Helping poverty-stricken families to solve their problems, permanently
Bóthar helps ensure families overcome hunger, malnutrition and poverty in a simple sustainable manner by donating animals, trees, bio gas and water systems to families throughout the world.
Annertech's challenge was to increase visitor engagement, improve the user experience and to increase donations on the website.
The project goals:
- To conduct User Research to discover the user’s needs, frustrations and motivations
- To build an intuitive online shop to increase sales of sustainable gifts
- To create a seamless donation user journey to reduce phone calls to the organisation
- To facilitate monthly donations which was not previously possible with the existing web solution
- To inform new users about the charity and promote Bóthar’s identity, story and mission
- To educate teachers and students in Ireland who visit the website for educational resources for school
Our Approach:
Bóthar’s aim for the project was to increase visitor engagement, improve the user experience and to increase donations on the website. To facilitate this strategy, we undertook a ground-up user research approach including:
- Content and Imagery Audit to allow Bóthar to communicate their mission and values in an impactful and meaningful way.
- Analytics and Heatmap Analysis to identify key user journeys and behaviours.
- User Persona Workshop to identify the target demographics needs and frustrations.
- One-to-one interviews and surveys with key user groups to explore and validate assumptions of needs and frustrations.
- User Flows to determine the best e-commerce experience.
- Wireframes to test the best content and page structures.
- Usability Testing to sense-check our user journey assumptions.
User Research
The visitors to the website included donors, teachers, pupils volunteers and farmers who wish to donate animals to the charity. Some of the pain points experienced by the users:
Pain point 1: The donation flow was confusing. The back button on the payments section took me out of the website. The currency's values didn't match up with what your donation would buy on the supporters draw section.
Pain point 2: The navigation was confusing. Hard to find what you are looking for.
Pain point 3: Difficult to know what to donate as there were no gift categories or price filters.
Design Thinking
We reviewed the website holistically and examined the major pain points experienced by the visitors. We noted that someone new to the website needed to know and understand what Bóthar did, where they worked globally and why they do what they do. Pages dedicated to this information were considered in the redesign of the website.
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Quick Donate: Opportunities for donating were available throughout the website on pages that told the story of how Bóthar are helping struggling communities to become sustainable. Bóthar responds to countries in crisis so we designed a dedicated campaign banner area that prompted the visitor to get involved and donate from the Appeal pages and the Home page. A donate form is placed in various places throughout the site so the user can choose their donation amount quickly and easily.
Presenting a Clear ‘Why’
The challenge was, ‘how do we design the donor experience so that it inspires generosity and engagement?’
The highlighted gifts are chosen based on the community's needs and it is a guide to inspire and help the donor make a decision about what amount they wish to give. ‘What will your gift do?’ area highlights 3 amounts showing an image of the positive impact their money will have on the communities receiving a gift. This information was presented with a short description. These amounts and images can be edited by the internal digital team as the appeals for certain sustainable gifts change within communities.
Imagery
We noted from research that there was inconsistent imagery of the animals and other gifts such as water filtration systems depicted using various illustrations and some using real photography. This had an impact on the donor’s perception of the ‘real’ effect an animal or water filtration system would achieve based upon the style of imagery used. All gifts were represented using actual genuine photographs taken in the communities of the animals, plants, water or gas systems in use. This has had a positive impact on donations and donors awareness of how they are contributing value to the communities in need.
Online Shop: for new users and current users, the online shop to purchase gifts and the donation form needed to be optimised, particularly for mobile. From our user research, we were able to determine what topic filters were most important to the users. The users also wanted the ability to find gifts to buy using a price range, sort by highest to lowest and gift type. This allowed the user to find the gifts that were affordable to them quickly.
Monthly Recurring Donations
Prior to the redesign of the website, the only avenue available to users to donate monthly was by contacting Bóthar directly. This process involved many pain points, causing a barrier to support. To solve this, we cater for a more effective streamlined monthly donation flow. The user can input their information required by Bóthar and the bank to process the payment. This has directly increased monthly donations to the charity enabling them to help more communities in need.
Results
The Annertech team listened to our concerns and brought solutions where we had challenges. Everyone in the Bóthar family is happy with the result but most importantly our donors are too. I would have no hesitation in recommending Annertech.
- Kate Finucane
Marketing and Communications Manager, Bóthar
