In the brave new world of online fund raising, getting prospective donors to open and read e-mail messages from an organization is a victory—but only partially so.

Usually the next step is for these prospects to take action and click on a link that that takes them to a Web page where they learn more about a cause or campaign and make a donation.

This first page that people view after clicking on an e-mail message is called the “landing page” in marketing tech circles, and it’s a real window of opportunity. And one that can shut all too quickly.

At his Donor Power Blog Jeff Brooks, creative director at a marketing agency that serves nonprofit organizations, discuses a study that says “landing pages” have eight seconds to rope readers in before they abandon them and move on.

The study he cites examined-profit businesses, but Mr. Brooks says the picture would be even more dismal if charity landing pages had been looked at instead.

The study, which examined the email-to-landing-page links at 150 American and British companies, concluded that 45 percent of the landing pages failed to repeat the call-to-action headline in the linking message, and 35 percent of the pages didn’t have the same look and feel of the e-mail message.

Seventeen percent of the landing pages were actually just the organization’s main Web site and didn’t include a specific call to action at all.

Nearly half of the landing pages “bog down users” by requiring them to answer 10 or more questions.

“As the knowledge of things that work emerges in the e-marketing field, we need to pay attention and put that knowledge to work,” Mr. Brooks concludes. “Anything less is a waste of money. And an abuse of donors.”