USABILITY AND ANALYTICS: THE TWO HIDDEN GEMS TO UNLEASH YOUR WEBSITE'S ROI

Session 4: 11:30 – 12:15

Frances HallSenior Director of Development, Make-A-Wish Foundation of America

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Your presenters...

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Matt.Barr@hjcnewmedia.com Fundraising and Innovation Consultant, HJC

Erik.Rubadeau@hjcnewmedia.com Senior Consultant – Technology and Fundraising Innovation, HJC

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Why usability and analytics?“Until recently, most of the decisions we were called on to make were based on

hunches, insight and a little bit of data... What are you going to do when your

hunches don't match the data that's now pouring in?”

– Seth Godin, 2009

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What is usability• Making products and systems

easier to use, and matching them more closely to user needs and requirements

• Usability is about: – Effectiveness - can users do what they

set out to do? – Efficiency - how much effort do users

require to do this?– Satisfaction – what do users think

about the website’s ease of use?

No.

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Why does usability matter?With some help from Nielsen Norman and adapted by us for charities and non-profits, we have identified 4 key reasons:

If your website is difficult to use, people will leaveIf users get lost on your website, they leave

If your website's information is hard to read or does not answer key questions sought by users, they leave

If users cannot find how to donate in the way they want to donate, they don’t donate

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Say again? Why does this matter?

The annual growth rate in online donors from 2004-2008 was 33% per year

whereas offline donors declined 1% per yearSource: Target Analytics’ report “Internet Giving Benchmark

Analysis”

By 2020, online donations are estimated to account for the majority of donations

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The ROI of usability• Usability seeks to:– Remove the barriers to making a donation– Pinpoint the common user errors on their journey

through your website– Know how to avoid these design/architecture

errors in the future• ROI is measured by a change in the ratio of

website visitors to donors– If there is no benchmark data for your website

you need to go out and record your own

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Great user experience will pay off

The 2010 NNGroup benchmark study of 20 for-profit e-commerce websites that employed usability testing prior to the redesign saw: Sales/conversion rates increase on average by 87% Traffic/visitor count increase on average by 96%

“On a site with low usability, people buy only the stuff they need. On a site with high usability, users feel more welcome

and are motivated to return for repeat purchases.” – Nielsen Norman Group, 2010

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Questions Questions QuestionsAll visitors to your website are either current or prospective donors. Fact. Have you answered your

visitor’s key question(s)?1. Can they easily find your

organisation’s goals, mission and values?

2. Can they see and read precisely how a donation will be used?

Do you even know for sure what they thinking and doing?

Cartoon courtesy of the NNGroup

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What are you looking to find out?• Have a clear set of objectives based on finding out:

– What your users doing, how they are behaving, what they want to do/find out, what barriers exist in making a donation or influence the visitor on making donation

• Data benchmarks for future designs– Know what works well and what doesn’t work so well– Know the ROI

• Influence your design process– To base architecture and design on what your

constituents do and want

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And how can you find this out?

• Record user data using online tools• Use a focus group, online or offline– No need for more than 5-10 non-expert

users• Listen to your users– Use surveys, record conversations in focus

groups, provide usability or design related feedback opportunities

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Tools? What tools?

ANALYTICSLet your data do the talking

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Web Analytics Defined (wikipedia)

• Web analytics is the measurement, collection, analysis and reporting of internet data for purposes of understanding and optimizing web usage.

• Web analytics is not just a tool for measuring website traffic but can be used as a tool for business research and market research. Web analytics applications can also help companies measure the results of traditional print advertising campaigns. It helps one to estimate how the traffic to the website changed after the launch of a new advertising campaign. Web analytics provides data on the number of visitors, page views etc to gauge the popularity of the sites which will help to do the market research.

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Web Analytics is…

• NOT a hit counter for your website

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Web Analytics is…

A powerful set of business intelligence tools that can measure and provide insight into the ROI and ROE of all your integrated initiatives

Your DataWeb Analytics Tool Your Answers

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Analytics Answers your Burning Questions

• How long does it take for a Twitter follower to make a donation? Do they ever donate?

• How many people see our mission statement before donating? Does it have an effect on avg gift size?

• What part of our website leads to the most tribute gifts?• Did the redesign of our newsletter signup form lead to more

subscribers?• Do people who watch our videos on YouTube signup for our

eNewsletter?• How many people call our 1-800 # from our donation forms?• Do we get more volunteers from facebook or from twitter? • What is our most popular campaign? Does popular equal profitable?• Are paid search donors worth more than organic search donors?

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What you need to get started

• Web analytics tool• Strategy• Comprehensive Setup• Time• Patience

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Web Analytics Tools

• Free vs. Paid• Choose a single solution and stick with it• Remember 90/10 Rule

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Strategy Before All Else

• Strategic Points to Consider– Define what kinds of questions you

want to answer– Define what the metrics are that

answer that question– Define how you will capture these

metrics– Define who (internally) will champion

your metrics

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(V=?) Define and Assign Value

• Everything you decide to track should have a value assigned to it.

• If it doesn’t have value why are you tracking it?

• Value is often monetary $• Value is defined by the user

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Analytics Setup

• Customize your tracking setup to properly measure all of your goals

• Goals• Events• eCommerce• Campaign Tagging

• Test your setup (all of it)• Benchmark Your Data

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Wise Words from Chuck

• I've always found that anything worth achieving will always have obstacles in the way and you've got to have that drive and determination to overcome those obstacles on route to whatever it is that you want to accomplish.

-Chuck Norris

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Top 3 Priorities to measure

• Donations (Single and Monthly)

• Newsletter Signups

• Social Media

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Tracking Donations• What: Track the volume and value of your

online donations

• Why : It provides you with snapshot financial data (on the fly) but also let’s you segment actual income by source and effort.

(Email vs. Website vs. Twitter vs. Google)

• How: – Add eCommerce Tracking – Add Campaign Tagging to everything you do– Track Single and Monthly Donations Separately

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Tracking Email Signups

• What: Track the number of new email signups to your organization.

• Why : To benchmark the volume of people who sign up to hear more from your organization and to understand where they come from

• How: – Add Thank You Page as a “Goal”– Add Virtual PageView– Add as an onClick Event

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Tracking Social Media • What: Track your Social Media Efforts

• Why : Establish an ROE for the amount of time you are spending on Social Media and measure the success/level of your engagement

• How: – Add Campaign Tagging to your SM links

(Survives tiny-ing)– Drive SM traffic to action that you can measure– Benchmark your # of fans and followers

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5 Filters to Make your Life Easier

• Filter out your organizations IP Address• Filter your consultant/vendor IP address• Add Full Referral URL Filter• Filter all URI data to lowercase• Remove URL Root Filter

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Now you have all this data...

• What to do with it?

• Frances Hall, Senior Director of Development, Make-A-Wish Foundation of America, will explain...

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1. Gain organizational consensus as to the goals of the website

2. Commit to follow through with all outcomes – begin with tests

3. Prioritize activity based on your organization’s goals

4. Assign timelines, responsibilities to staff5. Review test outcomes and make changes to site

according to results, refine test, and modify

Next steps post-web usability analysis

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Next steps post-web usability analysis

6. Gain organizational support along the way7. Commit to ongoing testing with appropriate

staff teams8. Be sure to refresh site “maintenance” and

explore “what’s new”9. Continue to use analytics to track your

outcomes10.Create an organizational report that defines key

metrics and benchmarks your data…monthly or quarterly

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Thanks!