What makes charity websites successful?

How many of us have gone on to a charity website and not found what we have been looking for? Or got bored of the LOOONNNNGGG donation process?! The key to solving this problem is to make the website more accessible and user friendly. According to research consultancy firm 'Think' over 60% of people fail to find what they are looking for on a charity website (Wiggins,2010). For more information see http://www.thirdsector.co.uk/channels/Fundraising/Article/1014537/visits-charity-websites-end-frustration-consultancy-says/

"Simplifying websites can lead to huge increases in the proportion of visitors to the site that go on to make donations,"

"A lot of people who have a bad user experience of a particular website will never visit that site again."

This leads me to the question of how I can simplify my website design? According to Chameleon (a online marketing company) placing more emphasis on the donation section of the page produced more successful outcomes.

http://www.chameleonnet.co.uk/Unicef_checkout_case_study.aspx

This shows that the donation rate for UNICEF went up from 1 in 10 people to 3 in 10 people donating.

This tells me that I really have to focus on how the audience can interact with the donate button, how easy it is to do and how long it takes. I could draw attention to it in multiple ways, such as an animated object, having the donation as part of the navigation and as an image to make it more accessible.