One Simple Question That Could Change How You Understand Your Supporters.

All this information has the potential to be useful, but analytics can only tell you what, not why. 

For example, you might know that someone came to your website via Google, but you probably don't know what prompted them to perform a search in the first place. You might know that someone has made a donation, but not what persuaded them to support you rather than another organisation working in the same field.

And you might know that hundreds of people visit your volunteering pages every month, but have very little understanding of what actually motivates them to get involved.

One of the ways to fill these gaps is to simply ask people with a well-placed question and an empty text box.

The Problem With Multiple Choice Questions

Imagine your website has included a question on its donation confirmation page:

How did you hear about our charity?

You've provided a dropdown menu with the following options:

• Google

• Social media

• Friends or family

• Charity event

• Other

These are perfectly reasonable categories, and they'll give you some useful data. After a few months, you might discover that 40% of respondents found you through social media, 25% through Google and 20% through friends or family.

But what have you actually learned?

You know the general channels people associate with discovering your charity, but not much about the circumstances that brought them to you.

Now imagine replacing the dropdown with a simple text field and allowing people to answer in their own words.

Instead of selecting "Social media", someone might write:

"My friend shared your story about a family you supported last Christmas, and I've been following your work ever since."

Rather than selecting "Friends or family", someone else might explain:

"My neighbour volunteers with you and told me about the support you provide to older people living alone."

And instead of selecting "Google", another visitor might write:

"I was looking for somewhere that could help my son, and your charity came up when I searched for support in our area."

These are illustrative examples, but hopefully you can see the difference.

All three responses provide information that a dropdown menu would have missed. They tell you something about the people interacting with your charity, the messages that are reaching them and the circumstances that prompted them to act.

This is information that you can do something with. 

What Could You Learn?

Let’s consider our example, where someone mentions a story shared on social media. You now know that a particular piece of content has influenced someone to support your organisation. That could be useful when reviewing your storytelling, fundraising communications and content strategy.

In the second example, you've discovered that a volunteer is actively encouraging other people to support your work. Perhaps your volunteers are among your most effective advocates, and there's an opportunity to make it easier for them to introduce others to the charity.

The third example tells you something completely different. It reveals the circumstances in which someone discovered your services, including the language they used when looking for help.

That information could be useful when reviewing your charity website design and content.

Of course, one person's response doesn't establish a trend. But when you start collecting answers over several weeks or months, you may begin to notice patterns that would otherwise have been missed.

Ask Questions That Help You Make Decisions

There's little point in collecting hundreds of responses if you have no intention of doing anything with them. Before adding questions to your website, think about what you actually want to learn.

If you're trying to understand how people discover your charity, ask how they first heard about you. If you're trying to improve your fundraising, ask donors what encouraged them to give. 

Here are five questions worth considering.

1. How did you first hear about our charity?

This can reveal specific recommendations, events, organisations, publications or online content that are bringing people to your website.

2. What encouraged you to make a donation today?

Rather than assuming which fundraising messages are effective, you can hear directly from donors about the reasons behind their decision.

3. What made you interested in volunteering with us?

Understanding people's motivations can help you improve how you communicate volunteering opportunities and what potential volunteers can expect.

4. Was there anything you struggled to find or understand on our website?

This can uncover problems with navigation, content or terminology that might not be obvious to the people who manage the website every day.

5. What information would have been helpful before contacting us?

For charities delivering services, this could reveal unanswered questions about eligibility, availability, referral processes or what happens when someone asks for support.

You don't need to ask all five in fact, you shoudn’t.   Choose one question that addresses something you want to understand, and start there.

Where Should You Ask These Questions?

The placement of your question is important. You don't want to introduce unnecessary distractions at the point where someone is trying to complete an important action.

For example, asking donors to explain how they discovered your charity halfway through a donation form probably isn't the best idea. The donation confirmation page, however, provides an opportunity to ask a short follow up question once the donation has been completed.

The same principle could apply to volunteering applications, event registrations, resource downloads or newsletter subscriptions.

One important consideration: Make these questions optional and avoid asking people to share sensitive personal information. Finally, be clear about how feedback will be used, and ensure you have appropriate arrangements for handling and storing responses.

Don't Just Collect the Answers, Read Them

The temptation with website analytics is to concentrate on numbers, charts and percentages. These make information easier to summarise and report but not everything useful can be reduced to a percentage.

Reading 50 comments from people who have recently donated, volunteered or contacted your charity could give you a much richer understanding of their experiences than a chart showing which dropdown option they selected.

Give Your Visitors an Opportunity to Tell You Something

Charities rightly invest considerable effort in communicating with their audiences, but communication works both ways.

The people visiting your website have experiences, motivations and opinions that could help you make better decisions about your digital communications.

Some of those people may be willing to share them, particularly if you make it easy and ask something relevant.

So next time you're reviewing your donation journey, volunteering pages or service enquiries, think about whether there's an opportunity to ask a simple question.

You might be surprised by what people tell you.