Would Anyone Be Willing To Give Me Feedback On New My Fund-Raising Website?

[Gerhard]

Hi everyone, I have just reached about 95% completion of my new fund-raising website I've been working really hard on - the money will go towards preventing malaria and deworming treatments. If anyone has the time for a quick 1 minute feedback, it would really help me out.

This is my first public request for feedback, so I'm keen on any thoughts you have In particular though, what are your first impressions? Can you easily tell the idea of the website in the first few seconds? How can I make it clearer? Would you hypothetically be eager to use the website, or would you have any objections (objections are really useful to me)?

If you have any display/visual glitches especially, could you let me know on what device/browser

I don't want to explain what the website is about, because well, the idea is that it's self-obvious as soon as landing on the home page.

Here is the link: http://www.idonatebyshopping.com/

Thank you in advance for help. I am nervous about releasing this into the public though- I see so much potential here, but after my first few attempts at website creation weren't very successful, I am apprehensive  

[Rookie]

 

First, some stand out points. 

• The page loaded nice and quickly. 
• You've got an easy-to-use, simple design. 
• There's immediately text sliding across the screen which caught my attention. 
• Everything works and loads smoothly. I wish every website was this quick and responsive.
• Immediate CTA in the header. 
• The accordion elements on the WDTMG page were phenomenal. Very descriptive and captivating. 

 

• The submenu goes through the bottom of my screen. I had to hit the down button a few times to see the rest of the submenu list items/pages.
• The 'List of Stories' menu doesn't appear correctly on Firefox browsers, or at least that was the case when I checked it out. I'll attach a screenshot. 
• At the bottom of the home page, make the heading 'Where does the money go?' clickable. 
• On the WDTMG page, align almost all of your elements to the center. It's mostly aligned to the left and it looks quite clunky on mobile devices. Resize the browser and see for yourself. 

I can see this is a work in progress, so I'd say you've done a great job so far. Keep it up. 

 

[Gerhard]

@Rookie Thank you for your very useful feedback

Quote

On the WDTMG page, align almost all of your elements to the center.

Yes, you're right. I didn't spot this error for some reason, but I need to align things correctly and also correct some widths.

The screenshot was very useful.  Dynamic heading menus are quite hard to get to position and resize smoothly for different window sizes; I wrongly assumed Firefox would render the same as to Chrome, I'll need to put my detective hat on as to why not, and hopefully it's an easy fix. Also, the long list of stores in the drop down menu will get even more clunky when more online stores are added, so I may need to rethink the whole UI for that (I'm thinking of a drop-down search bar in the header if I can brave the coding challenge).

All your points are very useful, so thank you again - and it's good to hear a few positives as well, it makes me feel like I'm on the right track at least as I'm aiming for a very modern/fast/easy-to-use design.

[Toby]

1 hour ago, Gerhard said:

If you have any display/visual glitches especially, could you let me know on what device/browser

Dropdown Menu has errors in Desktop and Mobile.

[Elisabeth]

42 minutes ago, Rookie said:

There's immediately text sliding across the screen which caught my attention.

It's too fast. I tried just a few seconds, but I wasn't able to read and understand the longer phrases before they changed.  I'm not a native speaker, maybe that's why.

On the second look, part of the impression is, there are TWO text boxes changing in rapid succession. To me that already that feels like a whirlwind. Also, the lower one has a lot of text in it, is it really necessary to have that one move?

As a user I don't like the sliding text feature esp. if there is a lot of it, there is nothing more annoying then text moving out of your sight in the middle of reading a sentence. Makes one feel out of control.

Anyway, great work for setting up this website! Especially if that's your idea, and you've also done the negotiations with the stores, that's remarkable.

Edited September 16, 2018 by Elisabeth

[Gerhard]

@Toby I can tell you're not very impressed right off the bat, rightfully so! I should have done a proper cross-browser check. If you have the patience, check back 48 hours, I hope to have all the issues listed here fixed by then.

@Elisabeth Thank you for the feedback, I'll take your input into close consideration. I'm struggling to think of another way apart from sliding text to explain the website right in the header - a list of text isn't very captivating. Maybe a graphic (I'm just thinking on the go here). 

 

I've scrambled to fix a few of these errors, especially the ones on Firefox with the heading. Unfortunately now the header is completely screwed in the Where Does The Money Go section - and I couldn't find the issue yet. Something very strange is happening there. I'll look at it again tomorrow, it's already past my bedtime and I still have my yoga routine to do.

(The solution came to me in my yoga routine - I love how the brain works, a solution just drops down from nowhere, creativity is so inexplicable!  )

Edited September 16, 2018 by Gerhard

[ajasatya]

@Gerhard a source of inspiration: https://www.kiva.org/

those "CLICK HERE TO COPY LINK" buttons are very ugly and don't work on chromium.

[Black Flag]

@Gerhard 

Just my opinion with a couple of points: 

• I found the drop down bar text sizing a bit too large for my liking, I didn't like scrolling down to see the whole list. 
• The blue background of the drop down bar didn't really line up with anything and looked out of place in my opinion. 
• Are the icons that shrink and grow meant to take you somewhere? 
• It was said before but to reinforce, the all of the scrollbars scroll waaaayy too fast. If it were me, I would prefer the quote by Margaret Mead above the introductions to the charities; almost like a title for them. 
  • Instead of scrolling, you could have the introductions as circular info bubbles? When you click on the link for the charity, it could take you to the information about the charity ON YOUR SITE. 
  • Then have a "find out more" (or similar) link at the bottom of the charity's information to redirect you to an alternative webpage. I didn't like being migrated so quickly. 
• The "Where does my money go" page is great and informative. I like that layout/how it works.  Although I did think the divider before "And how do we divide the money we receive" section was the bottom of the page. 

The first question I asked myself though when I got to the site was: How does it work? Couldn't seem to find anywhere saying how you generate the money for these charities. Could perhaps have another link next to the "Where does my money go?" button on the homepage saying: "How does this work?"?

Really like the layout of the list of websites you can use to donate at the bottom although the click here to copy link didn't work... And where is the Amazon link?! The only site I really use for online shopping... 

It would also be nice to have a personal touch seeing as it's to do with charity. Why not an About page? It's always nice to see faces and know how it started! 

Spent about 10 minutes on the site and I was using Chrome on Windows.

Hope this is helpful and it's a great idea!! Keep going and keep us updated!! 

[d0ornokey]

beautiful vision

[Rachityczny]

I like your ideas. And it`s really inspiring to see someone embody their Life Purpose.

• Technically site worked well; no glitches etc.- i was using latest Firefox
• As mentioned above, the charities` scrollbars change too fast
• When you hover over stores links/descriptions, links boxes change a bit; that is a little disturbing, and as we all know, every details counts
• How about you make an "Intro" for your website which would work like this: When you first enter the site, you only see iDonateByShopping logo and Mead`s quote for like 10-15 seconds, and it changes smoothly to normal view? (maybe Intro could be repeated when clicked on a button)

Great job anyway! Keep it up!

[SerpaeTetra]

Can you change it to .org instead of .com?  Maybe I'm naive in thinking, but when I see .com I would be more skeptical if I'm trying to support a good cause.

[Gerhard]

@ajasatya Thank you for the heads up, the the buttons were broken during a coding upgrade - it's fixed now.

@Black Flag Thank you for all your points. The dropdown is now smaller as a few people thought it was too big as well. The swiping and icons description have been removed altogether, it's entirely different now and more concise and modern (hopefully). I did think of a "How does this work" page - but I've pretty much settled on the idea that if I can't convey my idea 100% on the home page, then I need to make my home page better. 99% of people won't bother digging into how it works, it should just be obvious.

@Rachityczny Thank you for your points, especially the 'disturbing' links boxes changing on hover - I didn't pick that up, but it's fixed now. I have made the scrollbars for the charities 20% slower as you and few people though it was too fast, hopefully it's better now (btw though, it does stop swiping when you hover over it).

@SerpaeTetra Thank you for your idea. I'll keep it mind - .org is more 'ugly' though, if that makes sense, it doesn't ring very well. Maybe its just me. Cheers for your feeling though, I'll ask my friends what they reckon too, it's definitely an option.

Thank you to everyone on this thread  Your help is genuinely much appreciated and very helpful. I feel the website is much, much better now after addressing your feedback. It gave me some great inspiration for other improvements as well.

[ajasatya]

@Gerhard

this looks WAY better

[Gerhard]

@ajasatya Good point. My major idea with those buttons are to reinforce to the user that the idea is to copy links (and save it to their bookmark hopefully), hence I would like some "Click here to copy link" text.

Nevertheless, you are definitely right that they were probably the weakest point on the page (and maybe those 2D graphics which still need attention).

I have changed the buttons completely now, thanks to your input - let me know what you think of the new ones if you have the time and are keen. Try to click on the button for a small surprise 

 

PS. Good point about not having Amazon on the site Black Flag - unfortunately the company specifically prohibits and rewarding to shoppers by clicking on your links, including offering to donate on their behalf

[ajasatya]

@Gerhard very cute

but the animation kicks in even if i click on the textbox and not on the button, even though it doesn't feel "right" and the text is not copied to clipboard.

another feedback: find a way to be extremely transparent (example).

[Gerhard]

@ajasatya Thanks for the advice. Yea, I also think transparency is a great idea. Not only to convince people of the organisation's legitimacy, but also to prevent shady stuff happening in the long term future if I'm not around.

Those are good examples. I was planning on doing something similar, but haven't put much time into it yet since I haven't raised $10 yet  But those are great examples I will use as a template, they get it pretty much bang on. Simple and fast to read but informative enough to be purposeful.

[Gerhard]

Ok, so the updates I've been doing have taken a really long time, but I've finally reached a steady-state yet again  I'm still waiting for official registration as a charity here in Australia, but I'm thinking the website is 95% finished again (thinking that before seems so silly from here, let's see if that happens again!)

@ajasatya I took up a lot of your suggestions. The footer is included and I created an About page with some photos - I also added an FAQ page which is hopefully nice.

If anyone is interested in giving feedback v2 that would once again be very appreciated, and I'm sure to deeply take input into account - and I would like to make any improvement I can. Creative ideas and your first impressions are always the bomb

[ajasatya]

@Gerhard congratulations! it looks very clean now (:

[electroBeam]

@Gerhard Hey mate, you will derive heaps and heaps of value by contemplating on this idea: "treat your customers as human beings, rather than just another object helping you get donations".

Engagement of customers is a huge factor in your business model. With engagement, you will get more people using your site, and more donations per person. Through the site, give your customers a more personal feel. Make them feel like they are valued, and that they are meaningful/important. Get them involved in the business and give them a sense of ownership with your business. Include them into your business as if they are apart of your family. 

To give you a concrete example (for the sake of conveying my idea, I'm not telling you to actually implement this), consider the following redesign of your site:

Give them ownership and autonomous control over what they donate to.

- When buying things from the book depository, they get to choose what to donate to. They have the ability to choose a donation that is deeply meaningful to them. For example, just say a person on your site had a family member with a heart attack, they can actually choose to donate to heart attacks rather than just "preventing malaria and deworming treatments". If that isn't possible for now, would be great to have the ability to choose between those 2, or even give them the ability to suggest things to donate to, like a democratic thing where you provide them a list, and you tally up which areas your customer base wants to fund raise to. If you can personalize it even further, like allowing them to choose the country they donate to, etc, even better. The more personal it is, the higher amount of donation money you will get. 

Give your customers real statistics on how their money is making an impact. Make them feel special and important, and really trigger their empathy and compassionate side. Don't just provide this site and not give them feedback, why would they donate to a site like that? Be as transparent and open as possible. 

- for example: show that you care about their involvement and you have a really strong passion with making them involved in the process, not just on the money side but also on the emotional side. Really show you appreciate their help. you could do this by: After they buy an item from one of your stores (like ebay) a very interesting, fun and fascinating interactive page pops up, showing how africa was before your donations, and how it is after. Show them statistics of the lives saved (with emotional pictures of malaria treatments inside the hospital). Keep them updated on your progress.

Make it exciting for your customers to use your site:

- You could give them 'compassion dollars' where every time they buy a product with your sites, they get compassion dollars (like 2 compassion dollars). If they get 20 compassion dollars, they get a free meaningful gift or humanitarian voucher. For example, they get a free teddy bear with an anti-malaria shirt on it. 

Edited October 14, 2018 by electroBeam

[Gerhard]

@electroBeam Hey mate, (fellow Aussie?)

Thank you for you ideas, I will keep them in mind for the future. The only thing I would comment is that although the ideas sound quite simple - they would be really hard to implement for me at this stage. Maybe if/when I have some greater resources I'll have a serious look at how to accomplish some of these ideas

Sorry for the super late reply btw - I was on a long 3-week work trip and then reskinned the whole website - again!