Donation Page Optimization TACTICS + TESTING
Grassriots • Ryan Baillargeon & Senning Luk • Small Agency, based in Toronto, with clients in Canada, US, Australia • Over 7 years experience in Engaging Networks. • Focused on Campaign and Platform Development, and training.
… 2013 was Busy • Migrating Walk Free from Purpose to EN • walkfree.org
• Cooperate 4 Canada • Cooperate4.ca
• Global Slavery Index • globalslaveryindex.org
• Slavery is not a Game • slaveryisnotagame.com
• Defend Our Climate • defendourclimate.ca
To Name just a Few….
Case Study • Humane Society International • Donation Page Optimization
History • Started working with Humane Society International in 2012 after meeting at an EN community conference in Toronto • Helping lead a data import process, and to help train staff new to the platform. • Solve issues with existing Advocacy and Fundraising Pages ported from CONVIO.
In the beginning… • Every Campaign Needed to Manage • 3 Country Specific Payment Gateways + Paperless Direct Debit Option • One-time and Monthly Versions • Copy for WEB and APPEAL versions
• 12 Donation Pages to manage a single campaign.
2011 • Separate Gift Selection and Payment Screens • Donate button was below the fold. • Security Device Hidden • Requires Navigating away to correct donation amount. • Extra Form Fields that are confusing. • Every gateway has specific, particular requirements – can cause headaches when setting up (Form Field Names, Required Fields, Default Values, Payment Types, Data Formats)
Problem • Extremely difficult and lengthy to deploy • Even more difficult to test • Complex form dependencies were hard to maintain, payment gateway specific. • Ineffective for sharing / marketing • Added complexity to broadcasts / segmenting. • Users were complaining and donations were failing.
Phase One • Optimizing our process. • We had a process problem. Errors were being introduced when campaigns were duplicated and we were losing donations because of it, high error rates in the logs. • Our focus became to develop a template that was easy to customize and simple to deploy.
Our Focus • Reduce the number of steps to complete a donation. • Reducing the number of payment options and gateways. • Implementing Monthly + OTG on the same form. • Tighten up the User Interface
2012 • We called this, the integrated form. • We replaced complexity with either JavaScript code of Form Dependencies. • Used PayFlow Pro Gateway to handle currencies. • Had 1 extra form to manage PDD using RSM Gateway. • Convinced the accounting department to absorb some extra complexity in their process to reduce it on the donation end.
Results • Much easier to deploy campaigns. Quicker out the door • Lower error rates / lower incompletes.
Caveats
• Feedback was the the forms were “cold” and weren’t necessarily pulling heartstrings. • Increased Page logic did require ongoing debugging of edge cases where the page would break.
Phase Two • HSI now had forms they could trust, and a baseline for their performance. • Through a review process it was determined that the focus be on increasing the monthly donors base and overall conversions. • With a new level of comfort, they also wanted this new form to be visually representative of how a donor’s gift directly impacts animals. • HJC New Media Designed a Novel Fundraising Page, Grassriots Implemented the Concept.
See The Form https://hsi.netdonor.net/eaaction/action?ea.client.id=10 4&ea.campaign.id=16680
Read Elise’s Report http://www.engagingnetworks .net/sites/default/files/docum ents/2013-dma-templateeliseledsinger-slides.pdf
Results • Huge Payoff. Three Campaigns were transitioned to the Slider format with a focus on Monthly Donations, year-end results showed over 50% of donations were recurring. • The focus on visually communicating the issue also saw a higher average recurring gift.
Behavior Change • When we added complexity to the interactivity of the form, we quickly realized that the experience was not optimized for mobile devices. • While we tried our best to accommodate the devices in the design, it was not something that was easily accomplished. • We also began to notice that the number of user’s reading our emails and visiting our pages from a mobile device was increasing.
Phase 3 – Optimize all the things. • • • • • • •
Device Experience Page Load Speed Number of Steps Number of Form Fields Donation Amounts Number of Donation Options Donate Button
Device • Decided on implementing a mobile framework that would allow us to rapidly design, develop and deploy templates. • Foundation or Bootstrap are two very full featured options, and I highly recommend them. • Engaging Networks has mobile detection and you can customize a template without the use of a responsive framework.
Page Speed • 47% of consumers expect a page to load in 2 seconds or less. After this peak the rate drops by 6.7% for each additional second. • KISSMETRICS
• A 1-second delay in page-load time equals 11% fewer page views, a 16% decrease in customer satisfaction, and 7% loss in conversions. • ABERDEEN GROUP
# of Steps Our process had 3 Steps • Selecting your Donation • Giving us your details • Selecting your Payment Options We wanted to find situations where we could reduce one ore more of these steps, and bring the user directly to payment options.
# of Fields • Ask only for the information you require • Hide the information you already know • Pre-fill the information you can determine on your own.
Donation Amounts • We needed flexibility in our form to adapt the donation amounts based on who was viewing the page. • Hide higher options for new donors, hide lower options for existing donors. • Existing donors will only give more if you ask them to give more. • One thing we haven't tested yet, is adjusted the donation ranges based on the users device. Lowering amounts for mobile, will it increase conversion?
Number of Donation Options • Another example of too much choice is a bad thing. Too many donation options crowd the page and make a choice difficult. • We wanted to reduce the number of donation amount options, and target the most effective ones in device specific context.
Donate Button • We wanted to improve the information our Donate Button was communicating • Improve its presence on the screen – move away from a flat style. • Solve problem of showing default donation without the selection step.
Thank You Ryan Baillargeon Founder, Grassriots Toronto, ON
[email protected]
