Helping ‘Reforest Sri Lanka’ to increase its donations by 20%.
9 min read
NON-PROFIT ORGANIZATIONS have traditionally used websites because of its reliability in setting up events quickly and accepting donations.
“Rohan is a generous donor who wishes to support Reforest Sri Lanka's mission but finds the current donation process cumbersome and unclear, deterring him from making regular contributions and limiting the organization's funding for critical projects.”
Picture yourself as the founder of a non-profit organization that has been growing exponentially in the recent months.
Unfortunately, your organization is struggling to keep up with new CSR projects, fund new projects and cover operational expenses. Donations are the lifeblood of your organization, and you are using third-party donation platforms to secure donations, sending donors away from your site and eroding their trust.
You are in risk of losing your ability to achieve your mission of 90,000 trees per year, maintain operations and amplify your impact. You are in risk of losing the chance to educate more people about environmental issues, protecting the shores of Sri Lanka, and implementing new forest conservation techniques.
Reforest Sri Lanka’s website landing page is the first page seen by users as they enter the site. However, this page is outdated with missing CTAs, mission statements and poor overall navigation. Our data shows that majority of users spend very little time on this page as we suspect it did little to add value to their experience.
Timeline
3 months
My Role
UX Researcher and Designer
3 team members 2 staff members
Collaboration
Platform
Figma
Sneak peek of Reforest Sri Lanka’s Web Redesign
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Talking to Users
After seeing that we had nearly twice as many visits per month from young professionals (aged 20-35) than older population, we determined that our target user would be young professionals.
In order to understand this persona a bit more, we spoke to young volunteers and professionals already engaged in environmental activities and events that varied in size, frequency and location. By doing this, we could also capture how they were using Reforest Sri Lanka’s website and what value they took from it. We learned that such a volunteer/professional that engaged in volunteer work had varied interests, goals and expectations.
Some of their major pain points came from using a third-party platform to make a donation, leading to reduced trust and credibility within users. Furthermore, the website lacks transparency on what actually happens to your donations, where it is being utilized and how it is managed.
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Main Objectives
Although the website needed improvements in several areas, I decided to focus on things that can improve their funding, especially around donations, transparency and the plant shop.
I determined that our main objective is to increase user sign ups and improve active donations to the organization. A large portion of our users are found to be using mobile to login to their accounts.
I also noticed the current website does not allow volunteers to signup or log in, leading me to question whether they can actually register for events using this site. Upon further investigation it was found that the website only displays past events in a list format and does not publish any future events. Visually, there was also a lack of hierarchy and priority in the way information was presented.
I also looked at other websites of popular environmental organizations to further my research on what a useful website is comprised of. Some takeaways of what made them successful included:
Well-structured navigation
Compelling visual content to illustrate the organization’s achievements and goals
Clear CTAs to make a donation, and communication of the impact of them, showing donors how their contributions make a difference
Clear and easy shopping experience for eco-friendly items and plants
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Starting with Questions…
We created a list of ‘How Might We…’ questions to help us better align our user’s tasks and goals:
How might we motivate users to donate to environmental causes and organizations?
How might we provide an experience that is engaging and valuable to our users?
How might we improve the transparency of donations made to the organization?
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The Redesign Process
Card sorting
I ran a card sorting session that was composed of members from the Reforest Sri Lanka leadership team. I used this technique to determine which functionalities of the website should stay, be relocated or be eliminated based on our website’s information architecture and how much value it was adding on our website.
Internal Feedback
I sent out a survey to a group of young professionals engaged in community and environmental work to quickly inquire what should be added or removed from the website. The purpose of this was to discover potential quick wins on simple improvements that could be executed quickly.
[We need] a clearer and straightforward signup process with social logins. An easier way to make donations, especially recurring. More clarity on our donations i.e. increased transparency and ability to view info on impact. View past and upcoming events at-a-glance. Smoother shopping experience for plants and seeds. - Response from an internal survey
Some of the feedback we got was:
Going to a third-party platform for donations dampens the user experience for users due to inconsistent branding and loss of control.
People living abroad stressed the importance of donating in their own currency.
A big feature request was for better login and signup process with social logins.
A few people requested for a better landing page with more focus towards the work and its impact.
10 out of 15 people agreed ‘Donations’ feature should be improved and streamlined
The MVP
To validate these findings, I designed a simple overview of an internal donation process, landing page with CTAs and visuals, and removed a couple of features discussed in our ‘Card Sorting’ session.
After soft-launching to a smaller set of actual users, we started to see a difference immediately. Our users expressed the usefulness of these additions but more importantly, we saw a decrease in the amount of drop offs on the website.
Iterate, Iterate and Iterate
Based on our all of our findings shown above, we narrowed our focus into 4 areas for potential improvement of the donation process:
Improve visuals
Improve the user flow
Improve trust and transparency
Improve options
I learned that a majority of our users want more details on how their donations can make an impact, and I knew that the best way to do create a better emotional connection with potential donors is to use more visuals. I wanted to include images of the reforestation efforts of Reforest Sri Lanka to inspire empathy and prompt action. This also helps donors feel more connected to the cause and motivated to contribute.
Improve visuals
We decided the make the user flow simpler and condense it to one section and reduce the friction to make a donation.
Improve the user flow
What can Reforest Sri Lanka do after a donation is made? What does the user experience during the donation process?
We thought of a few ways to increase user trust and transparency by including trust badges, impact statements and sending confirmation receipts after a donation is made.
Improve trust and transparency
How can we provide more ways for people to contribute? Are other options available? Can they contribute on a recurring basis?
We decided to provide a subscription-based model to enable people to contribute monthly. In addition, we created an option to plant trees as a gift.
Improve options
Challenges and Compromises
One of the main challenges was to improve the visual hierarchy and emphasis. Condensing the donation flow while still keeping the important information up front and center was difficult. With this challenge, we often had to reiterate our designs in order to be achievable within time and technical constraints, while still providing more value to our users.
In one version, I wanted to include a list of multiple currencies. Instead of creating a scrollable list, I scoped it down to showing a popup with the most popular currencies where our donors are based.
I included the ability to proceed to the next steps within the same page and section, removing the hassle of scrolling and moving between pages.
Showing errors and empty states was not forgotten, and this was implemented by using several recommended affordances.
Monthly payment plans
Next Steps
So what else was left to do? How did we improve donor transparency? Do donors know what happens to their donations?
By tapping into the comprehensive database of Reforest Sri Lanka, we were able to get accurate and up-to-date information about each plant, date planted and location. We made this information available to the donors in a format that is easily comprehensible in the form of an impact dashboard.
Impact dashboard
Further Improvements
The released version of the website has been well received by our users and Reforest Sri Lanka received 5x more donations compared to its previous quarter. Signups increased 10% within the first two months since the new update.
However, there are still improvements that can be made. Browsing for past and future events needs to be streamlined and therefore this view was redesigned. A better login process with social logins was also implemented. The shop page was also redesigned with better product categorization, filtering and visuals.
