Your nonprofit’s website might be working against you, and you don’t even know it.
Most website usability problems aren’t just design fails. They’re small points of friction that add up, such as a confusing menu, a slow page, a hard-to-find donation button, and a broken link. Each of these issues makes it a little harder for visitors to stay, engage, and, most importantly, take action.
Here are nine common nonprofit website usability mistakes, and what to do about each one.
What is website usability?
Website usability measures how easily visitors can navigate, understand, and interact with your site.
An easy-to-use website lets a first-time visitor find what they need and complete an action quickly, without confusion or frustration. For nonprofits, that means donors can give, program participants can apply, and volunteers can sign up without hitting unnecessary roadblocks.
Mistake 1: Complicated Navigation Menu
If your menu has too many links or uses confusing labels, visitors won’t find what they’re looking for. Most will leave instead of figuring out where things are.
Keep your main navigation menu to seven items or fewer. Use clear, familiar labels like About, Programs, Get Involved, Blog, and Contact. Group related pages in a dropdown menu, and make your primary call-to-action (like Donate or Apply) visually distinct from the rest of the menu (adding a background color helps).
Mistake 2: Disorganized Layout
A visually chaotic page makes it hard for your visitors to know where to look first. When a page feels cluttered or hard to read, visitors lose trust in the organization before they even learn what it does.
Design with a clear visual hierarchy. The most important information should be the most prominent. Use white space to give your content room to breathe, and guide visitors naturally from one section to the next with a logical flow.
Mistake 3: Long, Dense Blocks of Text
Sharing your organization’s story is important, but long, unbroken paragraphs make it easy for visitors to skim past the information you most want them to know.
Keep paragraphs to two or three sentences. Use subheadings, numbered lists, and bullet points to break up content and make it scannable. Add images or graphics between sections to create visual interest and give readers a moment to pause. Bold key phrases so someone skimming can still catch the most important points.
Mistake 4: Missing or Weak Calls to Action
Even an engaged visitor won’t take action if they can’t find where to do it. Weak or buried calls to action are one of the most common reasons nonprofits lose potential donors, volunteers, and program participants at the last moment.
Place a clear, action-oriented call to action at the bottom of every page. Match the CTA to the page context. For example, a programs page might say “Apply Now” or “Check Eligibility,” or a blog post might say, “Download our Community Resource Guide.”
Also, make your CTAs visually distinct with colored buttons and larger text so they’re impossible to miss.
Mistake 5: Broken Links
A broken link on a donation page, program application, or key resource can stop a motivated visitor dead in their tracks. It also signals to search engines that your site isn’t well-maintained, which can hurt your SEO.
Scan your website monthly using a free tool like Ahrefs Broken Link Checker. Fix broken links promptly, and set up a custom 404 page with a helpful message and navigation options so visitors who hit a dead end aren’t completely lost.
Mistake 6: Slow Page Load Times
Slow websites lose visitors before they even see your content. Studies consistently show that visitors abandon sites that take more than three seconds to load, and that includes potential donors mid-campaign.
Test your site speed with Google PageSpeed Insights, which shows you exactly what’s slowing things down. The most common fixes are compressing images (keep files under 400KB using a tool like TinyJPG), hosting videos on YouTube or Vimeo and linking to them instead of embedding them directly into your webpages, limiting custom fonts, and enabling website caching. If your site is consistently slow, your hosting provider may be worth reconsidering.
Mistake 7: Too Many Steps to Take Action
Every extra click between a visitor’s decision to act and the action itself is a chance for them to change their mind. For example, think about your own online experience. If buying something online required five steps, you’d probably abandon the cart. Your donation process works the same way.
Use website analytics to identify where visitors drop off. Simplify your conversion flows wherever possible. Your homepage and landing pages should have one clear focus and one primary call to action so visitors always know what the next step is.
Mistake 8: Not Optimized for Mobile
More than half of all web traffic comes from mobile devices. If your site is hard to navigate on a phone, you’re making it difficult for the majority of your web visitors to engage with your organization.
Make sure your site uses a responsive design that adjusts automatically to any screen size, and test it on your own phone regularly. Text should be readable without zooming, buttons should be large enough to tap easily, and your navigation should work just as well on mobile as it does on a desktop.
Mistake 9: Poor Accessibility
An inaccessible website excludes people with disabilities from engaging with your organization. For a nonprofit built around inclusion and community, that’s a contradiction worth addressing.
Start with the basics. Use sufficient color contrast between text and backgrounds. Add descriptive alt text to all images so screen readers can convey visual content to visitors with visual impairments. Make sure your site can be fully navigated using only a keyboard. Structure your headings properly (H1, H2, H3 in logical order) so the page makes sense to assistive technology.
What to Do After Your Audit
You don’t have to fix everything today. Most nonprofit websites have two or three of these issues doing the most damage, and tackling those first will make a bigger difference than trying to overhaul your entire website at once.
Start by testing your own website like a first-time visitor. Click through every page, try to donate, sign up for something, and find your programs. Note every instance where something feels slow, confusing, or unclear. Those are your starting points.
Small fixes add up faster than you’d think. A cleaner menu here, a faster page load there, a stronger call to action on your donation page, and suddenly your website is working for your mission instead of against it.
Looking for free tools to strengthen your nonprofit’s marketing beyond the website, the Resource Hub has guides and frameworks built specifically for teams like yours. Join the Moonpath Collective to get access.