Audience-led approach increases donations

Audience-focused website optimisation

Client: Diabetes UK
Sector: Charity
Website: Diabetes.org.uk
Services: User Research, CRO, Content, Search Intent, Experience Design

The standout experiment has been one sitewide test which led to a 61% increase in donations when compared to the original.

Diabetes UK challenged us to identify the high traffic/high impact areas of Diabetes.org.uk to improve user journeys and increase revenue from key audiences.

The website received lots of traffic, but the conversion rate was low. The objective was to turn browsers into financial supporters while maintaining their engagement with the vital support content on the website.

The process began with a stakeholder workshop with 20 people from across the charity to analyse existing user journeys.

In the workshop, we ran empathy mapping and journey mapping exercises, which helped us to understand users and their needs better.

Following the workshop, we did search intent research to understand more about how the target audiences were searching in Google. We used this to understand whether existing content met user needs and to inform what additional content users needed to improve their donation journeys.

The process provided us with an opportunity to train the Diabetes UK content team on how to do search intent, and how Google’s Micro-Moments influence queries and change intent.

To validate and challenge the initial research phase, we conducted audience interviews and usability testing with several people who live with diabetes. This allowed us to observe how users interacted with the website to understand their needs, motivations, and concerns when it came to donating or supporting the charity.

The audience interviews gave us a good understanding of user needs and issues, allowing us to conduct an informed heuristic review of important areas of the Diabetes UK website. The output from the review was a set of recommendations for optimisations, content, and A/B tests.

Our creative team produced conceptual designs of new user journeys which we combined with our recommendations and a prioritised A/B test roadmap to form our final report.

We've since put the testing roadmap into action, running A/B tests on several sections of the website with the aim of increasing financial conversions.

The discovery work laid a strong foundation for the first set of A/B tests. With insight-backed hypotheses in place, early testing showed a good level of improvement.

The highlight so far has been one sitewide test which led to a 61% increase in donations when compared to the original. Further testing has led to improvements in the user experience, particularly for mobile users.

With another round of split tests proposed, we’re looking forward to continuing to help Diabetes UK improve conversions.