TL; DR: Wix recently introduced Wix Donations, a website-building platform tailored to the fundraising experience. Nonprofits and fundraisers can use Wix Donations to attract donors, engage with visitors, collect donations, and manage their campaigns. Wix Donations also offers various promotion and analysis tools to help users track and optimize performance. We spoke with Oren Inditzky, VP and GM of Online Stores & Donations at Wix, about the new platform, its all-in-one capabilities, and how creating an online donation experience can help fundraisers.
My favorite way to give is online. Mobile donations are easy, quick, and accessible from anywhere. But I also remember the days of direct mail or over-the-phone donations. Charities, such as St. Jude and ASPCA, would have conspicuous commercials and request that donations be sent through those two methods at the end.
But like everything else, the donation landscape has evolved due to the inevitability of digital transformation. According to Springly, about 54% of donors worldwide prefer to donate online with a credit or debit card over any other method. Many nonprofit organizations have modernized their donation collection processes to meet donor expectations.
The donation industry is also following in the footsteps of the eCommerce market. As new features are released and users become more comfortable with online transactions, donation collectors can take after eCommerce stores and create their own digital presence. This is exactly what Wix aims to help users do with Wix Donations.
“Nonprofits understand that being online gives them way more opportunities than just collecting donations. They can sell merchandise, write blogs, and facilitate the community by having a forum on their site. We have all that built-in under one roof,” said Oren Inditzky, VP and GM of Online Stores & Donations at Wix.
Wix Donations is an all-in-one platform for website-building and fundraising. It allows donation collectors to create complete landing pages with call-to-action buttons, eye-catching designs, mobile-friendly payment options, and search engine optimization. And that’s not all. Users can also leverage Wix’s performance tools and real-time analytics to track and boost metrics.
How Wix Donations Sets Users Up for Success
Donation collection has officially moved into the online and mobile space. In fact, 67% of nonprofits worldwide accept online donations. With this online shift, Wix has positioned itself to help donation collectors undergo digital transformation and engage their donors in new ways with its easy-to-use platform, Wix Donations.
“The major value we bring is a professional holistic solution that is easy to use, efficient, and cost-effective. It’s a one-stop shop that allows you to design your site, collect donations, sell merchandise, organize charity events and check your analytics in one place,” said Oren.
Wix Donations is an ideal solution for any nonprofit or donation collector. It includes all the essentials to create a website with fundraising at its center. Since Wix already specializes in eCommerce, users can also benefit from these advanced functionalities in the Wix Donations platform to further promote their important causes and exceed their financial goals.
“You definitely see eCommerce being the locomotive in the internet industry. So new advanced features start in eCommerce and then trickle down to other online verticals such as donations. So you have all the tools you need to acquire donors or engage with them,” said Oren.
Wix Donations is specifically tailored for fundraisers’ needs and donors’ experience, yet as part of the border Wix platform. Users can leverage Wix’s website building and AI capabilities to create sites that showcase their cause and generate trust. Donors will also expect multiple payment form options, such as Google Pay and digital wallets, which Wix already has built into its ecosystem.
“Recurring donations became an important factor in how nonprofits plan or budget because it brings more predictability. We knew that recurring payment for donations is a must-have, and we see customers already using it,” said Oren.
Everything on Wix Donations is also mobile-friendly. So donors can read engaging blog posts, donate, and participate in forums all from their mobile devices.
5 Essentials for an Effective Donation Landing Page
People can use Wix Donations for almost anything that requires fundraising. Oren told us he had seen some interesting use cases, including wedding couples, political campaigns, and blog writers. Oren also offered his advice for making a well-designed donation landing page.
“One of the most important things is branding. You want to design your site or pages to establish a consistent brand identity with the right colors, logo, visual style, language, and tone. It should generate trust,” said Oren.
Users can leverage the Wix website builder to customize their webpages to display their unique story and engage donors with their cause. Content also plays a significant role in web design and user experience. Website owners should add the right imagery and wording to connect visitors with their cause. Wix Donations can help users with that as well.
“In any place where you have imagery, text, or an actual donation widget on your site, you can use AI to help you generate them. Our engineers made sure that those AI prompts are tailored to the specific needs of donation collection,” said Oren.
Oren’s third tip was developing a clear and easy-to-find call to action. He said the specific buttons for collecting donations should be simple to understand and clear to see. Oren also emphasized trust. Donors want to feel secure that their donation is going to a good cause. Oren advised showcasing testimonials, success stories, and transparent reporting on funds or financial activity.
“Last but not least, optimize everything for engagement. Design everything intuitively — the entire story, the flow, the imagery. Everything should eventually lead toward that critical donate button,” said Oren.
Empowering Fundraisers to Meet Financial Goals
Wix Donations is here to help nonprofits and fundraisers attract and engage their donors. Its all-in-one platform allows users to save money on third-party tools and manage everything in one place with one subscription and no additional platform fees.
“To truly fulfill their potential nonprofits require many tools today that they should not pay extra for. When collecting donations with Wix, you can also facilitate a forum with the community, write a blog, sell merchandise, and do them all with a click of a button. That’s something new that we bring to the nonprofit industry space,” said Oren.
Wix Donations also allows fundraisers to track their performance with analytics and digital marketing tools out of the box. Users can optimize their SEO, automatically generate posts to social media, manage email marketing campaigns, and optimize all that with real-time data analytics. These features enable them to stay ahead of the curve.
“You can look at the lifetime value of donors and analyze recurring revenue. We also have a suite of CRM tools to manage donor information and use that to generate more retention and engagement. It’s all very advanced and robust,” said Oren.
Although Wix Donations is a relatively new platform, Oren said he and his team at Wix have already seen success stories and learned much about the donor experience and expectations. He said the Wix Donations team will continue researching and testing new features to enhance donation collection and make exceeding goals easier.