How point-of-donation upgrading affects conversion rate

Heritage Action for America

Experiment Summary

Timeframe: 01/11/2015 - 01/23/2015

For existing members to the Heritage Foundation, the donation form is prepopulated with the donor’s prior giving amount as a suggested gift.  However, in the case of the control, it is not clearly presented to the member what level their donation qualifies them for and what benefits are provided.  As a way to upgrade these donors, this experiment contemplated the value of communicating the membership level and associated benefits for a donation at the next highest level of membership.

Research Question

Do members to the Heritage foundation give more in order to receive greater benefits?  How does communicating the available benefits of the next level affect conversion and average gift amount?

Design

C: No Membership Language

T1: Membership Language on the Form

Results

This experiment has a required sample size of 742 in order to be valid. Since the experiment had a total sample size of 6,745, and the level of confidence is above 95% the experiment results are valid.

Flux Metrics Affected

The Flux Metrics analyze the three primary metrics that affect revenue (traffic, conversion rate, and average gift). This experiment produced the following results:

    0% increase in traffic
× 12.6% decrease in conversion rate
× 0% increase in average gift

Key Learnings

The results of this experiment are very interesting.  On one hand, including the upgrade language increases average gift amount by 12.2%.  But on the other hand, the upgrade language decreased average gift by 12.6%.  This suggests that though the tactic may prove to be effective to get a donor to upgrade their gift amount, it may also turn others off.  More testing needs to be conducted to understand how changes in the language might be able to mitigate the drop off in conversion while still positively affecting average gift amount.

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