Who Am I?
- First name is just the letter J
- When asked what it stands for, I reply Truth, Justice and the American Way
- Married 20 years
- Have a 10 year old daughter
- Own the most ridiculous breed of dog ever created
- Play too many video games
- Live in Charleston SC - Hate Boating
Ridiculous Lay-abouts
Using Data Driven
Decisions to Inform Your Web Design
Not just how, but why?
- Why Data and Science?
- How do we get started?
- What are we looking for?
- How can I improve my site?
- How does psychology play a role?
- Why our assumptions fail
- How we can use analytics
- Explore the three stages of reinforcing
human behavior - Bust some myths
- How your website is an extension of
your organizations 'personality' - Final thoughts
Why Data?
This is Art!
Donate Now!
Why Data?
This is Art!
Challenging Our Assumptions of Reality with Data
What you know.
What "feels" right.
Your Gut.
VS
Data Driven Decisions
*
* Expertise plays an important role, but data and experience lead to expertise and expertise without data is anchor-less musings.
Why Your Assumptions Fail
We're old.
- Game of Thrones premiered before Pinterest. (2010)
- Heath Ledger played the Joker before the Chrome Browser existed (2008)
- The last Harry Potter Novel (Deathly Hallows) is as old as the first ever iPhone (2007)
- Taylor Swift's first album dropped before Twitter (2006)
- Friends went off the air before you ever had a Facebook Friend (2004)
- Forrest Gump debuted before the Internet was public (1991)
- Seinfeld existed in a world where Netflix mailed you DVDs and before Napster began file sharing (1998)
Why Your Assumptions Fail
We're old.
You cannot predict how people will use technology or what that technology will be.
Why Your Assumptions Fail
We're snobs.
Why Your Assumptions Fail
We're snobs experts.
We are the experts of our organizations.
We understand our organizations to the point of blindness.
Why Your Assumptions Fail
We're snobs experts.
The following words are commonly used in the non-profit sector but have VERY different meanings to the uninitiated.
Gift
Pledge
Unrestricted
Constituent
Target
Recurring Gift
Tribute
Ask
Designation
Why Your Assumptions Fail
We have jobs.
We rarely access our website from the perspective of a visitor.
Rarely do we have the time to constantly check our website
I'm Sold.
Now what?
Adding Google Analytics
Or other analytic suite.
We need to know what's going on!
What are we looking for?
Error Pages
Error Pages
Check website health with real time statistics
Analytics placed on error pages can tell you a wealth of information on website health.
Error Pages
Create it as a goal or a custom report
Error Pages
Improve your error pages by asking...
- Did you tell them why they are there?
- Can they search?
- Can they contact you?
- Can they navigate away?
- Do they know they are still on your site?
Error Pages
Why have an error page stop your mission?
What are we looking for?
All Traffic
Shows where your traffic and conversions come from.
Use to to understand where your traffic comes from and optimize your efforts
Use to identify quality traffic as well
Check overall traffic against conversion rate to judge the quality of traffic.
Bounce?
Bounce?
Quality traffic means:
- Courting quality sources
- Driving visitors to action
- Telling your visitors what that action is
- Gaining a visitor's trust
- Making that action easy to perform
Bounce?
Courting quality sources
The power of social media
is not magic, it's finding an audience of the like minded.
Finding and appealing to communities that share your org's values will create better traffic.
ALS
Was it successful?
Did it drive quality traffic?
$220 million, the answer is yes.
ALS
Successful, but why?
How can we re-capture that lightning in a bottle.
The martyrdom effect states that people give when there is pain and effort because it feels more meaningful. Christopher Olivola of Carnegie Mellon University tested this, and found people more willing to participate when there is effort and sacrifice involved. Their participation has meaning.
https://www.cmu.edu/news/stories/archives/2014/september/september16_martyrdomeffect.html
is pleasure derived from the misfortune of others.
Schadenfreude
26 seasons of America's Funniest Videos can't be wrong
Driving Traffic
The Emotional Journey
- Visceral
- Behavioral
- Reflective
- The Ask
- The Click
- The Thank You
Visceral
What drives viewers toward articles?
- Emotions
- Questions
- Negatives
- Lists
- Curiosity
Emotional Headlines get shared more.
https://www.orbitmedia.com/blog/web-design-tips/
“We are not thinking machines that feel, we are feeling machines that think.”
Antonio Damasio
Questions
Questions
Betteridge's law of headlines
Any headline that ends in a question mark can be answered by the word no.
Have we found the Cure for Cancer?
Do you want to help with the crisis in Haiti?
Negatives
In a study by Outbrain it was found click through rate of articles with negative superlatives (such as “never” and “worst”) were 63% better than positive headlines.
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/20140618065438-86132492-positive-vs-negative-superlation-in-headline/
Negatives
Overexposure to negative headlines can create PTSD, according to a study by the University of California, Irvine in 2013
Lists
“The list is the origin of culture. It’s part of the history of art and literature. What does culture want? To make infinity comprehensible. It also wants to create order.” -- Umberto Eco
BuzzFeed, posted on Dec. 13, 2013, at 3:55 p.m
Curiosity
Piquing a reader's curiosity can increase your Click Through Rate. According to a study by Cal Tech, enticing users with the answers to interesting trivia activated the part of the brain that anticipates rewards.
(caudate region)
http://www.naturalhistorymag.com/features/123206/curious-about-curiosity
Curiosity
Wait-a-minute... that's clickbait...
http://www.contentforest.com/copywriting-tools/clickbait-headline-generator
Curiosity
Be Wary
Studies have also shown that not delivering on a headline promise can produce strong levels of outrage.
Wisdom
"Knowledge is knowing that a tomato is a fruit, wisdom is not putting it in a fruit salad." -- Miles Kington
- Find the emotion your cause evokes.
- Grow it organically.
- It isn't a bait if it's true.
- It isn't a trick if you provide a solution.
Driving Traffic
The Emotional Journey
- Visceral
- Behavioral
- Reflective
- The Ask
- The Click
- The Thank You
Behavioral
Your audience has taken you up on your promise of information and action.
Don't let them down.
What can derail a donation?
What can increase its likelihood?
Don't Underestimate color, font and design in affecting behavior
"Testers for 7-Up consistently found consumers would report more lemon flavor in their product if they added 15% more yellow coloring
TO THE PACKAGE."
― Malcolm Gladwell,
Blink: The Power of
Thinking Without Thinking
Evocative Web Design
Balancing the familiar with the unfamiliar
Unfamiliar
Innovative interations
Full screen imagery
Unique navigation
Unexpected feedback
Familiar
Form Elements
Links
Images with Captions
Buttons
Labels
Browser Behavior
Good design balances both.
It evokes a response without confusing the donor.
How will you know?
Duh.
This is where analytics comes in.
The Unfamiliar
and Unexpected
can be as mundane as a broken link. Good design uses the unfamiliar to evoke emotion. Bad design inadvertently uses the unfamiliar to confuse visitors to your site.
For instance...
Donate now
Means now.
Donate now
Means now.
Don't complicate a win.
Don't fight a battle you've already won.
Use Color and Pattern Variation
The Occipital Lobe is sensitive to variations in pattern.
Web Marketer, Paras Chopra found that standout colors are remembered more and clicked 60% more than other web elements.
https://www.orbitmedia.com/blog/web-design-tips/
Don't be afraid to add multiple paths forward.
We are a notoriously inattentive species.
What that means
for website navigation.
Creating multiple paths to donate allows the user to easily find the path forward that they are specifically looking for. Do they expect a button or a navigation element?
"Why not include both?"
-- famous gorilla
Then use Google Analytics to see which modes are working and which are falling flat.
Using Event Tracking you can see how often a link or button is clicked, cross referenced with any other link or button.
ga('send', {
hitType: 'event',
eventCategory: 'Gorilla',
eventAction: 'click',
eventLabel: 'Ball passing'
});
Path Variation
By varying the routes to success we can ensure that users will find the action they are looking for. It also allows us to experiment with the familiar and unfamiliar to evoke emotion.
Click Test
https://usabilityhub.com/click-test
Goal Funnels
- Giving you information about donation form performance.
- Finding areas where donors are abandoning the conversion path
- Drilling down to see where potential friction exists
eCommerce
Use eCommerce to track donations and compare them to various campaigns and designations.
BLACKBAUD.netcommunity.api.DonationConfirmation.add(function (data) {
if (data.TransTotal) {
ga('ecommerce:addTransaction', {
'id': data.TransID,
'affiliation': '',
'revenue': data.TransTotal,
'shipping': '',
'tax': ''
});
for (var i = 0; i < data.Items.length; i++) {
ga('ecommerce:addItem', {
'id': data.Items[i].ID,
'name': data.Items[i].Name,
'sku': data.Items[i].SKU,
'category': data.Items[i].Name,
'price': data.Items[i].Price,
'quantity': data.Items[i].Quantity
});
}
ga('ecommerce:send');
ga('ecommerce:clear');
}
});eCommerce Tracking
- Transaction ID
- SKU
- Category
- Quantity
- Amount
- Name of 'Item'
Busted Myths
Placing Content Above The Fold
There is no fold...
A study by Huge Inc
http://www.hugeinc.com/ideas/perspective/everybody-scrolls
Tested four designs
- A control image, with no visual cues to scroll below the fold.
- A scroll arrow that cues users to scroll down.
- A short image, where users had to scroll to see above-the-fold content in entirety.
- An animated image with a moving element to lead viewers below the fold
Regardless of how you cue your visitors,
91% of them WILL scroll.
http://www.hugeinc.com/ideas/perspective/everybody-scrolls
Convinced?
- Chartbeat, a data analytics provider, analyzed data from 2 billion visits and found that “66% of attention on a normal media page is spent below the fold.”
- Long Text and articles should ALWAYS scroll, according to usability studies by the Software Usability Research Laboratory
- ClickTale's heatmap service analyzed 100,000 pages and found that 22% scoll to the bottom regardless of length.
- TMZ's most clicked homepage link is at the bottom.
Content and Image Sliders and Slideshows
Diminishing Returns
That bears repeating...
1% clicked the slider.
Of those, 89% were the first position.
Don't Forget Mobile
This content removed, it's 2017 people.
Driving Traffic
The Emotional Journey
- Visceral
- Behavioral
- Reflective
- The Ask
- The Click
- The Thank You
According to Symantec, after issues of stolen data, this is the number 1 concern of online shoppers.
In online transactions, customers are worried whether they will actually receive the item they purchased.
But... wait...
This is an online donation...
Your aren't buying a physical object.
This makes your what you do after the transaction doubly important.
Silent gratitude isn’t much use to anyone.
- G.B. Stern
Reflection
Looking back at a successful decision.
- Acknowledgement Email
- Thank You Page
- Communicating success
Donors prefer to give to a winning team.
Kiva.org ran a study on the percentage toward a funding goal and the effect it had on donations
They found that donors gave substantially more often to goals that were 50% funded than those less than 33% funded.
And they gave to goals over 66% funded substantially more than 50% funded.
Communicate your successes as well as your goals.
Your Website is You
Humans personify everything; your organization is one of those things.
Anthropomorphism
Attribution of human qualities to non-human entities such as animals or objects.
"Did you see what Apple did today?"
"The government is shady."
"I love my car. She always gets me where I need to be."
Your website becomes your introduction and establishment as a person worthy of empathy, trust and consideration.
Your design should evoke those emotions and start the conversation.
GoFund-Envy
If the Internet can raise $20,000 dollars for cat tuxedos - surely your cause can too.
We tend to give to people rather than causes.
We tend to give to winning teams and attainable goals.
Spurious Decisions
Try not to make spurious decisions on a single set of data. Double check and retest your analytics.
Remember the old
mantra of statistics:
Correlation is not (necessarily) Causation
One Final Thought
| Doing the Wrong Thing | Doing the Right Thing | |
|---|---|---|
| Well | ||
| Poorly |
Anxiety
Courage
Growth
Flying Without a Net: Turn Fear of Change into Fuel for Success - Thomas J. DeLong
To Get Here
We Must Go Here
Last Words
Questions?
The Psychology of Web Design
By J Owen Schultz
