like the number of followers, likes, shares, comments, and click-through rates on your website from your social platforms. Most of these social networks have internal analytics you can use to see what your users like and if it triggers them to head to your donation, services, or volunteering pages.
Measure Conversion Rates Where They Matter Most
An NFP website is different from an eCommerce storefront or small business selling a service. You don’t measure success by the number of custom cat hats you sell.
You can measure what is known as “conversion rates” in other ways, such as how many donations you receive, who is registering for upcoming events, or the number of subscribers to your Substack or email newsletter.
Back to our Koala NFP (Let’s call it Caring for Koalas). You’ve just launched a new website and will measure conversions for one month, 3 months, and half a year. That will give you a good insight into:
- Tracking Donation Conversions: If you have 1,000 new visitors in a given period and only 10 donate, you have a 1% conversion rate. Most high-performing donation pages should be in the 14-19% range.
- Event Registration/Volunteer Signups: If you’re hosting a fundraising gala and 500 people visit your website between the announcement for open signups and the event date, but only 5 register, your messaging is unconvincing.
- Email List Growth: Email is still one of the highest ROI tools for NFPs because it requires next to nothing to get up and running. Knowing your website is good would mean more subscribers, open rates (20-30%), and CTR (click-through rates). Email is the best pathway for A/B testing new headlines, content, visuals, and ideas.
Using these metrics tells you how your website is functioning. It gives you valuable information as to what is providing value and where you may need to make adjustments to get more attention from the target users you want the most.
If you share a heartwarming video of a family of young koalas being released into the bush and it results in higher volunteer signups, you may be onto something your audience wants to see.
What About Website KPIs?
A KPI is a Key Performance Indicator. Businesses of all sizes use them to measure everything from the COGS (cost of goods sold) to how many customers ask for a free sample at an ice cream shop.
KPIs are essential to tracking the success of your Australian NFP. Knowing your website is successful, but not seeing the returns in other areas of your organisation indicates you have a problem that requires attention. A few of these KPIs include:
- Cost Per Dollar Raised (CPDR): Take the total fundraising expenses for an event or mission and divide it by the total donations received. The lower the CPDR, the better. You’re doing well if you spend 20 cents to raise one dollar.
- Donor Retention Rate: Do you know if your NFP donors are coming back for reengagement? If only a quarter of your total donor return from last year, you have a retention issue that needs work. You probably need to send more impact stories and handwritten notes to encourage people to maintain relationships.
- Volunteer Turnover Rate: Burnout is a serious concern with volunteers. Track your signups (through your website if available) and see how long people stay around. Something as simple as a mentorship program could reduce volunteer turnover.
- Program Expense Ratio: What percentage of your operating budget goes toward providing the services aligned with your mission? A lot of businesses and “big” donors will look for this number because it demonstrates efficiency in delivering what you say you will deliver.
While your website is a wonderful measure of the public’s interest in your daily activities, there are other ways to ensure your NFP is succeeding or not. Keeping track of all these metrics using automated tools and AI-driven technologies will help you stay on track, adjust, and better steer toward mission success.
Your Website is More Than Aesthetics
Yes, you want an NFP website visible on all screen sizes and easy to navigate that grade schoolers could explore. However, there must be ways to track how impactful your new digital presence is with your target audience.
Using a combination of tools like Google Analytics, social media, and visitor behaviour insights ensures you know everything you need to have online dominance. Adding in organisational KPIs provides even more insight so your NFP is successful.
At Web 105, we can build your website with integrated plugins and extensions, making this data-gathering process quick and easy. Schedule a consultation with us today, and let’s discuss how to best measure your new website’s conversion, engagement, and industry impact.
FAQs
How to measure nonprofit program success?
There are many ways to measure how your nonprofit is succeeding. Metrics like donor retention rates, program expense ratio, social media engagement, website traffic, and CPDR are all good indicators.
How is program success measured?
The best way to tell if your program succeeded is to measure the expected outcomes with the actual results.
What is the average bounce rate for a nonprofit website?
It varies a lot by type of nonprofit, target audience, and engaging content. On average, a good nonprofit website bounce rate measures between 60-70%. However, the lower you can go, the better.