Live Action

How removing a step in the donation pathway impacts donor conversion

Experiment ID: #33560

Live Action

Experiment Summary

Timeframe: 07/13/2020 - 08/27/2020

After a prospective donor clicks the primary donation button on Live Action’s website, they are taken to a page that communicates all of the different ways they can give. From there the prospective donor has to click on the giving widget at the top of the ways to give page to get to the actual donation page. We hypothesized that this additional step in the donation pathway was causing friction. To test this, we simply removed the in-between page and sent people directly to the donation page itself from the donation button in the primary navigation.

Research Question

Can we increase donor conversion by removing a step in the donation pathway?

Design

C: Control
T1: Redirect donation page

Results

 Treatment NameConv. RateRelative DifferenceConfidenceAverage Gift
C: Control 26.2%$0.00
T1: Redirect donation page 20.9%-20.2% 97.0%$0.00

This experiment has a required sample size of 494 in order to be valid. Since the experiment had a total sample size of 1,220, 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
× 20.2% decrease in conversion rate
× 0% increase in average gift

Key Learnings

To our surprise, when we removed the “ways to give” page from the donation pathway, donor conversion decreased. Having the additional page in the donation pathway helped increase donor conversion and overall revenue. Our hypothesis for this is that the in-between page acted as a micro-yes in the giving process. Instead of causing friction, it actually helped people make the decision to give sooner and more likely to complete their transaction. 

Removing the ways to give page had the biggest impact on new visitors to the website and people on mobile devices. 


Experiment Documented by Courtney Gaines
Courtney Gaines is Vice President at NextAfter.

Question about experiment #33560

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