5 Ways to Ruin Your Church’s Giving Experience

Your online giving experience is, essentially, the way giving a gift makes your givers feel. It’s about the look, the ease (or lack thereof) of completing the gift, how secure it feels, and how connected it makes them feel to their church. You could say it’s the overall vibe.

Believe it or not, an online giving experience can actually drive givers away. Studies show that it happens as much as 83% of the time on charitable websites. Curious to know what traits do this?

These are the top 5 barriers that can ruin a giving experience for a giver:

Lack of trust

Most online giving platforms whisk givers away from your website to a third-party site to complete their gift. The problem is that it breaks your givers’ sense of trust in the process. People are increasingly nervous about online security. They will drop off if being redirected to a strange site feels scary.

Not seeing the impact of their gifts

Today’s givers care a lot about making an impact. In fact, it’s the #1 reason people don’t give. It’s why we’re such big believers in media-rich giving experiences. They are an easy, built-in way to beautifully showcase your ministry projects so givers can search, browse and be inspired to give to the one(s) that align with their passions.

Mandatory Account Creation

Some giving platforms don’t offer guest checkout (or they make it very difficult to find). Some givers simply don’t want to have to create an account and keep up with yet another password in order to give. Are you willing to gamble with their gifts?

Lack of personalization

Personalization is key for engaging with givers. They’ve become accustomed to it in their online interactions and highly value receiving messaging that applies to them and shows that they are known. Your giving data should allow you to sent customized messaging from your church, not your payment processor’s DO-NOT-REPLY address. (This is customary when givers are taken to a third-party site to complete their gift.)

Frustrating forms

Nobody has time or patience for glitchy, lengthy, multiple-step giving forms that are a hassle to sign in to. If givers’ abandon their gift out of frustration, they may never try again. And for those who won’t give any other way, that’s a big loss.

We call these 5 barriers the deadly sins of online giving. Don’t let them deter your givers!

To learn how Vision2 addresses these issues with the most comprehensive giving and stewardship platform available to churches, reach out to us today.

Related: 3 Must-Have Features of a Good Giving Experience.