What Visitors Really Want When They Visit Your Charity’s Website

Meet James. He’s just heard about a local mental health charity through a friend and wants to learn more. He opens his laptop, types in their website address, and lands on their homepage. There’s a big photo of people in suits shaking hands, a paragraph about their “strategic vision for holistic wellbeing solutions,” and a navigation menu with buttons like “About Our Governance” and “Strategic Partnerships.”

After 30 seconds of clicking around the website, James still doesn’t know what this charity actually does, who they help, or how he might get support for his struggling teenager. Frustrated, he closes the tab and looks elsewhere.

Sound familiar? Every week, thousands of people visit charity websites across the UK looking for help, wanting to volunteer, or hoping to donate. But too many leave empty-handed, not because these organisations don’t do brilliant work, but because their websites don’t speak the language that visitors actually understand.

The truth is, people don’t visit your website to be impressed by your professional credentials or lengthy history. They come with urgent questions and specific needs. When your website answers those questions quickly and clearly, magic happens: visitors become supporters, clients, volunteers, and advocates for your cause.

Answer the Big Question: “What Do You Actually Do?”

This might sound obvious, but you’d be amazed at how many charity websites fail this basic test. Visitors shouldn’t have to hunt through multiple pages or decode complicated language to understand your mission.

Within seconds of landing on your homepage, people should know:

• Who you help (young people, families, elderly residents, animals, etc)
• What problem you solve (homelessness, mental health, education, poverty, etc)
• How you help (advice, support groups, food banks, advocacy, etc.)

Make it work for you:

• Put a clear, simple sentence at the top of your homepage: “We provide mental health support for teenagers in Birmingham” or “We help homeless families find permanent housing in Leeds”
• Use everyday words instead of sector jargon, “support” rather than “intervention,” “help” instead of “facilitate”
• Add a short video where someone explains what you do in plain English

Think about how you’d describe your charity to a neighbour over the garden fence. That’s exactly how it should sound on your website.

Make It Ridiculously Easy to Get Help

When someone visits your website in crisis, maybe they can’t pay their rent, their child is struggling at school, or they’re caring for someone with dementia, they need help now, not a treasure hunt through your site structure.

Create a clear path to support:

• Have a bright, obvious “Get Help” or “I Need Support” button on every page
• List your phone number prominently, many people prefer to talk to a human
• Include a simple contact form that asks only essential questions
• Show your opening hours clearly, especially if you offer crisis support
• Add a postcode checker if your services are location-specific

If someone’s in crisis, every extra click between them and your help could be the difference between reaching out and giving up.

Show Real People, Not Stock Photos

Your website visitors want to see themselves reflected in your work. Stock photos of diverse people pointing at laptops or shaking hands in boardrooms don’t help anyone imagine how you might help them or their family.

Instead, show:

• Real people you’ve helped (with permission, obviously) living their lives, not posing for cameras
• Your actual staff and volunteers at work, in your office, at events, or delivering services
• Your real location- the building people will visit, the community you serve, your actual workspace

Be authentic about challenges too. If you work with people experiencing homelessness, don’t just show success stories. Show the reality of the work, people might connect more with honest, unglamorous photos than polished marketing shots.

One small homeless charity in Bristol saw donations increase after replacing stock photos with simple smartphone pictures of their volunteers making sandwiches and sorting donations. People could finally see exactly where their money was going.

Speak to Different Types of Visitors

Your website gets all sorts of visitors with completely different needs. The teenager looking for mental health support has different questions than the retired teacher wanting to volunteer, and the local business owner considering a donation has different concerns than both of them.

Create clear pathways for different visitors:

• “I need help” – Quick access to services, eligibility information, how to get started
• “I want to help” – Volunteer opportunities, donation options, fundraising ideas
• “I want to learn more” – Your impact, stories, research, annual reports

Use language that fits each audience:

• For people seeking help: reassuring, non-judgmental, practical
• For potential volunteers: welcoming, clear about time commitments, honest about what’s involved
• For donors: specific about impact, transparent about how money is used

Many successful charity websites have a simple menu or buttons right on their homepage asking “How can we help you today?” with these different options clearly marked.

Keep It Simple and Fast

People’s attention spans online are shorter than ever, especially when they’re stressed or in crisis. If your website takes forever to load or requires a computing degree to navigate, you’re losing people who genuinely need your help.

Simple wins:

• One main action per page – don’t overwhelm visitors with too many choices
• Short paragraphs – big blocks of text are intimidating on screens
• Clear headings – people scan websites; they don’t read every word
• Working links – broken links make you look unprofessional and unreliable
• Mobile-friendly design – many people will visit on their phones, especially in crisis situations

Test your website yourself: can you find your phone number in under 10 seconds? Can you figure out if you help people in your postcode? If you needed urgent help, would you know what to click?

Your Next Step: See Your Website Through Fresh Eyes

This week, try something simple but powerful: ask someone who’s never heard of your charity to spend five minutes on your website. Give them a specific task, “Find out if this charity could help your elderly parent” or “Figure out how to volunteer here” and watch what they do.

Don’t explain anything or give hints. Just observe where they click, what confuses them, and where they get stuck. You might be surprised by what you discover.

Your website isn’t a trophy case for your achievements, it’s a bridge between people who need help and people who want to help. The clearer and simpler you make that bridge, the more people will cross it.

Every person who finds what they’re looking for on your website is a life potentially changed, a volunteer recruited, or a supporter gained. That’s worth spending a bit of time getting right.

What’s the first thing someone sees when they visit your website? Does it answer their most important question? Try the five-minute test with a friend this week and see what you discover.

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