How personalizing the donation page with the reader’s first name impacts donor conversion
Focus on the Family
Focus on the Family is a global Christian ministry dedicated to helping families thrive. We provide help and resources for couples to build healthy marriages that reflect God's design, and for parents to raise their children according to morals and values grounded in biblical principles.
Experiment Summary
Timeframe: 03/27/2021 - 04/09/2021
Focus had a new offer running around Biblical truth in a broken world. It had a strong conversion rate and a lot of traffic. So we tested a personalization by passing the person’s first name from the landing page to the donation page and adding it to the header. Instead of just saying “Congratulations!” it said “Congratulations, John!” This has worked well in the past for other organizations and we wanted to test it for the Focus audience.
Research Question
We believe that speaking to someone using their first name for visitors to the donation page will achieve higher donor conversion.
Design
Results
| Treatment Name | Conv. Rate | Relative Difference | Confidence | Average Gift | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| C: | Control | 6.2% | $0.00 | ||
| T1: | First Name | 4.0% | -35.8% | 78.0% | $0.00 |
This experiment has a required sample size of 760 in order to be valid. Unfortunately, the required sample size was not met and a level of confidence above 95% was not met so the experiment results are not valid.
Key Learnings
What we found was the opposite of expected. Using the reader’s first name actually decreased donations by 36% and revenue by 37% with a directional decrease. This level of decrease held true across almost all devices and demographics.
Our hypothesis is that it caused more friction by the surprise of seeing their own name. The other possibility is that it made the Congratulations more noticeable and led them to believe their work on the page was complete and they did a good job and could now leave the page. We are now testing a form design on this page rather than a personalization, to see if making the choices in giving more clear and the process easier will increase donor conversion.