CaringBridge

How reiterating the value proposition affects donor conversion rate

Experiment ID: #1234

CaringBridge

CaringBridge offers free personal, protected websites for people to easily share updates and receive support and encouragement from their community during a health journey. Every 7 minutes, a CaringBridge website is created for someone experiencing a health event.

Experiment Summary

Timeframe: 03/25/2015 - 03/31/2015

With the rise of crowdfunding sites, CaringBridge has seen a rise in refunds as supporters misunderstand or are misinformed about who receives donations collected on the site. To attempt to reduce the refund rate, we restated the value proposition and clarified that donations go to CaringBridge — not the patient — immediately below the donate button, to be read at the moment of decision.

Research Question

Will adding additional value proposition language reduce the refund rate?

Design

C: Control
T1: Treatment

Results

 Treatment NameConv. RateRelative DifferenceConfidence
C: Control 5.2%
T1: Treatment 6.9%31.3% 99.4%

This experiment has a required sample size of 1,757 in order to be valid. Since the experiment had a total sample size of 9,311, 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
× 31.3% increase in conversion rate
× 0% increase in average gift

Key Learnings

The increase in conversion was an unexpected result — but the learning tells us that by restated the value proposition at the moment of final decision, we can increase the likelihood of a donation. This is a learning that can be tested sitewide.


Experiment Documented by Jeff Giddens
Jeff Giddens is President of NextAfter.

Question about experiment #1234

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