How presenting a micro-ask instead of a direct donation ask in a giving widget 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: 12/10/2020 - 12/26/2020
During Focus on the Family’s year-end campaign, they feature a giving widget at the top of their navigation. On the left hand side they have a banner with value proposition copy and on the right hand side they feature a mini giving form where people can decide how much they want to give. After a person selects how much they want to give, they continue to the donation page to complete their gift. We questioned if this was the best approach to convert donors. So to test into it, we presented a softer call-to-action in the giving widget. We presented website visitors with a question where they would then decided “yes” or “no”. The question we asked was “Would you consider giving hope to families this Christmas?”. Both “yes” and “no” buttons led to a donation page where they could make a gift. We hypothesized that pushing the decision to give to the donation page might increase donor conversion instead of having people make the decision to give and decide how much they want to give right when they see the widget.
Research Question
Will presenting a softer call-to-action on the giving widget increase donor conversion?
Design
Results
This experiment has a required sample size of 15,323 in order to be valid. Since the experiment had a total sample size of 46,083, 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
× 9.5% decrease in conversion rate
× 0% increase in average gift
Key Learnings
The micro-ask decrease overall donor conversion by 9.5%. To our surprise the direct ask and gift array selection actually improves donor conversion. Our hypothesis behind this is the motivation of traffic coming to the website during this season. There are so many channels pushing people to the Focus website to give. Once they get to the site, they may have already decided to give. Another hypothesis is that the soft micro-ask might be a bit of a whiplash. If I say “yes” I want to give families hope at Christmas and then am taken to a donation page, the experience may be too big of a jump.
Here are some additional observations of the impact on other visitor segments in the experiment – most of them reinforcing our hypothesis around visitor motivation:
- Email visitors had a 160.5% decrease in donations with a 100% level of confidence.
- Paid Search visitors had a 40.2% decrease in donations with an 88% level of confidence.
- Mobile visitors had a 35.1% decrease in donations with a 100% level of confidence.
- Returning visitors had a 15.8% decrease in donations with a 99% level of confidence.