What's holding back your online fundraising? It may be your fundraising pages.
Speaking on April 8, 2013 at the Association of Fundraising Professionals International Conference in San Diego, Tim Kachuriak, Dan Gillette, and Nathaniel Ward explained using case studies how the design and content on your pages may be holding back your supporters from making a donation online. The solution? Eliminate this "friction" from your fundraising pages and you could see a marked lift in your results.
33. Friction in the Online Giving Process: Defined
/ frikSH n/ Noun.ˈ ə
Anything that causes psychological resistance to a
given element in the online donation process.
48. Step 1: Identify your goal
Without a goal, you can’t
tell what’s helping or
hurting conversion
Ask yourself: What is the
single most important thing
your donation form should
achieve?
It’s “make money” right?
51. Step 2: Make sure you measure your results
You need 1) donation and e-mail tools that allow tracking
and 2) a tracking service like Google Analytics
52. Enable e-commerce tracking in Analytics
Make sure you’re tracking
revenue, not just visitors
1.Click “admin” in the top bar
2.Click “profile settings”
3.Select “yes, an e-commerce site”
4.Follow setup instructions to add
the appropriate tracking codes to
your site. (May require
programmers.)
53. Use Google’s tracking codes
Add tracking codes to every e-mail, banner, and social media link
Drill down into results and effectiveness by:
•Campaign
•Medium
•Creative variant
Your final code will look like this:
http://www.url.org/?utm_source=Conference&utm_medium=Email&utm_content=Slide&utm_campaign=AFP
Google “URL Builder” is an easy tool to help you create these
55. And now for something completely differentAnd now for something completely different
56. Step 3: Implement a radical redesign
that reduces friction
Go big or go home
For your test to get a meaningful lift, your redesign should
be meaningfully different.
Fiddling around the edges only gets you so far.
Small changes can have a big impact, but incremental
changes will likely be small.
57. How to cut length friction
Reduce the number of questions
and steps. Cut liberally!
•Ask yourself: is this something
required for this transaction?
•Think back to your goal. Does this
step or question help achieve that
goal?
In general, every click to a new page
reduces conversion by 50%!
58. How to cut difficulty friction
Find anything that makes your donor stop and think. Cut it.
•Remove needless gift designations
•Make sure errors are handled nicely
•Is it clear how the donor goes to the next step? Really?
•Allow your donors to give without registration.
59. How to cut difficulty friction
More ways to reduce difficulty
•Does your page take more than 3 seconds to
load?
At 4 seconds, 25% of page visitors will
abandon you
•Do your supporters have to pinch and zoom to
donate on their mobile device?
They shouldn’t have to.
Source: http://www.fastcompany.com/1825005/how-one-second-could-cost-amazon-16-billion-sales
60. Find out the truth about
what really works
Photo: Flickr/Winnifredxoxo
61. Step 4: Run an A/B split test
Randomly display both versions of your page to visitors to see
which performs best against your goal.
62. Setting up the test in Google Analytics
2. Set up the test by pasting
each version into a new
experiment
3. Deploy the additional tracking
code to the default landing
page
4. Confirm the test is deployed
correctly
How to set up your test in Google
Analytics
1.Configure your goal
64. Step 5: Validate your results
You want your experiment to be repeatable
Aim for 95% level of confidence
Use the MECLABS validation tool
If the test fails to get a lift…
Use data to find out why
65. The ultimate reason we learn
So we can fail
And then learn from that failure
When I arrive at this site for the first time, there is really a lot going on. How to Give, What to Support, Why Giving Matters– all good content, but I arrived at this page because I clicked on a link on another page to GIVE. My motivation is ALREADY to GIVE– all of this other content actually can prove to be quite distracting and MAY even make me change my mind. The option to MAKE a GIFT is very small and is outside of the primary Eye-path.
Already we reach decision point that produces significant friction. I arrived here with the INTENTION of giving a gift to Stanford. But now I have all of these other decisions to make. I have to pick a school or group, I have to select what type of gift I will give, and the source of payment. All of these factors may be important, but they occur so early in the process that it begins to reduce my motivation– I had no idea there was so much to consider!
Without a description of why it matters where my gift is designated, this just adds unnecessary friction to the giving process.
This description actually just adds anxiety– If I select a designation here, I may be asked more questions as I get further into the process– Oh, man– and I really need to get back to work– I may not have time to do this right now…
Although the descriptions are helpful, the fact that my selected gift designation does not accept my gift type is EXTREMELY frustrating. No, I don ’t want to call an talk to the “gift processing staff”– that’s why I went online– I THOUGHT it would be easier!! Any by the way, why does Stanford have an entire STAFF dedicated just to gift processing– maybe if they made it easier and more efficient they could save the expense.
What ’s a security transfer? Why don’t you take Discover? This is all stressing me out– Sheesh– I’m only at STEP 1 of 5!!!! Maybe I’ll just wait and do this some other time…
Oh my! I can ’t even read all of the options…
What does that mean– joint gift with spouse/partner? What ’s the difference between In Honor of or In Memory of? I wasn’t thinking about those things when I came here to make my gift, but now that you introduce those questions, I may want to think about them. I may want to talk to my spouse/partner. I may want to consider who I can make my gift in honor of. I may even want to contemplate whether or not I want this gift to be anonymous.
What???
This may be asking this information because a few steps ago I selected that I wanted this donation to be a joint gift with my spouse/partner. BUT– this adds a lot of friction to the process– why do you need to know my wife ’s name? Are you going to start soliciting her too? She may not like that.
So…where do I give? --where your donations go? (great, but I want to donate) --Search for a student or group (don ’t really know what that means…just trying to donate) --For Participants– to search for your page, click here (I don ’t want to click there, I just want to donate) --search for a group page (what are you talking about???) --Sign up? (NO– I ’m just trying to freakin donate!!) --Or, get more info! (ARRGGGHHH!!!) --Other ways to give—Discover more ways to help (I guess this is it)
So…where do I give? --where your donations go? (great, but I want to donate) --Search for a student or group (don ’t really know what that means…just trying to donate) --For Participants– to search for your page, click here (I don ’t want to click there, I just want to donate) --search for a group page (what are you talking about???) --Sign up? (NO– I ’m just trying to freakin donate!!) --Or, get more info! (ARRGGGHHH!!!) --Other ways to give—Discover more ways to help (I guess this is it)
