A user experience project.
Goalgiving.com
The brief.
What is Goalgiving and what do they do
Goalgiving.com is a tech-for-good platform that unlocks the power of sport to raise money for charity, bringing fans closer to their teams in the process.
A for-profit organisation, Goalgiving take a 5% fee, however, rationalise the amount of good work enabled by raising £1 million would be justified in them taking £50K to run the business.
The vision is to eventually facilitate the first ever £1 million goal for charity.
Current model relies on developing partnerships with clubs/sports stars and charities in order to indirectly drive users to the platform through the 3rd party’s channels to sign up and donate, lack of club/brand involvement to date means shifting this focus to target the fan rather than rely on brands/clubs & their channels.
What is the problem that GoalGiving.com is trying to solve
Charities need new and regular donors, but it’s becoming harder for charities to generate donations through traditional methods, because:
Consumers are becoming increasingly desensitised to charity pleas in a saturated market that consistently leverages shock tactics to highlight social issues in order to grow donations.
What is the problem we’re trying to solve with this brief
The GoalGiving platform in its current state is functional in its form, but it is neither clear in what it is nor is it appealing to use or share & talk about.
Research phase.
A thorough investigation of the target audience to understand their behaviours and motivations, as well as thoughts & sentiment towards Goalgiving and the broader context of charitable giving and sports. The research design involved a screener to recruit respondents as well as a detailed discussion guide for interviews with the client, cognitive walk throughs, and user interviews. The research phase consisted of the following:
1 x stakeholder interview (client)
4 x cognitive walkthroughs
6 x user interviews
Affinity mapping
Persona development (pictured left)
Brief reframe.
How might we make the process of donating every time your football team wins feel as fun and infectious enough to share with others.
Research insights that led to this reframe:
Currently confusing for first time users to define what Goalgiving is and how it works.
In the early phases focus on one sport to drive engagement and test and learn - football is by far the most popular based on user testing.
People who consistently give to charity anyway won’t be motivated by Goalgiving, it’s a more convoluted way for them to continue their existing behaviour. Changing sports fans behaviour to donate in a way they find enjoyable is key to success.
Incentives are nice for ultra fans but for general people the more powerful motivation is the influence of others and social competition (leveraging the bias of social proof).
Respondents want personalisation, not only in choosing their own team and local charity, but also to be able to track their progress, view statistics, and have ongoing control over their donation amounts (this in itself can be gamified).
Problem Statement
Goalgiving.com needs a way to gamify the donation process, because the target audience are motivated more by social competition than outright incentives.
Hypothesis
We believe that by gamifying the experience for competitive football fans, we will achieve more account sign ups and a more consistent revenue stream of regular donations.
Ideation.
Creation of a league shareable with friends
Build a customisable & personal league option into the sign up process in order to invite friends and colleagues.
Personalised homepage
When logged in, give users some levels of personalisation to show their team, upcoming schedule, their charity, donations so far, etc.
National Leaderboard
Provide platform wide competition and a metric for major prize giveaways, plus give new users a taste of the league based platform
‘My team’ screen
Give users oversight of their goalgiving team, the team they support in real life, up to date statistics, news, and upcoming fixtures
Fixture screen
View a fixture with head to head statistics, enabling the user to make an informed decision about the probability of the outcome and adjust donation amount per ‘win’ and per ‘goal’ accordingly.
Live game commentary
Keep users on the platform even when the whistle blows for kickoff
Relevant content
Attract new users to the platform through contextual content (i.e. football news, transfer rumours, etc) and keep existing users engaged with the platform. Can be owned or aggregated from other sources.
User flows and wireframes.
Three key user flows:
Learn about what Goalgiving is
Clear path for new users landing on the homepage to learn more about the proposition and how the platform works
Sign up flow + create a league
Stepped process to create account, select team, select charity, and create a new league shareable with friends
A weekly donation for an existing user
Logged in user, views league standings, views team & upcoming fixtures, selects an upcoming fixture and adjusts donation amount, watches live game commentary on the platform.
Prototype & user testing.
#1 Learn what Goalgiving is
Success. Users responded positively to quickly understanding what Goalgiving is and how it works from the homepage.
Some minor adjustments to copy length and readability.
#2 Sign up flow & create a league
Success. Users were able to walk through sign up process, particularly liked the status bar at the top.
Users successfully created a league and preempted being able to invite their mates, liked the option to send email invite or a link.
#3 A weekly donation for an existing user
Successful journeys in all tests conducted.
Users appreciated the personalised home screen, slight delay using hamburger menu to navigate (improvement: ‘my league’ + ‘my team’ buttons added to home screen)
Users found their team and understood there was an upcoming fixture, easily recognised they could adjust donation amounts
Slight delay in recognising the live fixture option (improvement: added to logged in home screen),
Very positive about live commentary and success state.
Conclusions
League based Goalgiving campaigns are powerful tools
Deliver against Goalgiving’s promise of being a ‘fun new way’ to give to charity.
Significantly improve the overall site experience for a sports fan.
Foster increased engagement through leveraging social competition to drive higher donations.
Allow for a more consistent stream of donations week on week (and give the users a sense of control over their weekly contributions).
Personalisation can lead to increased engagement
Allow users to select their own team, their own charity, create their own league and then allow them to track their personal progress, view statistics, and have ongoing control over their donation amounts.
Contextual Content
Drive new users to the site and engage existing users through developing sports related content and/or aggregating existing online content specific to a users sport/team/league.
Blogs and articles pertinent to the users team will impact their donation decisions (e.g. opposing teams key player becomes injured)
Keep users engaged with the platform even when the whistle blows with live game commentary and updates on goals, red/yellow cards, and ongoing statistics.