CaringBridge

How count-based urgency and percentage-based urgency affect conversion

Experiment ID: #10339

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: 12/10/2018 - 01/02/2019

CaringBridge had been running sticky bar challenges throughout their year-end campaign, and had found a “power hour” method that created recurring urgency by setting hourly goals and inspiring donors to help reach them. As they neared the end of the campaign, they had a $25,000 matching gift they wanted to leverage to generate revenue, but decided to test the “donor-based” goal (with a number of donations displayed) against the traditional “goal-based” thermometer, which showed a percentage of the $25k gift remaining to be matched. 

Their hypothesis was that while thermometers have been tested to convey urgency, they might make the goal too abstract or “out of reach” for one single donor. They didn’t want to go about “business as usual” without testing it. 

Research Question

How will count-based urgency affect revenue, as opposed to percentage-based urgency?

Design

C: Countdown
T1: Thermometer

Results

 Treatment NameClick RateRelative DifferenceConfidence
C: Countdown 0.53%
T1: Thermometer 0.43%-19.4% 98.6%

This experiment has a required sample size of 34,887 in order to be valid. Since the experiment had a total sample size of 108,547, 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:

    19.4% decrease in traffic
× 0% increase in conversion rate
× 0% increase in average gift

Key Learnings

The countdown clock prevailed as the winner, with the thermometer reducing clicks by 19.4%. Looking deeper into the data, the conversion rates downstream were actually the same—24%. However, the reduction in traffic for the thermometer meant that fewer total people made it into that funnel, which meant fewer gifts and less revenue. 

This experiment has implications for any campaign—while fundraisers are traditionally percentage-focused as they are thinking about revenue goals which may or may not be visible to the prospect, donors might respond better to a “count-based” goal where their individual gift, no matter how large, can have a significant impact. 


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

Question about experiment #10339

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