Design Matters: Finding Fault With Our Stars

Not long ago on Airbnb, when you spotted a nice place and wanted to remember it, you clicked a star. Now, you click a heart. We recently found out why.

On most consumer-facing websites, people want to be able to express interest in something without immediately having to take out their credit card. You’ll see this option represented as “save for later,” “add to wish list,” or simply “favorite.”

At DonorsChoose.org, that means flagging a classroom project that catches your eye; identifying a teacher whose requests you’d like to follow; or saving a keyword search that captures your passion, such as “autism” or “art.” We use your preferences to alert you to classroom projects we think you’ll like. Last year alone, our recommendation emails generated $3 million for public school classrooms.

For years on DonorsChoose.org, you would indicate a favorite by clicking on a star icon next to the project, teacher, or keyword search. Then we decided to test what would happen if we replaced the star with another schoolhouse icon: a heart.

We randomly assigned 120,000 visitors to see hearts instead of stars. The difference in user response confounded us. Hearts delivered a 135% increase in the number of projects favorited, and an 83% increase in the number of teachers and keywords favorited. We also noticed a slight uptick in overall conversion rate when users were presented with the “hearts” version of our site.

But those were the results for people visiting DonorsChoose.org via desktop browser. For people accessing our site via a mobile phone, hearts proved no more effective than stars. We’d love to hear your theories as to why!

What small design changes have had big business implications for you?