UI flow feedback

[philipn]

The current gittip UI doesn't seem optimized for donations. Has any A/B testing been done?

I have some friends who are using gittip to do recurring fundraising for their hackerspace, and some of their potential donors aren't technical folks. I've also had gittip suggested as a recurring donation platform for other projects where the donor base isn't likely to be technical, so an optimized giving UI flow is super important. Otherwise, it's likely something home-rolled will have better donation conversion. This may not be in the scope of gittip, so feel free to ignore / close / etc this!

E.g., one reason people use Kickstarter is because it's well designed and optimized to get backers. I hadn't used gittip before, but here's my thoughts as I looked at making a donation earlier:

• Land on a profile: https://www.gittip.com/shanley/
• Biggest text is how much they get rather than the gift. Doesn't look like a donation page.
• Select "$2" (which is tiny)
• Confirm button is somehow gray. I'm not sure why it's gray, because all of the other action buttons are green.
• I click confirm, and confirm doesn't even work. It just says "Tip now changed to $2!" But I already selected $2.
• At this point, most people would just give up.
• So next, I am guessing I now need to sign in to make the donation. This isn't clear to me.
• Click "sign in"
• Clicking doesn't work, it's an on-hover mouseover menu. I understand, but some people would be confused here because click doesn't engage the pull-down menu. Clicking should keep the menu stuck open.
• I select twitter.
• I enter my twitter credentials or authorize the app. This is weird because I may not have a twitter or github account.
• I am now logged in, and I'm now back on the page.
• ..except, the amount I selected isn't even there anymore. See screenshot.
• It's not clear I'm logged in. My username is a hash in the upper right hand corner rather than my twitter name or profile picture.
• I re-select the gift amount of "$2"
• The confirm button still doesn't work, but now I see "Back your gift with a [link]Credit card to make sure it goes through!"
• Oh wait, did the confirm button work?
• I click on the link to credit card, which should probably be a modal or something more obvious.
• Credit card page appears. The page is asking for not just my CC # but also my name, address, etc. The best practice for conversions is usually to get them to enter their CC # as quickly as possible and then ask for more information.

[chadwhitacre]

Thanks for the thorough report, @philipn, and sorry for the sub-par experience. One ticket where we've started working on a better donation flow is #1167, but that effort has stalled out. I've added a +1 for you there.

A few specifics:

Clicking doesn't work, it's an on-hover mouseover menu. I understand, but some people would be confused here because click doesn't engage the pull-down menu. Clicking should keep the menu stuck open.

I've added a +1 to #1289 for you.

This is weird because I may not have a twitter or github account.

I've added a +1 to #1052 for you.

My username is a hash in the upper right hand corner rather than my twitter name or profile picture.

As a parenthesis, the explanation for this is that you signed up a year ago using GitHub, so you already have an account with that username: https://www.gittip.com/philipn/. When you signed in with Twitter today that created a second Gittip account. You can combine the two by signing out of Gittip, then signing in with GitHub, then clicking "Connect Twitter" from your Gittip profile page.

... which should probably be a modal or something more obvious.

I think you have something along the lines of #1167 in mind here?

The page is asking for not just my CC # but also my name, address, etc. The best practice for conversions is usually to get them to enter their CC # as quickly as possible and then ask for more information.

Good call. I've noted this on #1167.

If you want to see what people are currently working on, you can see our kanban board here:

https://huboard.com/gittip/www.gittip.com/beta

If you want to get involved to help work on these issues, you can find some pointers here:

https://www.gittip.com/for/contributors/

Or just ask. :-)

I'm reading this as mostly a dupe of #1167, with an awesome explanation of why we currently suck. :-)

Anything else we should reticket out of this or follow up on here?

[philipn]

Great, thanks so much! Closing this issue out.

[chadwhitacre]

Sweet, thanks for the feedback! :-)