M+R Report: Do $5 Asks + Big Red Buttons Work?, February 2010

Rob Johnston

At today's meeting I mentioned the M+R report that talked about removing navigation from donation pages. Here's the excerpt:

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Removing Donate Page Navigation – We intuitively know simpler is better when it

comes to donation pages. So we were curious to see what impact, if any, removing or

reducing navigation from donation pages would have – would less distraction keep

donors focused on giving?  

Of the four tests we ran, two had a statistically significant results; in those two tests, the

elimination or reduction in donate page navigation lifted the conversion rate of the page

by a jaw-dropping 53.7% and 28.9%, respectively.  And while the results of the other two

tests were not statistically significant, they trended positive:  

OrganizationReduced Navigation: Impact on ConversionsA99.9% chance to lift by 53.7% B99.9% chance to lift by 28.9% C57.1% chance to lift by 0.90% D65.48% chance to lift by 2.85% 

These results support our theory that removing distractions from the donation page helps

keep a donor focused on completing the transaction.  Because two organizations showed

a huge improvement by removing navigational elements, we feel comfortable

recommending this tactic to smaller organizations who may not have the resources to test

landing pages themselves. 

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The report includes a number of mailing and form tests. It lives on the publications page:

http://www.mrss.com/publications.html

The direct link is :

http://www.mrss.com/2009-eoy-fundraising-tests.pdf