Users on mobile devices made up almost half of web traffic to nonprofit websites last year but gained on share of transactions and online revenue to desktop users.
The 48-percent share of nonprofit web traffic by mobile devices increased by 2 percent in 2018 but the share of online revenue was up 15 percent, accounting for 21 percent of revenue. The share of transactions was 30 percent, a gain of 20 percent more than 2017.
The mobile experience is but one of the deep dives within the 2019 M+R Benchmarks Study. The 13th annual report analyzed 4.4 million emails sent to 37.5 million subscribers, more than 7 million online gifts, and $376 million raised by 135 nonprofits.
Users on desktop computers constituted 44 percent of web traffic but accounted for 63 percent of transactions and 71 percent of revenue. Both categories were down last year, by 7 percent and 2 percent, respectively. Tablets remain in the single digits across the board, with 8 percent of web traffic, down 9 percent last year; 7 percent of transactions, down 1 percent; and 8 percent of revenue, down 9 percent.
Desktop users also enjoy the highest conversion rate on the main donation page, at 21 percent, followed by tablets at 16 percent, and more than twice the rate of mobile, at 9 percent.
The average gift also was highest via desktop at $133, dwarfing the average gift by mobile, $80, and almost one-quarter more than the average by tablet, $105.
“Some of these differences may be due to demographics and cultural differences, over which nonprofits have limited control,” according to authors of the M+R study. “If mobile-first users have lower incomes on average than desktop-first users, we might expect their average gifts to be lower. And if supporters feel more secure using their home Wificonnection to process donations rather than pulling out a credit card while in public or completing a transaction via Apple Pay on a donation form, it will take time to change those attitudes.”
Ultimately, it’s up to nonprofits to “make giving easy, compelling, and irresistible regardless of the device or platform.”
Part of what makes that compelling is how long it takes for a nonprofit’s homepage to load. On average, it takes 0.31 seconds longer to load on a mobile device than on a desktop, according to the study’s data, 2.67 seconds compared with 2.36 seconds.
Large organizations saw the longest homepage load time on mobile at 3.72 seconds, as well as the longest load time for desktop, 2.52 seconds. Also longer than average were load times for hunger and poverty organizations, 3.69 seconds; international groups, 3.56 seconds; rights groups, 3.15 seconds; health, 2.78 seconds; and wildlife/animal welfare, 2.76 seconds. Rights organizations had the largest disparity between desktop and mobile load times, at 3.15 seconds versus 1.56 seconds (the fastest mobile load time overall behind wildlife/animal welfare, 1.55 seconds).
For the study, small nonprofits are considered those with annual online revenue of less than $500,000; medium includes those with revenue between $500,000 and $3 million; and large is those with online revenue of more than $3 million.
Overall, about 1 percent of website visitors made a donation, according to the study. Among categories, public media had the highest percentage:
- Public media, 4.5 percent
- International groups, 2.4 percent
- Wildlife/animal welfare, 1.5 percent
- Environmental, 0.7 percent
- Health, 0.6 percent
- Cultural, 0.5 percent
- Rights, 0.4 percent
By size of organization, large groups led the way at 1.8 percent of web visitors making a donation, compared with 1.5 percent for medium and 0.5 percent for small.
