Compassion International exists as a Christian child advocacy nonprofit that releases children from spiritual, economic, social and physical poverty and enables them to become responsible, fulfilled Christian adults. With over 1 million sponsored children, and 5,659 international church partners, Compassion International offers it’s website visitors, future donors and sponsors, a consistent website experience across all digital platforms.
As a donor myself, I have visited the Compassion International site numerous times on my tablet, smart phone and PC and I have always found the site easy to navigate and pretty intuitive. I know now that’s not by sheer accident but it’s the purposeful effort by Compassion’s web designers to build a responsive site that will resize itself whether the user is in vertical or horizontal viewing mode, on a tablet, desktop or smartphone. Here are my top 3 reasons why I believe Compassion International not only has a great mission but also a great website across all platforms.
- Simple. The sites content is simple and focused on it’s purpose – breaking the cycle of poverty for children in need around the world. In fact, the first thing that displays at the front screen of each device is the call to action (CTA) – sponsor a child today. This CTA is prominent and consistent across all three platforms. No fluff marketing here. The site is full of childen’s profiles, their stories and current initiatives. The content is also scannable and easy to read.
- User Centered. Most people who visit the Compassion Interational site go there to sponsor a child, donate, and/or learn about the nonprofit. For this reason, Compassion make it easy for visitors to search for a child by country, gender, and age. The top navigation bar on the website, viewed on a tablet, smart phone, and computer, allows the user to quickly select whether they want to sponsor a child, donate, or learn more about how they can get involved. If they choose to sponsor a child, the website employess parallel scrolling, allowing future sponsors to easily browse and select the child they wish to sponsor.
- Design that makes logical sense. Another great thing about the Compassion International website is the website’s intuitive color scheme and logical layout. Let me explain. The Compassion site uses four dominant colors – dark blue, light blue, white and “attention grabber” yellow. It always uses the dark blue as a background color, the light blue for navigation menus, and the “attention grabber” yellow for buttons that direct the user to answer the call to action such as sponsor, and donate. This effective use of color makes the site more intuitve and easy to navigate. The site is also purposefully laid out into 3 sections that engage, build trust, and validate. The first section is all about the children who need sponsorship and their stories. The second section is designed to build creditbility and trust by sharing their commitment to financial accountability and integrity - which is very important to donors. And the last section gives visitors what makes Compassion International different from other charitites.
Don’t just take my word for it, learn more about Compassion International by visiting www.compassion.com on your tablet, smart
phone, and computer, and let me know if you agree with my analysis.
