Updating Stand Up To Cancer's Donate Page
TLDR: Using a mini-design sprint and applying content design methods, I helped increase the conversion rate for Stand Up To Cancer's by 36%.
The problem:
The Stand Up To Cancer donate page had seen its conversion rate dip. We wanted to increase it during synchronised fundraising during the 2nd series of The Great Stand Up To Cancer Bake Off on Channel 4 when traffic to the page would increase considerably. We were also creating an option for monthly donation sign up, to add to the option of single, one-off donations.
The original page
What the research showed:
Text was now the main donation channel
Data from Power BI showed that the total donations and amount for the campaign had increased overall - but the majority was now coming from Text to Donate. This was impacting on page traffic - people were getting Text to Donate information from the TV programme and also being directed to the Channel 4 donate page (instead of Stand Up To Cancer's Donate page).
Power BI showed that people were donating more through Text to Donate due to testing of higher direct prompts of £30 and £20 (instead of just £10).
My solution
I led a the Stand Up To Cancer Marketing Team through a mini-design sprint workshop (3 hours, instead of 5 days). While this sounds intense, the team were very familiar with the page and the issues from previous presentations I had done during team meetings. A designer also joined us.
Defining the problem:
I prepared work in advance, presenting some research on the page activity and findings regarding donations. This helped define the problem and what we wanted to tackle. We mapped out the user journey to the page, covering the different touch points that a user may encounter on route to the donate page.
Ideation:
Prior to the workshop had asked colleagues to do some competitor research which each colleague presented quickly to the group. I then led a Know, Feel, Commit exercise with the team, asking colleagues to jot down what they think users need to know, feel and commit to doing when they land on the page. I then plotted these ideas on a priority matrix.
Deciding on a solution:
After prioritising the know, feel, commit ideas, everyone did individual sketches as part of a Crazy 8s exercise, using the priority matrix as a guide. These ideas were presented back and we voted for designs with dot voting. Following this, the designer sketched a final page design with the group and we included rough copy.
Prototyping:
Outside of the workshop, I then worked with the designer and a developer to create the protoype in Axure before building the final page in the CMS (Drupal) and managing the development of new features. I also wrote the final copy. From the workshop to the final published design and sign off, the whole process took about 3 weeks.
The final design
-
Key messaging about how your donation will help is at the top of the page, removing the unnecessary banner.
-
Cognitive load is reduced by condensing the donate nudge copy and not presenting all the information for different donation amount in one go.
-
A new donation feature with a donate monthly option was added without taking up extra space on the page.
-
An image of cancer patient who would feature on the episode's appeal film was added to the page, along with a quote from them or their family.
-
A simple infographic at the bottom of the page explained the longterm impact of donations for the campaign and directed readers to research projects.
-
The final copy also took into account SEO recommendations, specifically around meta data.
Testing and results:
Usability testing (conducted onsite) showed users understood the new donate mechanism. It suggested they saw synchronicity between the TV programme (they were shown a clip of the appeal film during testing) and this page. The page was ready to go live.
During the first two episodes we saw conversion rates on the newly created test version increase by 36%. The average single donation remained the same and became a focus for future optimisation. Text to donate figures were unaffected by the increase in website donations.
We saw just a handful of monthly donors sign up but their monthly donation was higher than the Cancer Research UK monthly average.
However, over time this trade off wasn’t strong enough (we would have needed to create exclusive content for monthly donors) and monthly donors fell below forecasting.
What I learned
-
You can achieve a lot by collaborating, even in a short space of time and that we didn't always need to do a 5-day design sprint.
-
Try to involve key people involved in the final product creation. Having an developer in the sprint may have avoided the issue with being unable to add in key copy to the page template.
-
Defining the problem rather than jumping straight into a solution is important. And understanding user motivations before proceeding with a new product (i.e monthly donations) is key.
The final product wasn't perfect but we then worked on iterating and adding more content to the page (specifically focusing on the cancer patient featured). Sadly however, the Covid pandemic put this development project on the back burner as our focus went elsewhere and I was re-deployed to the Cancer Research UK central content team full time.
A donation prompt show on air during The Great Stand Up To Cancer Bake Off.
The average age of website donors had increased
The average age of donors on the Stand Up To Cancer page had increased over time to be 45 - 55+ (when our target was a millennial audience). I hypothesised that this could be due to an older audience being less comfortable with donating over text and preferring to use the webpage (but this was just an assumption).
Average donation amounts were low
The average website donation rates showed that the lowest suggested amount (£25) was much higher than the average donation (£10), which could have presented a barrier to people who want to donate. So we also wanted to tackle this by altering the suggested amounts but were unable to during this iteration.
People wanted to know how their donation helped
I set up a feedback from a survey (Hotjar) that popped up when people went to exit the page without engaging with it. The survey had over 200 responses and suggested people wanted to understand how their donation helped. Although we had this information on the page, a heatmap on the page suggested that a large portion of visitors to the page were not finding this. The focus was also on specific medical equipment and lacked a more human element. Respondants on the survey had also said that they wanted to see the people their donation would help.
Visitors were confused about being on the right page
The survey also suggested that people were confused about whether they were in the correct place to donate when arriving on the page after watching a fundraiser on Channel 4. Stand Up To Cancer donate page looked very different to the programming on Channel 4. And to add to the confusion, Channel 4 also had a donate page (we were unable to merge the two pages in anyway during this project).
The journey to the donate page from search