Many charity and non-profit websites use Google Analytics to measure and optimise their user experience, a superb free tool which provides valuable insights into user behaviour. Blackbaud Online Express (OLX) is a tool used to embed donation forms into a site, however Google Analytics is not supported out of the box (much to the frustration of many website managers). The donation form is usually the main conversion point for the site, so it’s crucial to measure successful submissions. If Google Analytics is not used at this important stage in the user journey if will be significantly more difficult to optimise the site to improve donation rates and to increase the efficiency of advertising efforts.

Luckily there is a solution to this issue, easy to use extension can be added to any donation page, and successful submissions of the form will be tracked automatically, and can be viewed as a Google Analytics event. These events can in turn be used as goals, which can be used to automatically optimise your advertising efforts and provide a detailed understanding of the efficacy of the donation process, and which channels are working hardest to drive qualified leads. You could hire a developer to add these events to the site manually, however it can be difficult to detect a successful submission, and as a result most home grown solutions usually only track clicks on the ‘donate’ button. If a form submission fails (for example if a credit card number is entered incorrectly), a donation event will be triggered incorrectly leading to erroneous statistics.

If you use Google Adwords, extra metrics can be viewed by linking Google Ads (previously Adwords) and Analytics accounts. Once this is done, Google Analytics goals can be shared and then it’s a simple job to see which campaigns and variants are working hardest to drive conversion. Google Analytics goals can also be used in conjunction with Google Optimize to act as a conversion point for AB and multivariate testing.

In conclusion, if you don’t have Google Analytics tracking on your BlackBaud Online Express donation forms, you are missing our on a wealth of useful information and automates optimisations, and now there is a simple solution to make this happen today.

View solution