Fundraising 2011/Test Updates/October/14

Wikimedia Staff Test October 14, 2011

Up until now, we had only tested appeals from individuals and had never tested an appeal from a group. The fundraising team asked the Wikimedia Foundation staff to draft up some ideas for an appeal from the staff. Quite a few people wrote a couple ideas and we tested a few versions. We found that the best version started with a line comparing us to the other top five websites.

Several donors also sited this comparison as a reason for donating. One donor wrote in, “I loved that you mentioned the server and people count, I had no idea it was that low.” Another donor wrote, “Compared to the other few giant websites, Wikipedia consists of very few people and servers (which is economical) yet provides equally huge quantity of services.”

We also tested two versions of the banner text:

Please read: An appeal from the Wikimedia staff
Please read: An appeal from our staff

Turns out the "our staff" banner had a higher click and donation rate. There are still plenty of variations to test with the staff banner and appeal but it looks like we may have a new effective way to appeal to donors as a group. It doesn't look like we're reaching "Jimmy level" of donations quite yet but there are still a few areas we can improve.

Next steps

We also really want to test a group appeal from the Wikimedia community. A couple people have started so far but we could still use some ideas. Please share a few thoughts and help us out.

Thanks Mhernandez 01:53, 27 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Landing Page Test Results
title	impressions	views	donations	amount	amount50	click_rate	don_per_imp	amt50_per_imp	amt_per_imp	don_per_view	amt_per_view	amt50_per_view	avg_donation	avg_donation50
Wikimedia Staff	864081	10326	106	1976.85	1638.77	0.01195027	0.000123	0.002287805	0.001896546	0.0103	0.191444	0.158703	18.649528	15.460094
Our Staff	865763	10772	132	3293.01	2632.41	0.0124422	0.000152	0.003803591	0.003040565	0.0123	0.305701	0.244375	24.947045	19.9425