Membership homepage redesign increases sign-ups by 21%

Key optimisation outcomes

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

The objective of our CRO workstream is to better understand the users' path through the fundraising journey, in order to identify pain points, make recommendations for optimisation and ultimately improve user experience and conversion rate.

We had previously conducted a CRO discovery research project on the membership part of the diabetes.org.uk site and a membership banner test, which indicated a sizeable opportunity to increase memberships.

Working with the in-house team at Diabetes UK, we held a workshop and identified membership registrations as our second test. We felt that updating the content, highlighting the 'perks' better, and generally improving the page layout would increase membership sign-ups.

Our hypothesis: IF the copy on the main membership page is reviewed and optimised; THEN more users will visit the sign-up page DUE to increased persuasion.

Ensuring we can effectively convert our supporters into members is a key strategic goal for Diabetes UK.  It has been a pleasure working with such a proactive and knowledgeable agency to improve how we present one of our most important fundraising products to our audiences.

In addition to the results we have achieved in this test, importantly it is part of a longer term roadmap of development and testing which will stand us in good stead as we continue to invest in growing membership in the future.

Andrew Russell, Head of Individual Giving at Diabetes UK

For this challenge, we brought experts together from across a wide range of disciplines at the agency. Our primary test was a redesign focused on a new homepage hero component and a new strapline to communicate the values and perks of membership more effectively.

On-page content benefitted from an update to highlight the benefits of becoming a member, using more persuasive copy.

Finally, we analysed the most popular FAQs and pulled the answers into the page to make the content more beneficial for the primary audiences.

The conversion rate of the A/B test variant was above the original throughout the test duration. In this time, the test reached a statistically significant uplift of 21% in membership sign-ups. The new layout significantly increased the number of users signing up, boosting the overall conversion rate from 2.8% to 3.4%.

Mobile and Tablet devices drove the most significant uplift improvements – during testing, we documented a 32% and 38% uplift, respectively, and Desktop improved by 4%. We looked at forecasting test impact, and if the uplift figures are maintained, it will generate 1,222 additional memberships per year. With annual Diabetes UK membership costing £36, this equates to an extra £43,992 for the charity per year.

Fundamentally, the charity now has a membership homepage that converts at a higher rate. Not only does this mean additional vital long-term revenue, but it also means they can continue to support even more people living with diabetes.

It’s so rewarding to be able to help Diabetes UK grow their membership base and see the impact that has on the fantastic work they do. The excellent outcome of this test is a testimony of client-agency collaboration and an iterative approach to testing.

Ensuring that the test was coded to the highest standard and based on a solid foundation of research, made sure that we had faith in the variant and the outcome.

Lee Colbran, Co-founder 

It was great to work with Diabetes UK on this successful A/B test. After completing a research ‘discovery’ piece on the membership part of the diabetes.org.uk site, we held a collaborative hypotheses prioritisation workshop, which identified this as our second test.

The Diabetes UK team were eagerly involved with us throughout the design process, which meant we could jointly deliver a page variant that met the test objective. This project was an enjoyable CRO challenge for us at Fresh Egg and a great set of results for Diabetes UK.

Kirsty Parker, Account Director