Luther Seminary

How Interrupting the Browsing Experience with a Gift Selection Slide-up Impacts Online Donations

Experiment ID: #202889

Luther Seminary

Experiment Summary

Timeframe: 03/19/2026 - 03/20/2026

Bible League Canada (BLC) is a ministry organization dedicated to placing Bibles and biblical resources into the hands of waiting believers in Canada and around the world. During one of their fundraising campaigns, we wanted to test whether increasing the number of appeal links in an email would help drive more visitors to the donation page.

We decided to test this in Email #2 of this campaign, which served as a key follow-up touchpoint. While the first email introduced the need, Email #2 was designed to reinforce urgency and convert engaged readers into donors. Because it targeted an already-warmed audience, it represented a meaningful opportunity to optimize click-through behavior and drive additional gifts.

This experiment asked: Would increasing the number of donation links in the email body increase clicks to the donation page? Or is a single plain-text link sufficient once donor motivation is established?

The Control version included a single plain-text donation link within the email.

The Treatment version included the same plain-text donation link and also hyperlinked two additional sections of body copy higher up in the email. These additional links directed to the same donation page and provided readers with more opportunities to click as they engaged with the message.

The language, story, and overall appeal copy remained the same across versions. The only variable tested was the number and placement of donation links within the email.

We randomly split the Email #2 audience between the two versions and measured clicks to the donation page as the primary outcome. Clicks on non-donation links (such as social media icons or the organization logo) were excluded from our analysis. Click results were pulled from February 11 – 28.

Research Question

We believe that introducing a gift selection slide-up for website visitors on Enter the Bible will increase donation conversions because interrupting passive browsing with a clear, immediate giving opportunity reduces friction and prompts action through attention capture and choice simplification.

Design

C: Control

T1: Treatment 1

Results

	Treatment Name	Conv. Rate	Relative Difference	Confidence
C:	Control	0.00%
T1:	Treatment 1	0.03%	100.0%	99.5%

This experiment has a required sample size of 11,954 in order to be valid. Since the experiment had a total sample size of 50,055, 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
× 100.0% increase in conversion rate
× 0% increase in average gift

Key Learnings

This test demonstrates that a more interruptive, attention-grabbing donation prompt can drive incremental giving on a high-traffic content site.

The gift selection slide-up (treatment) yielded 8 donations totaling $347.80, averaging $43.48 per donation, while the control yielded no recorded donations. This suggests that proactively prompting users can convert a small portion of otherwise passive visitors into donors.

While VWO reported a +0.03% lift with 99.5% confidence, the results required additional validation. Because users were redirected from the Enter the Bible domain to a Luther Seminary donation page without cross-domain tracking enabled, conversions were not fully captured within the testing platform.

To account for this, a backup campaign-tracking setup within the donation system was used to verify the results. Although originally implemented to keep the test clean, this approach ultimately ensured accurate attribution and confirmed that all donations came from the treatment experience.

From a behavioral perspective, the results suggest that capturing attention and simplifying the decision to give through preset gift options can prompt action, even when initial donor intent is low.

However, the low overall conversion rate indicates that attention alone is not enough—stronger motivational framing will likely be required to drive meaningful scale.

Next Steps

Keep the Donation Experience Within a Single Domain: Future tests will prioritize directing users to donation pages within the Enter the Bible environment. Keeping the full journey within a single, first-party domain will improve tracking accuracy, reduce attribution gaps, and enable more confident decision-making.
Test Alternative On-Site Donation Prompts: Build on this learning by testing additional formats, such as a sticky donation slide-out, to understand how different levels of persistence and visibility impact conversion.
Strengthen Motivational Framing: Pair attention-grabbing elements with messaging that emphasizes urgency, impact, or donor identity to increase both conversion rate and overall revenue.

Experiment Documented by NextAfter

Question about experiment #202889

If you have any questions about this experiment or would like additional details not discussed above, please feel free to contact them directly.