The answer to "what do I fix first" depends on one principle: fix what is actively costing you right now before you fix what might cost you later. Problems that interrupt the donation flow, break visitor trust, or prevent people from reaching your content are urgent. Everything else can wait its turn.
Start with your donation flow
If your donate button is broken, links to the wrong page, or your donation form doesn't submit correctly, nothing else matters until that is fixed. This is your most direct revenue path. Any time spent on other improvements while your donation process is broken is misallocated.
Test your own donation flow right now. Click "Donate" and walk all the way through to a completed transaction. Do it on your phone. If anything doesn't work, that's your first fix.
Fix anything that prevents visitors from finding you
If your site isn't indexed by Google, if your most important pages are blocked from search engines, or if you have a "Discourage search engines" setting accidentally enabled in your CMS, fix that immediately. A site that can't be found by new visitors has limited reach no matter how good everything else is.
Search for your organization by name in Google. If nothing appears, you have an indexing problem that takes priority over almost everything else.
Address security issues
If your site is running on HTTP rather than HTTPS, browsers are warning every visitor that it's not secure. This kills trust and is trivially easy for donors to notice. Get an SSL certificate in place. Most web hosts offer them free through Let's Encrypt.
If your CMS and plugins are significantly out of date, that's a security issue too. Outdated software is the most common vector for nonprofit website compromises.
Fix broken links on high-traffic pages
Links that go nowhere on your homepage, your About page, or your donate page erode trust immediately. Run a quick broken link check using a free tool or your browser's developer console. Fix the ones on your most important pages first.
Make your homepage clear and fast
After critical issues are addressed, your homepage is the highest-leverage page to improve. It sets the first impression for the majority of your visitors. A homepage that answers "who are you, what do you do, and what should I do next" within ten seconds, loads in under three seconds, and works correctly on mobile is worth more than any other single improvement you can make.
If your homepage has performance problems (uncompressed images are the most common cause), fix those. If your headline is vague or jargon-heavy, rewrite it. If there's no clear call to action above the fold, add one.
Not sure what's wrong or where to start? A GoodSiteReport audit gives you a prioritized list of issues across every category with clear guidance on what to fix first and what can wait.
Then work through the rest by impact
Once the critical and homepage issues are addressed, use this rough order for everything else:
- Trust signals missing from your donation page (privacy policy, security indicators, contact info)
- Mobile usability problems on key pages
- Missing or generic page titles and meta descriptions (SEO)
- Accessibility failures, starting with missing alt text and poor color contrast
- Outdated content on staff pages, news sections, and annual report links
- Site speed optimizations beyond the homepage
This order is not arbitrary. It reflects where problems are most visible to visitors and most directly connected to the actions you want them to take.
One thing at a time
Trying to fix everything at once usually results in nothing getting finished. Pick the highest-priority item, fix it, verify the fix, and then move to the next. A completed fix is always worth more than a half-finished improvement. Small, consistent forward progress adds up to a meaningfully better site over a few months.