How adding steps to the donation form impacts donor conversion
Live Action
Experiment Summary
Timeframe: 06/05/2020 - 07/19/2020
There aren’t a lot of additional elements on Live Action’s primary donation page that would cause friction to the donation process. But visually, we hypothesized that the donation form didn’t have enough breaks for the eye and could potentially be causing friction for people making a gift. To test into this, we added steps to the donation form to visually create breaks for the eye and to bring greater clarity to the giving process.
Research Question
Can we increase donor conversion by adding visual breaks and clarity to the giving form?
Design
Results
| Treatment Name | Conv. Rate | Relative Difference | Confidence | Average Gift | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| C: | Control | 82.4% | $0.00 | ||
| T1: | Stepped Process | 71.4% | -13.3% | 99.9% | $0.00 |
This experiment has a required sample size of 114 in order to be valid. Since the experiment had a total sample size of 589, 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
× 13.3% decrease in conversion rate
× 0% increase in average gift
Key Learnings
The added steps and hypothesized clarity to the donation process negatively impacted donor conversion by 13%. When we reviewed the impact on the different audience and device types, we saw the most significant decrease with returning visitors and mobile visitors. This tells us that instead of adding clarity to the donation process, we actually caused friction to those returning to the site to make their gift. While not fully knowing what people were mentally perceiving, we can hypothesize a couple of things…
1. They are most likely used to seeing and experiencing the page a very specific way and when it wasn’t that same similar experience, it may have caused concern for them and resulted in them not making a gift.
2. The stepped process may have also made people feel like there were now multiple steps to the giving process in which they had considered it to just be one or a simple process with the control or what they were used to.