The challenge

As a charitable entity, the lifeblood of the Fred Hollows Foundation is donations. The money raised goes towards training doctors, nurses and healthcare workers, distributing antibiotics, funding much-needed medical equipment and facilities, and performing life-changing eye operations. The Foundation came to Luminary looking for ways to increase charitable donations through its website. Together, the Foundation and Luminary embarked on a Conversion Rate Optimisation (CRO) project to test and refine the site to maximise its donation-generating capacity.

The solution

A key aspect of the CRO project was to utilise the A/B Testing functionality in the Kentico Enterprise Marketing Solution (EMS). The Foundation had invested in the EMS prior to working with Luminary but had not been fully exploiting its capabilities. Luminary helped it to unlock the potential of the EMS.

The project commenced with a series of workshops where more than 35 on-site experiments were developed. These involved initiatives like altering the text and length of the donation form, using different images, usability improvements, and removing images and exit points during the donation process.

Using the EMS, Luminary also implemented personalised content based on the user’s journey to be presented during the donation process, and activated marketing automation to deliver automated donation abandonment emails. Variations of the personalised content were subject to A/B testing, as were different triggers for the automated donation abandonment emails.

The outcomes of all of the A/B Testing experiments were then analysed to provide a set of recommendations for permanent changes to the website and suggested areas for further investigation and testing.

The result

Several important insights were gleaned from the A/B testing. For example, it was revealed that a simplified version of the donation form, with a reduction in the number of potential exit points, resulted in a 40.2% conversion rate, compared with 36.1% for the original version. A percentage shift of this magnitude has a significant impact on the Foundation’s overall donation outcome.

The initial phase of the CRO project was completed in the lead-up to the Foundation’s End of Financial Year Tax Appeal Campaign – a critical time of year for donations. As a result of executing a number of data-driven changes to optimise the site, the conversion rate increased by more than 11% year-on-year. 

As a testament to the success of the project, the Foundation has indicated that it now plans to conduct a similar CRO exercise on an annual basis.