[Foundation-l] Donation Button Enhancement : Part 2

[Liam Wyatt]

On Tue, Jul 21, 2009 at 11:02 AM, Andrew Gray <andrew.gray at dunelm.org.uk>wrote:

> 2009/7/21 Robert Rohde <rarohde at gmail.com>:
>
> > Testing should be done in parallel, not in sequence.  History has
> > demonstrated that donors have a tendency to respond disproportionately
> > to "the new thing".  Which means that whatever button you test first
> > will have an advantage over whichever one you test last.  Probably the
> > easiest way to get a reasonable distribution is to vary which button
> > people see based on their IP.
>
> Or simply to randomise it entirely.
>
> If either of those aren't possible for technical reasons, it might be
> practical to rotate them - run each button for x many hours at a
> stretch, rotating them so as to ensure they don't regularly go up at
> the same time (of the day or of the week) and so that they get roughly
> equal coverage.
>

Rotating them would seem like a more viable solution than randomised - We
don't want the situation where every new page in WP someone reads there is a
new/different coloured donation button where last week there was none at all
- to go from nothing to that would be almost as bad as a flashing "donate
here, now!" banner. I suspect that if there are any complaints about this
new button system they will be about whether it makes us look like we're
giving the 'hard sell' to people. Finding the middle ground between making
the donation button clear/prominent and making it subtle/non-distracting
will be difficult but also very important. We want people to know that we
depend on donations but we don't want them to be annoyed by being constantly
distracted by a big colourful push for their wallet (especially if it keeps
changing).

It's a tricky line to tread - but I'm sure we can do it!

-Liam [[witty lama]]

wittylama.com/blog
Peace, love & metadata
Sent from Sydney, Nsw, Australia


>
> --
> - Andrew Gray
>  andrew.gray at dunelm.org.uk
>
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