Creating user-centred, campaign CTAs
In a recent sprint the User Centred Design team wanted to start looking at: what do users need from a JRF campaign web page? As JRF finds its voice as a campaigning organisation we want to make sure we are giving people the information they need to learn about poverty in the UK and want to solve it.
This is a big topic and one that we don’t know a whole lot about at the moment. Everything was up for grabs and there was lots that excited us — we knew we just had to make a start. We would capture broad strokes, probing some of our riskiest assumptions, and letting the testing show us the direction for future sprints. We were up and running: starting to embody agile and centre the user in JRF’s campaign work.
What we did
We captured our biggest assumptions (and we had lots of assumptions) and then used a method described by Sanjay Poyzer to find and prioritise our riskiest assumptions. We plotted our assumptions on a matrix of how confident we were in them against the impact it would have if they were wrong. Low confidence and high impact = a very risky assumption.
We identified 3 loose themes in the assumptions:
- How campaign material will sit within the rest of the site
- The level of complexity users will tolerate in campaign content
- What actions people will want to take to support a campaign
Assumptions falling into ‘What actions people will want to take to support a campaign’ were generally our riskiest and so this was where we would start testing.
We built a prototype landing page which was to act as a conversation starter with our test subjects. We wanted to prompt discussion around what actions they wanted to take, why they wouldn’t take others, what would give them confidence to act and what actions they felt were missing or unnecessary.
We also asked them to rank a selection of actions by how likely they would be to complete them.
5 features of effective ‘call to action’s
Our testing helped us identify the features of great, low-friction campaign actions that users can complete immediately.
High Impact
The action should feel like it is high impact. We did not look at research on what actions actually have the most impact. But users have their own ideas of what will make a difference. Donating for example, was mentioned several times in our testing.
JRF does not accept donations. What other highly impactful actions can we ask users to take? How can we make the impact of our campaign actions clear to users?
Low effort
Users do not want to spend time thinking about taking action, they also don’t want to commit long stretches of time to completing a process. They just want to get it done.
How can we make our campaign actions easy for users? Can we make actions scalable?
Familiar
Users are more likely to complete actions if they have done them before or are familiar with them. This is partly to do with ease, but also trust and confidence.
Our test subjects often mentioned the Government’s petition website — this was something they felt familiar with, trusted and were happy to use.
How can we use familiar platforms and processes in our campaigns? How can we build trust and confidence with our users?
No long term commitment
If you want users to act quickly, they should not need to make long term commitments. Users do not want the action to intrude on their future lives.
Our test subjects were wary of signing up to newsletters, or joining groups on social media because there would be pressure to interact, they would receive notifications, and might feel overwhelmed by news updates.
How can we make continuing engagement unobtrusive and welcome to users? How can we show respect for our users’ time?
Private or anonymous
There is a risk associated with acting quickly when you do not have all the information. Private or anonymous actions allow users to act quickly without worrying about social repercussions.
Our test subjects didn’t want to retweet or publicly support a campaign because they were worried about virtue signalling and getting involved with conversations they didn’t want to be a part of.
How can we be clearer about what we will share with others? How can we help users feel proud of their action?
Further engagement comes from being informed
The features listed above are for low-friction actions that users feel comfortable taking quickly.
If we want people to take an action that does not have these features, our users need to be well-informed. This means understanding the process as well as understanding the campaign topic. People are more likely to act when they have all the facts.
One of JRF’s goals is that more people know about poverty and want to solve it. Reading the campaign mission was our test subjects’ most likely action to complete. Finding out more about JRF also ranked highly. Providing this sort of information can be a powerful campaign action in itself. It is the first step in turning interested users into advocates.
We want to know more about what information people expect to find on a campaign page. We want to know what motivates people to learn about JRF and about UK poverty and we want to know how to present this information in a useful way. These questions are going to form the basis of our next sprint.
