Steve Daigneault and the team at M+R Strategic Services have just released their latest white-paper: Do $5 asks + Big Red Buttons Work? The paper reviews what was learned from their 2009 end-of-year tests, and answers questions like:
- Can you raise more by asking for less?
- Do “best practices” like big red donate buttons, extra security logos and reduced navigation always work?
- Do emails with more images and less text perform better?
Steve promise the paper includes at least one gold nugget, and he delivers:
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.
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.
You can download the full white paper here.
