Donation form website: test it before the appeal

An appeal email is sent on a deadline, and the donor who opens it has already decided to give. They tap the link on a phone, pick an amount, and expect the form to keep the number they typed. Three things break that. A custom box that rejects a comma or a decimal point shows an error with no reason. A switch from one-time to monthly can reset the amount to a preset. A required address field can reject a postal code from another country, and the donor closes the form. You test with a number you already know, on a laptop, and never see the box turn red.

• The custom amount accepts cents and commas, and shows an example of the format under the box.
• Switching from one-time to monthly keeps the amount the donor typed.
• One-time is selected by default, so no donor gives monthly by accident.
• The address fields accept postal codes and region names from other countries.
• The payment frame loads on a phone, and the Donate button stays above the keyboard.

Wrong: a custom box that takes whole numbers only, with an error that says invalid amount and gives no example. Right: the box takes whole numbers, cents and commas, shows an example such as 25.50 under it, and keeps whatever the donor typed when they change the frequency. The switch is the cause that is easiest to miss. Many forms rebuild the amount list when a donor flips to monthly, and they put the amount back to a preset, so the donor pays a different number than the one they chose.

On a phone the keyboard can be the cause. Some phone number pads have no decimal point, so a donor who types cents may have no way to add them. Read the report for the stop. A visitor who stops on the amount after typing cents, and says the box turned red, has hit the first cause. A visitor who stops after flipping to monthly and says the number changed has hit the reset.

A donation form asks for an address so a receipt can be issued, and the address fields were usually built for one country. A postal code rule written for one format rejects a valid code from another. A region list with no entry for the donor's country leaves them with a dropdown and nothing to pick. Wrong: a postal code field that reports invalid as soon as a letter appears. Right: the field accepts the formats your donors use, and the country is chosen first so the region list changes to match.

Whether a receipt is good enough for a donor's taxes depends on your country and your organization's status. That is a question for your accountant, not for this test. The test shows only whether the address fields let the donor finish, and the exact error text they saw when they could not, which is the part to read as a donor would.

Checkout flow testing

The test reaches the donation form up to the payment step, and stops there. The payment part is often a frame loaded from another company's address, so on a phone it can load slowly or not at all, with the Donate button above or below it. Read that step on a phone with the keyboard open. A donor who stops on a blank frame has hit a frame that did not load, not a bad amount, so look at the embed before the amount box. Check that the frame loads from the appeal link before the email goes out.

A new appeal, a new campaign page, or a new donation embed can carry an older form, with its own amounts and its own default frequency. Rerun the custom amount, address and payment path for every appeal page before its email goes out, and again on a phone. With paid credits, visitors can reach a form behind a site password while the appeal page is still in draft.