Event Pages
How might we enable our user base to build standalone web pages to support their fundraising events and campaigns?
Overview
Mobilecause is a SASS product built exclusively to support nonprofits. The Mobilecause platform provides online giving and text-to-donate, event fundraising, peer-to-peer campaigns, engagement, mobile messaging, reporting, and analytics.
The Challenge
In Q4 of 2019, my product manager and I made it a point to engage every NPO that opted not to renew its contract. The overwhelming majority of NPO’s that choose not to renew, mentioned the lack of microsites as part of our core services. NPO’s needed the ability to build minimalist, modern, and engaging microsites to support their fundraising efforts. This case study presents how we utilized research, human-centered design, and analytics to do just that.
Role and Team
My Role
I was responsible for the entire end-to-end design and process which includes; product strategy, research, usability testing, architecture, wireframing, visual design, prototyping, and QA.
My Crew
1 Product Manager, 6 Engineers.
Think
Research + Strategy
As the Product Design Lead for the Event Page feature, my initial efforts included:
Familiarizing myself with the existing products in our competitive space.
Conducting user interviews to ascertain features and functionality the would resonate most with our clients.
Establishing feedback and usability testing sessions with our users to fully understand their frustrations with the features, their workflows, and their motivations.
Make product and engineering part of the research process by inviting them to participate in feedback and usability testing sessions with the ultimate goal of spreading team-wide learning from the users.
Reinforce how valuable user input is to product and engineering teams by regularly sharing synthesis and insight from the research sessions.
Strategize with stakeholders on how to address our users’ pain points and how to prioritize those efforts on the product’s roadmap.
User Interviews
The first thing I did to kickoff of this project was to engage product success team to develop a list of existing clients that had asked for this feature. The goal was to discover what kind of problems they were attempting to solve through building a microsite.
Journey Mapping
User interviews had given us a better sense of how to best support our users. Moreover, our personas were up-to-date. The next logical step was to begin journey mapping to help us step into the user’s shoes and create a shared vision.
Competitive Analysis
Mailchimp
Analyzing existing software always gives me a strong sense of common design patterns. Mailchimp is a great example of a website builder not directly in our product space that served as inspiration. For instance, I appreciated that Mailchimp didn’t rely heavily on pop-up modals. This is important as pop-ups can distract and impede the user.
Wix
Wix had some interesting social aspects to it. The ability to like images in a gallery could resonate with an audience. I also liked the ability to batch upload images when building galleries.
Classy
I learned the most from Classy, as many NPOs consider them the gold standard in terms of design. It was hard to get a good look at their product as it lives behind a paywall. However, their help documentation provided a few screens I could use to build the basic anatomy of their page.
Hero Image
About Section
Progress Circle
Map
Leaderboard
Sponsors
Footer
Make
Design & Build
At this point, we had sourced opportunities from our stakeholders, competitors, colleagues, and most importantly users. These efforts allowed us to develop a plan of action along with a set of goals for the initial launch of the event page builder. We were ready to start ideating and iterating!
User Flows
Event Page Builder Diagram
Sketches
Iterate, Iterate, Iterate
Getting Warmer
Where We Landed
…and here is what the final design looks like in platform.
Qualitative Feedback
“MobileCause has been a total game-changer for the way in which our organization fund raises. With less than 4-weeks lead time before our event, we had the support we needed to not only reach our goal but surpass it by over 130% from the previous year. This platform will transform the way you do fundraising events.”
– Teach for America
Now What?
In order to continually improve and evolve the Event Page Builder, we planned on adding a crowdfunding component to the Event Page. At least that was the plan before Covid-19 flipped the world upside down. The next addition to the Event Page would allow our users to incorporate live streams so that our users could host virtual events.
More Case Studies
