Challenge
Create a new webpage to announce its endowment campaign. The webpage will make it easy for donors to give and attract high-profile musicians to participate. This will help raise awareness of the campaign and show how Songs of Love benefits songwriters and musicians. The homepage and navigation will also be updated.
Vision
Create a system to attract donors and provide a constant flow of funds. The system will be easy to use and solve problems for donors. It will also include an outreach plan to increase visibility and attract more support.
Goal
Get more donors
Expand reach to international audience
Raise $5M for the endowment campaign
We worked closely with the organisation's leadership and the creative team, to help us understand the target audience's needs, expectations and behaviours.
Content Inventory
We first conducted a content inventory of the site to provide a granular view of the website’s content strategy and structural approach.
Empathy Map
We got access to Songs of Love’s donor database and did additional interviews and observations to build a profile for our persona. An empathy map was created to visualise how specific users speak, think, feel and interact.
Persona
After creating the empathy map, we pulled in the information from it to create our primary persona, Mia. She is meant to represent the primary audience and how they interact with the Songs of Love Foundation.
Meet Mia
Teacher | 32 | Rochester, NY
Goals
Make a difference
Supporting local nonprofits
Transparency in impact
Challenges
Financial capacity
Knowing where funds go
Minimal donation
Website navigation
Motivations
Seeing reactions
Trust in the foundation
Knowing the benefits
To build upon our knowledge of the target audience, we studied several peer-reviewed journals and articles. A few things stood out from these literature materials and helped us understand the user better.
Perception: An organisation's perception influences donation decisions, with reputable organisations attracting more donors.
Alignment: Aligning with donors and maintaining a strong online presence increases the likelihood of donations.
Tailoring Appeals: Customising appeals to donor preferences enhances donation outcomes, using statistics or emotional appeals accordingly.
Reward-based Crowdfunding: Offering valuable rewards in return for contributions boosts effectiveness of crowdfunding campaigns.
Information Architecture
We wanted to update the website’s navigation bar and site map, so users can more easily find what they need. To do this, we conducted three rounds of tree testing.
During a tree test, participants see a simplified navigation bar. This navigation bar mirrors the underlying site map. For each task, the participant is prompted to choose which page will contain certain information.
Round 1: Tested the existing website’s navigation bar.
Rounds 2 and 3: Used the previous round’s feedback to create and test updated site maps/navigation bars. We also added some tasks to evaluate new or updated items, based on the previous participants’ feedback.
Optimal Workshop tree-test results, observing task direct success rates
Proposed Sitemap
After the first phase of research, we decided to slightly adjust the scope of the project to a direction that would benefit the foundation long term. This led to the development of a strategy that includes; marketing campaign and an outreach plan for the endowment campaign strategy.
Marketing Campaign
To make Songs of Love a successful foundation long-term, a proper marketing campaign has to be implemented. These campaigns are significant in creative content and UX strategy. By defining the stories, and telling them to the right audience, it will be easy to grab their attention, boost brand awareness and establish strong relationships. To build a strong marketing campaign, we considered:the following
Discovery of their unique standpoint.
Clear definition of the target audience.
Illustrate the organisation's offer.
Create brand elements that grab user attention.
Build the organisation’s brand awareness.
Defined Audience
To have a clearer understanding of the target audience, we had to make sure they are described correctly. The foundation helps ailing children and teens, as well as songwriters and musicians. The only difference is that children and teens are the primary beneficiaries while musicians and songwriters are both secondary beneficiaries and supporters.
With that in mind, we narrowed our target audience to:
Donors (primary audience)
Philanthropists
Musicians
Parents
Music enthusiasts
Prospect donors
Global community
Outreach Plan
We then thought of specific tactics the foundation can use to attract new donors and maintain the existing supporters. It also includes a set of necessary steps to consider when increasing exposure and awareness of Songs of Love to the public.
To keep up with the trends, this plan will look at the use of technology to:
Build relations with stakeholders through newsletters and maintaining transparency and open communication.
Find valuable partners who share the same vision as Songs of Love.
Determine the best medium for outreach i.e social media, emails or phone calls.
Use statistics and emotional connection to create interest.
Initiate a soft launch to fix errors, get feedback and build traction.
Relations with stakeholders
We encourage the foundation to maintain transparency and open communication with its donors through emails and newsletters (loveletters). Since donors offer monetary support and have connected emotionally with Songs of Love, maintaining that connection is crucial. The newsletters will provide donors with updates and any problems or concerns the organisation might be facing.
It is important to create events that celebrate milestones and honour the donors and everyone involved for their contribution. Being openly supportive goes a long way in building relationships and it reminds people why they support Songs of Love. In special cases where events are difficult to conduct, consider sending gifts or notes of appreciation to all donors.
Soft Launch
After finishing the outreach plan, we advised the client to launch the campaign to a small group of supporters to get feedback. Consider asking the following questions in the feedback:
What is their first impression of the campaign? Why?
Is the message clear and easy to understand?
Does it inspire them to engage with the organisation?
Do they feel any emotional connection towards the campaign? What emotions come to the surface?
Do they have any suggestions that would improve the campaign? What are they?
A soft launch can help a campaign fix bugs, build momentum, and spread awareness. Supporters who test the pre-launched campaign will feel more attached to it, and new donors will be more likely to donate once they see momentum.
Songs of Love Foundation can convert prospects into donors, increase exposure, and raise $5 million with this strategy. The strategy includes proper planning and creating a pleasant experience for the target audience. The next step is to implement the strategy using the tools, channels, and professionals recommended.
The primary goal for this project was to improve the website's usability to encourage donations. This was achieved by creating prototypes and sitemap updates to make the website easier to navigate and more visually appealing. The secondary goal was to provide a UX strategy for long-term success. We achieved this by developing a UX strategy guide and an outreach plan to help Songs of Love attract high-profile musicians and generous donors.
Lessons Learnt
Recruiting: It was difficult to recruit participants that reflect our target audience. This may have impacted our tree test findings. However, we recruited a broader sample for Round 3, who may share more similarities with Songs of Love’s donors.
Labels: Changing the name of a page can have a significant impact. When page titles are concise and descriptive of the page’s content, users are more likely to find what they’re seeking.
A/B Testing: This was a helpful strategy for determining which wording and navigation bar placement would be most efficient for complicated pages.
Considered Changes
Observations: If we had the time and resources to do observations, we could see first-hand how participants navigate the current website.
More questions: We could also ask questions during the observations to understand why someone clicked certain links or buttons.
Sample size: With more time, we would recruit a broader sample of tree test participants. Ideally, our sample would be more representative of donors, families, songwriters, and other Songs of Love website users.