Category Archives: digital

what should your bounce rate be?

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I’ve been pondering bounce rate. Bounce rate is when someone visits your site but then quickly exits without clicking into any other page. It’s natural to aim for the lowest bounce rate possible. Low bounce rate generally means a more engaged audience.

At the British Heart Foundation our bounce rate is currently around 40%. But this has been playing on my mind since a committee member from a well known commercial brand said they thought it was high. What should charities be aiming for? and is it really a bad thing to have a higher bounce rate? why might commercial and charity sectors differ?

According to my quick twitter poll 40% is similar to other charities, one person even said for their health professional information bounce rate is more like 100%. Taking a quick sweep of the internet – advice seems to be that 40% – 65% is an acceptable average range.

But having a high bounce rate can’t always be a bad thing. There are some cases when you probably want people to leave your website right away – say when you have some sort of affinity deal with a corporate partner, or if you’re signposting to another charity who offers services you don’t, or serve an audience you don’t support.

So why would commercial and charity sectors differ (if they do)? Well perhaps people who go to commercial brands are generally looking to build their trust in the brand a little bit more than they might be on a charity site. Or maybe commercial sites are not designed to meet people’s goals quite so well / quickly.

I’d be really interested to hear other people’s thoughts and any additional bounce rate benchmarks anyone is willing to share.

One thing’s for sure – if you’re not monitoring your bounce rate, you should be!

trends in digital charity teams

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In the last day or so I’ve finally published my digital charity job archive page. I’ve only gone back as far as 2008 but I’ve been an avid watcher of the charity job market ever since I started in the sector. It’s a useful indicator of charity digital team structures and roles.

Looking back over the almost four years worth of salaries and job adverts a few things stood out to me:

  • Salary rates haven’t changed that dramatically – surprising given that anyone who works in digital knows that there is probably more to your job now than a few years ago.
  • Charities have more digital content related roles than other types – most charities outsource a lot of their digital marketing, production or development. I personally can see this changing as digital skills become more native with each generation, and tools become more intuitive too.
  • Social Media and Community roles are starting to appear across more charities. I believe you need an internal champion to help spread adoption and integration across an organisation – and so you need someone with the time to do this work either a dedicated post or otherwise.
  • There is an absence of analytics and insight related roles. We’ve got a dedicated post in the British Heart Foundation Digital team, as well as broader roles in other teams – an Insight Manager, Evaluation Manager and Knowledge Manager. My guess is that analytics and insight is part of the remit of some other digital roles and / or other teams. But on the surface I can only assume some charities are underinvesting in this – I’m hoping to be proved wrong!

Be really interested to hear your observations, additions or thoughts…

building the business case for digital in your charity

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I’ve pulled together stats for a presentation on why investing in digital, and in particular the new trend for mobile, is important. There’s lots of information out there if you’re prepared to do some digging. But I thought I’d share some of my own research to potentially save you the effort. Feel free to take anything useful.

Mobile

  • Vodafone say 70% of new customers signing up in the UK demand a smart phone compared with just four in 10 in Europe. [http://bit.ly/fHLCjL]
  • Mobile commerce experienced an 8% growth this Christmas [http://bit.ly/e2rA97]
  • In April 2010, 19% of UK consumers were already participating in mobile commerce [http://bit.ly/h9GLjE]
  • Mobile commerce rises to 29% when you look just at the 18- to 34-year-old market [http://bit.ly/h9GLjE]

Social media

  • This is still a rapidly growing area, with over half of the UK population being on Facebook [http://bit.ly/elAq4L].
  • Social commerce is a particular trend which is on the up – Amazon and other only retailers are taking their checkouts to Facebook. (couldn’t find a link for this one)

Increasing cost efficiencies while building scalability

  • Online fundraising raises around £10 for every £1 spent on direct costs and the average donation is double that given offline (£30 compared to £15).  [http://bit.ly/gJ7CAP]
  • When targeted, the average online donation is £54. [http://bit.ly/gJ7CAP]

Charity examples

  • Oxfam Created a YouTube video after the Haitian Earthquake, a media spoke person simply talking to camera, explaining what the situation was and asking for donations. It was picked up by YouTube’s homepage where it got nearly 700,000 views, and generated £30,000. [March 2011 http://bit.ly/gTIgRR]
  • Save the Children Created an SMS petition in 2009 and won an NMA award – as well as building awareness it reportedly boost donations at a low-cost per acquisition (just pence per SMS) [http://bit.ly/fh56bM ]
  • Disasters Emergency Committee For the Haiti Earthquake Appeal they encouraged people to text donations to a special short number. Despite being promoted almost exclusively on Twitter more than £161,000 was raised [http://bit.ly/gJ7CAP]
  • Depaul UK Had the most high-profile charity mobile app to date, more than 400,000 downloads May – July 2010. The free interactive game offers users the chance to make decisions on behalf of a young man facing homelessness. “We didn’t spend a penny on marketing,” iHobo has also raised £7,000 in small donations from 3,100 people [http://bit.ly/9KuHOT]
  • British Heart Foundation The 50th anniversary year we launched a cross-channel campaign to build brand relationships and long-term prospects. As a result of Facebook Adverts and the natural ripple effect we recruited over 32,000 new Facebook fans within February. These individuals were acquired at a cost of 25p each and will be developed through the ongoing social media activity.
  • Zynga (social gaming production company) Not really a charity – instead a charity appeal. Farmville with its 20 million users a day raised $3m for Haiti from by donating 50% of the cost of special virtual Sweet Seeds, bought by players for their virtual farms. An initial promotion generated a donation of more than $575,000. This was repeated three times to raise the total. [http://bit.ly/gJ7CAP]

Please leave a comment with any more fantastic results and stats I should be including!

how the digital advertising standards affect charities

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Its been a little while since the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) broadened their remit to include digital. In preparation for the launch I pulled together some quick notes that I thought others might be interested in. So here they are.

In summary – if you’re following best practice already, particularly the Fundraising Standards Board, you’re likely to already be doing all the right things. But it’s definitely worth double checking!

 

What’s covered? (extract from ASA’s website)
“Advertisements and other marketing communications by or from companies, organisations or sole traders on their own websites, or in other non-paid-for space online under their control, that are directly connected with the supply or transfer of goods, services, opportunities and gifts, or which consist of direct solicitations of donations as part of their own fund-raising activities.”

“There are three important aspects of the scope:

  1. It applies to marketing communications ‘directly connected with the supply or transfer of goods, services’ etc: this phrase conveys the primary intent of marketing communications coming within the extended digital remit: to sell something. It is understood that a marketing communication may set out to sell something in a myriad of different ways. It need not necessarily include a price or seek overtly an immediate or short-term financial transaction or include or otherwise refer to a transactional facility.
  2. The promotion of causes or ideas: The scope doesn’t cover marketing communications promoting causes or ideas but does explicitly apply to marketing communications which consist of direct solicitations of donations as part of fund-raising activities. This takes into account of the potential for consumer detriment, especially financial loss, arising from these marketing communications.
  3. ‘non-paid-for space online under [the advertiser’s] control’: this phrase covers, although not exclusively, advertisements and other marketing communications on advertiser-controlled pages on social networking websites. Social networking websites have a significant consumer reach, are popular with children and young people and play an increasing role in public policy debates.”

Complaints to ASA generally relate to: Misleading Price claims, Availability claims, Delivery claims etc, Offensiveness, an Harm.

    Relevant exclusions

    • Press releases and other public relations material
    • Editorial content
    • Political advertisements
    • Corporate reports
    • Natural listings on a search engine or a price comparison site
    • Claims in marketing communications in media addressed only to medical, dental, veterinary or allied practitioners, that relate to those practitioners expertise
    • ‘The Code is primarily concerned with the content of marketing communications and not with… products themselves’
    • ‘Heritage advertising’ where its not part of your current promotional strategy and is placed in appropriate context.

    User generated content including customer reviews is outside of remit unless incorporated in marketing message/s or strategy eg user contributed photos of people enjoying your product displayed under a ‘marketing headline’. Planting of marketing related comments incognito is illegal

    Impact for charities

    • Not the whole of a charity’s website is in remit – just those places which are geared to getting donations or selling a service or product.
    • Campaigning material online is not covered where it’s not immediately linked to a donation. Although obviously if then published offline as advertising it is within remit as all offline advertising is.
    • PR material which is seen to be selling directly to consumers is likely to be covered – although PR is otherwise outside of the remit.

    Key considerations?

    • Claims need to be true and accompanied by all information necessary for the consumer to make an informed decision.
    • Must not omit material which is needed for the consumer to make an informed decision. Eg any criteria required for refunds to be possible, qualifications and limitations need to be stated,
    • Must hold evidence for any claims you wish to make, particularly those which consumers may want proof of.

    What can you do to be prepared?

    • Get training: ASA is offering training on 29 September 2011 ‘Advice:am – Digital advertising’ £170
    • Get an audit: ASA – a standard audit costs £800 + VAT and takes up to 10 working days to complete.
    • Get advice on individual bits: Advertisers seeking advice on individual marketing communications on their website may continue to use CAP’s free Copy Advice service.

    what does HTML5 mean?

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    I watched an excellent video of Bruce Lawson from Opera (the web browser) speaking about the history and potential uses of HTML5. I’ve already been thinking about HTML5 but so far we’ve steered clear because it’s not yet formally complete. They’ve now announced they expect it to be finalised by 2014 – so what does that mean?

    Here’s a few bits that stood out for me from the video:

    • more universal video access (jump to around 50 mins into the clip)
    • easy inbuilt standard controls for forms – no more hacks for sliders or other form controls
    • true semantic web – separation of presentation and content
    • there is backwards compatibility to previous html standards so if your site is ‘brochureware’ – words, pics and simple forms – then there may be no need to change for a long time.

    web managers meet up: Comic Relief digital production

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    I attended a Web Managers meet up recently (here’s the web managers linkedIn group). One of the speakers was Rae (@raepizer) who is Digital Production Manager at Comic Relief. She gave a quick run through how they work and some of the lovely stuff they’ve produced for this year’s Red Nose Day.

    Rae’s talk was great and of one the things that stood out to me was the daily stats meeting across the teams. I’m definitely going to try to get this started for our peak campaign times at work.

    Here’s my notes for anyone interested:

    Digital staffing:

    • Digital Production Manager with a permanent team of around 12 front end digital staff including a Senior designer and Senior developer
    • Within the team they have a tech standards person who sets standards and guidelines and oversees them – they work with the separate broadcast team to get the right video format and convert etc
    • On top of these they can have up to 20 digital contractors at once
    • They work closely with other key separate teams; Back end and CRM, Donations and hosting platform, Marketing, and Broadcast team. (I think I lost some of the detail here so happy to take additions!)

    How they operate:

    • During the campaign period they have daily stats meetings across the organisation to inform how they optimise and help them be reactive
    • They have a kids steering group for all the kids related areas
    • Audience segment breakdowns are based on TV programmes eg hollyoakers
    • This year they’re going to focus on facebook, twitter and YouTube – last year they did more but it wasn’t a good use of time vs effectiveness
    • Usability testing is done each year for each new site- they do one new design per year to keep up with drupal updates and build on learning from previous year
    • For their mobile site the design was done in-house but the build outsourced.

    Their ‘products’:

    • Start in May for September school site launch – they also did a CD-Rom this year as research showed school technology was behind the times and this format was best for them
    • January is when they do the big new site launch -most years approximately 2 week before the official campaign launch
    • They generally put up four new website news articles a day
    • On the Red Nose Day site the most popular sections are the Shop then the Kids area
    • At its peak the donation pack form takes more donations per second than amazon.

    great digital expectations – and tips on how to manage them

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    Digital is easy. Isn’t it?

    Thankfully there are lots of user friendly tools and websites out there these days. Of course they have their limits as to how flexible and extendable they are. Fortunately you don’t tend to hit the limits very often when you use these tools and websites in your personal life.

    This creates an interesting challenge to those of us who have to manage expectations of how quick and easy it is to deliver digital activity in the workplace. I find myself having to manage unrealistic expectations which are founded from personal use of the web. Naturally there is also the opposite ‘technophobe’ end of the spectrum but this post isn’t about that – perhaps I’ll write about that another day.

    Managing expectations is a tricky balancing act – you definitely want the enthusiasm not to be damaged while the realism comes to the fore. Here are a few of my personal tactics and tips for different situations:

    • Explain the gap between the vision and the reality
      • group requirements into lists of essential, desirable and nice to have and show which are met by the suggested approach (ideally also show this for a better alternative/s)
      • communicate the effort needed and be transparent about the choices –  where possible ask them to be a partner in choosing what is sacrificed or prioritised in resource allocation and/or requirements
    • Show the reality of the approach
      • do a walk through to show if something is limited or time consuming – show an alternative too
      • create a prototype which is as close as you can get to the requirements with the approach and an alternative – the gap should then be in plain sight
      • find examples of others already doing it and ask them for their experience. Where possible – visually point out the flaws / customisations / effort
    • Do a little bit of what’s being asked
      • where risk is low deliver a small part but quickly – proving one way or another whether its worth investing more
      • when you think it’s possibly very expensive or time consuming but this isn’t changing views – get a quote from an agency – it’ll either be acceptable or support your hesitation

    ways of working with your IT team (and avoiding conflict)

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    There’s always at least a little bit of tension between IT and digital comms teams. They both strive for the greater good but generally have a different view of what that means. The IT team care about security, stability and sustainability. And I’m very pleased they do as a flaky network and lack of email can kill a digital strategy before its started!

    A digital comms team thrives on agile, agnostic, use of new technology – having a quick turn around that takes advantage of the current wave of interest. Unfortunately this doesn’t always go down that well with the steady and sturdy IT folk. However I wouldn’t advocate uprooting and going alone.

    I’ve worked in a number of models – digital tech completely outsourced, digital development outsourced and hosting in house, and currently a mix of digital tech inhouse and outsourced across the piece. So far the last model has been the most effective event though it’s resulted in more tension and complexity at times.

    Why do I think this?

    • The tech side can be a time consuming distraction.
      You can delegate the maintenance stuff and get on with the new bits. If you’re in digital comms your priority should be the user experience and the comms itself – not fixing a compatibility issue that arises when a new browser is released.
    • Being too close to the tech can mean you don’t challenge it.
      It’s a lot easier to push for the next piece of functionality when your head isn’t completely buried in all the intricacies and complexities of the technology.
    • Managing integration to back office systems isn’t digital.
      When your website talks to your back office systems its very easy to get drawn into working on the integration and development of those systems. This just isn’t a good use of your time nor skills. It is a good use of IT skills – its one of the things they’re employed for.
    • Having a different perspective is healthy.
      ‘IT brains’ are often different to ‘comms brains’, together (either across individuals or within the same person) you end up with the right questions, checks and balances that result in a better more future proof result.

    Unfortunately there isn’t a trick to making the model work comfortably. A two way balance of trust, defining boundaries, respecting skills, and spending time to build the partnership are all key to ensuring you get the best out of any joint working.

    should charities innovate in digital?

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    In digital there is always a new trend that’s causing buzz, at the moment its Quora. It’s easy to get excited by the potential of many of these new trends but when you work in charity its hard to justify investment when something is new and still relatively unproven.

    For a long time I thought charities had the most constraints. However people I’ve spoken in other sectors have said they think it’s even harder to break away from the norms of their comms routines and channels.

    I once spoke at an event for pharma comms professionals and was astounded that some of the things I saw as standard digital practice were seen as groundbreaking in the pharma industry. The sector is just so heavily regulated and very fearful of being taken to court.

    yoobot case studyIn a conversation with someone from a mainstream publisher they told me how they had a specific team for innovation and if you wanted to do something different you had to pass the concept to that team first. This meant the everyday small bits of innovation ended up taking much longer to come to fruition (if they did at all).

    I’m fortunate to have been involved in some great projects which have innovated in the third sector digital space. I’m personally thrilled that our British Heart Foundation yoobot.co.uk site has even been featured in a best of the web case study book (The Internet Case Study Book).

    I can’t imagine being in an environment where you literally just operate. But I think it’s important to recognise that innovation comes in all shapes and sizes. I also think that charities are the perfect breeding ground for digital comms innovation. Here’s why:

    • the bottom line is not the only objective – with diverse objectives comes diverse thinking!
    • it’s not just a day job – less top down, more bottom up.
    • we often have hard to reach audiences or complex messages – the traditional approaches just don’t often make the grade.
    • staff resources are scarce – you have to ‘muck in’ and try different things because there aren’t enough people.
    • we’re used to working with little or no money – when there’s no/little money involved the impact of failing is reduced meaning you’re more likely to try something new.
    • charity comms can look home made and be accepted – supporters generally accept a bit of roughness round the edges from charity digital comms (but perhaps only a little!).

    Of course at the end of the day there are barriers to innovation no matter what sector you’re in. But I think the key things are to recognise that innovation can start small, and that being afraid to fail means you probably won’t innovate.

    catalysing behaviour change – growing up connected

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    I once met someone who experienced a massive surge in internet popularity at a young age, approx 13. That’s where I’ll leave the detail- it’s a fascinating story but not mine to tell. What I can say is some of the observations I made about the impact of this internet popularity at an early age.

    • They expressed loneliness when they had no responses to their internet activity.
    • Friends meant something different, they included people they had regular online dialogue with but will probably never meet.
    • They ‘forced’ an introduction virtually before a face to face meeting (even though to some peers this was considered to be cyber-stalking).

    These are traits that we’re now seeing in digital natives, those people who have never known a world without the web. The internet fame this person experienced appears to have catalysed this behaviour development so that the person, although not from the digital native generation, had these traits.

    So now I’m pondering is there is a way to identify catalysts that could take us to the next stage of media related behaviour? and are they already happening out there?

    …. perhaps I need to read some behavioural psychology books.