Does varying the text of the donation call to action increase click through

[ajparsons]

Q:Does varying the text of the donation call to action increase click through

We will measure this with via an A/B test in google analytics. Campaigns will be marked up to track conversion value.

Two messages will be tested against each other at a time. Testing the current message against a set of other potential messaging.

[ajparsons]

The current message (see original ticket):

We work to defend the right to FOI for everyone Help us protect your right to hold public authorities to account. Donate and support our work. This hasn’t been modified since 2016 and generally the effectiveness has been low

An alternate “what we do” message is suggested above:

Like this website? Make sure it stays online WhatDoTheyKnow hosts over half a million FOI requests submitted by members of the public. Help us stay up for the next million.

A wikimedia-like (‘if everyone’) message would be:

WhatDoTheyKnow helps enforce your FOI rights If just 10% of people using the site gave £3 we can support the site for years to come and grow our campaigns to support wider access to public information.

A Guardian-like message (very long, and a little concerning) would be more like:

Supporting WhatDoTheyKnow WhatDoTheyKnow has traditionally been funded by a combination of grants made to support our FOI work and grants made to mySociety more generally. However, several of those grants have now come to an end, and we need to think about new ways of finding funding - not just to sustainably support the archive of more than half a million requests, but add new features, properly support our volunteers, and campaign for better support for freedom of information. If everyone who benefited from mySociety services helps to support us, we can comfortable fund and grow our mission. Support WhatDoTheyKnow and mySociety by giving as little as £1 here.

[garethrees]

I think we should focus these around the stories of WDTK.

We've started to amass a fair number of nice case studies about the use of WDTK, and I think these help to make the impact of FOI more concrete than just saying "government transparency" etc.

• https://www.mysociety.org/2019/09/02/foi-and-the-irish-border-issue/
• https://www.mysociety.org/2019/07/26/after-exploitation-using-foi-to-understand-what-happens-to-victims-of-modern-slavery/
• https://www.mysociety.org/2019/01/23/using-whatdotheyknow-to-uncover-how-schoolchildrens-data-was-used-to-support-the-hostile-environment/
• https://www.mysociety.org/2018/09/18/now-you-can-ask-coroners-to-provide-information-through-whatdotheyknow/
• https://www.mysociety.org/2018/08/09/use-your-rights-the-peoples-audit-sheds-light-on-council-finances/
• https://www.mysociety.org/2018/06/13/foi-one-part-of-the-fight-against-the-lose-lose-lobo-loans-to-local-councils/
• https://www.mysociety.org/2018/05/17/truth-justice-for-haemophiliacs-whatdotheyknow-and-the-contaminated-blood-scandal/
• https://www.mysociety.org/2018/05/09/taxis-wheelchairs-and-local-authorities-an-update/
• And many more https://www.mysociety.org/category/transparency/whatdotheyknow/

Let's try making a donate ad from two of these?

[ajparsons]

This seems like a good idea.

Along the lines of below?

Our users have used WhatDoTheyKnow to find out how [what happened to victims of modern slavery]. Please donate to support this service.

Would the [case study] want to be a link to the blog post? If so we could add the donate short code to those blog posts.

[garethrees]

Along the lines of below?

Our users have used WhatDoTheyKnow to find out how [what happened to victims of modern slavery]. Please donate to support this service.

Yep, exactly.

I think we could/should also include a tweet-sized summary of the story. Hacked in an example to show visually what I mean – would want to think about wording:

I think the visuals of these could be much improved (#118) (all our case studies have a header image for example) but possibly worth a go with just this different text first?

Would the [case study] want to be a link to the blog post? If so we could add the donate short code to those blog posts.

It feels like we should link to them. I doubt people donate first time, but they may do after clicking through a couple of these. It would be good to make sure if someone donates via the blog post via one of these ads, that it's recorded as such.

[ajparsons]

I like that. Even if we just mark up the link to the story with campaign tags to start with, we could see how many people click on that to understand if its worth adapting the blog posts.

In the interest of gathering data, should we just put a few text ones in rotation to test?

[garethrees]

Even if we just mark up the link to the story with campaign tags to start with, we could see how many people click on that to understand if its worth adapting the blog posts.

👍

In the interest of gathering data, should we just put a few text ones in rotation to test?

Yep!