How communicating the impact of a recurring gift can cause friction to returning website visitors
Billy Graham Evangelistic Association
Experiment Summary
Timeframe: 09/01/2019 - 11/01/2019
On the BGEA primary donation page, we hypothesized that adding a line of copy communicating the impact of a recurring gift at the point of a person’s gift decision may influence a person’s decision to change their one-time gift to a recurring gift. No other elements were changed to the giving process.
Research Question
Can we increase recurring giving by communicating the impact of a recurring gift at the point a person decides on the kind of gift to give?
Design
Results
| Treatment Name | Conv. Rate | Relative Difference | Confidence | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| C: | Control | 2.6% | ||
| T1: | Recurring Gift Value Prop | 1.4% | -46.2% | 100.0% |
This experiment has a required sample size of 1,018 in order to be valid. Since the experiment had a total sample size of 6,946, 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
× 46.2% decrease in conversion rate
× 0% increase in average gift
Key Learnings
What we found is that the additional language on the gift type had no impact overall. But when we started looking into the different kind of traffic, the story was much different. For new donors to the BGEA website, this additional value proposition language increased recurring giving by 48%! At the same time, the added copy actually caused a decrease in recurring giving for returning visitors by 46%. This is a fascinating discovery in understanding the different motivations of site visitors. Because returning visitors are used to the website and how it looks and functions, the additional recurring gift value proposition caused friction in the giving process resulting in fewer donations.