If you’re a fundraiser, you should also be conversant in “elder marketing.” These are the people who drive the charitable giving bus. And they’re steadily moving online.
That’s why you should look at this study at Jakob Nielsen’s Alertbox: Seniors as Web Users.
Key findings (among many):
- Reduced visual acuity is probably the best-known aging problem, and yet websites with tiny type are legion.
- Pull-down menus, hierarchically walking menus, and other moving interface elements are problematic for seniors who are not always steady with the mouse.
- Seniors also have a harder time using unforgiving search engines and forms.
- Seniors often had problems reading error messages, either because the wording was obscure or imprecise, or the message’s placement on the page was easily overlooked.
- Drastic design changes hurt seniors the most.
Barriers to web usability are barriers to participation. That means less revenue for your cause.
Jeff Brooks has been serving the nonprofit community for more than 35 years and blogging about it since 2005. He considers fundraising the most noble of pursuits and hopes you’ll join him in that opinion. You can reach him at jeff [at] jeff-brooks [dot] com.
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