From feeling collective support of your nonprofit’s work to experiencing the excitement of someone bidding the highest for a unique item, auctions are fun and effective fundraising events. However, before you can host a successful auction, you need to effectively plan and promote it.
That’s where your nonprofit website comes in! It can be an excellent digital fundraising tool that allows you to check off many to-dos for your fundraising auction. In this guide, we’ll walk through some website strategies your nonprofit can use to boost its next auction:
You may find it useful to reach out to an experienced nonprofit web design consultant for assistance with putting these strategies into play. However, your own skills, a little knowledge of web design, and a can-do attitude will go a long way when following these tips!
According to NXUnite, search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of optimizing your website and its written content to perform better on search engines so that it’s more easily found by people searching for terms relevant to your organization and its operations. This is done by ensuring your website offers a great user experience (UX) and building your content around keywords.
There’s a lot that goes into SEO, but the main goal of this kind of marketing is to drive more organic traffic to your website. Here are some tips that can help:
Note that in general, it can take anywhere from four months to a year to see results from SEO. This makes SEO a great long-game strategy for organizations that have auction-related events that happen on a regular basis, like annual galas.
While you wait to see your content rank higher on search engines, though, you can also direct people to your website content through email, social media posts, QR codes on posters, and more to get the most mileage out of your optimization efforts and increase those RSVPs!
Your supporters’ auction experience begins when they sign up, so think of your registration form as your chance to make a good first impression. Check out these tips to ensure your registration process is fast, convenient, and easy:
To determine if your registration form is ready to be pushed live or not, have a few of your nonprofit team members test it out and provide feedback.
Then, when your form is ready, provide plenty of links to it from various pages around your website to encourage registrations.
For many virtual events, you’ll be perfectly fine hosting your registration, live stream, and other event features on your main website. Fundraising auctions, however, are a little more involved and might need a more dedicated space to explain all the details.
Instead of cluttering up your nonprofit’s main website, you might decide it’s better to create a microsite for hosting your auction and use your main website as a promotional tool.
When building your auction’s microsite, you’ll need pages for several core elements, including:
Remember to keep your microsite mobile-responsive and accessible just like your nonprofit’s main website. Cornershop Creative also recommends including a clear presentation of your nonprofit’s mission and purpose. This can reinforce your nonprofit’s branding and remind donors what your auction is all about!
Don’t feel like you have to limit your microsite to just these pages. As you start planning the finer points of your auction, you’ll likely discover all sorts of information and features you’ll want to add to your microsite. Get those creative juices flowing!
If you’re hosting an online auction, you’ll need one very important tool on your side: online auction software. But this necessary tool will only work if you integrate it with the rest of your nonprofit’s tech stack, including your website.
There are an impressive number of auction software solutions available. Start weighing your options and noting which software integrates with which platforms. Before making a purchase, confirm with your provider that integration won’t be a problem.
Once you have the right software, connect it to your website, CRM, event software, and any other necessary digital fundraising tools. Practice entering information in these systems to make sure your data is flowing smoothly between your platforms and prevent any potential data loss or user experience issues down the line.
Before and during your auction, take photos whenever possible so that you can continue promoting your nonprofit even after your event is over. These might be images of your high-value items, pictures of smiling faces over dinner tables, or a photograph of part of your event’s live stream.
Instead of sending a plain text thank-you letter when you follow up with your guests, you can add images taken during your event to remind guests how much fun they had. Plus, a great photo could convince guests to hang onto your thank-you card, which might remind them to attend your next event.
Then, you can turn to your website to post photos of your auction. Snapshots of guests having fun interspersed with photos of high-value items will help attendees recall your auction fondly and encourage others to attend next time. Just remember to ask any guests who appear in the photos for their permission to post them online!
To set your auction up for its best chance at success, look to your website first. These strategies for marketing and managing your event are crucial for a successful auction event!