How transcribing a video on a donation page affects donor conversion
Buckner International
Buckner International is a global ministry dedicated to the transformation and restoration of the lives we serve. We are a Christ-centered organization that delivers redemptive ministry to the most vulnerable from the beginning to the ending of life.
Experiment Summary
Timeframe: 12/21/2017 - 01/03/2018
Buckner International was running a video ad on Facebook targeting their donors and housefile, with a video of Dr. Reyes explaining the impact that their gifts had in 2017 on children and families that Buckner served, and inviting them to make a year-end gift.
The video linked to a landing page with the video on it and the opportunity to make a gift. They wanted to test whether transcribing Dr. Reyes’ message in the video on the page would have a greater impact than just re-watching the video.
Other elements of the donation page, including the form, remained the same.
Research Question
Does the transcription of a video convert more donors than a video alone?
Design
Results
| Treatment Name | Conv. Rate | Relative Difference | Confidence | Average Gift | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| C: | Control | 1.2% | $25.00 | ||
| T1: | Video Transcription | 1.1% | -4.6% | 2.7% | $40.00 |
This experiment has a required sample size of 291,100 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
The motivation of visitors to the page and traffic to the page was too low to make any definitive assessment of which was the better treatment. This makes sense given the reason they clicked to the page (either to watch more of the video or for more information).
It’s likely that not enough people were motivated to give because of the source of the traffic (Facebook) which has traditionally been harder to convert with direct ask ads. Also, people may have been confused by the lack of context on the donation page that only showed the video, without supporting text.
The concept of testing video vs. text treatments should be re-tried with a page that gets higher traffic to guarantee a more valid learning.