Usability of site and online marketing of World Wide Fund of Nature

WNF [World Wide Fund for Nature in the Netherlands] launched its new site www.wnf.nl towards the end of 2007. WNF is in the permanent process of improving its website and attracting more visitors. In this article we describe what methods WNF used to achieve this and to what adaptations this has led. Please think along with us: what important chances has WNF still let go unused? This article is a translation of the Dutch version.

World Wide Fund for Nature aims to protect the diversity of plant and animal species on our planet. The bigger WNF is, the more it can do, also in terms of influencing businesses, organisations and authorities. With almost 1 million donors in the Netherlands, WNF Netherlands can take a firm line, also on concrete matters like having sustainably FSC forested timber in the shops and sustainably caught MSC on the table.

The major aims of the WNF website are:

• Visibility/traffic: attracting and binding visitors
• Conversion: online registration of donors (donors, “rangers”, “bamboo kids’, WNF Lifeguards) and gifts.

This article lists a number of techniques used by WNF to have the best possible site and to push the traffic and the conversion to an ever higher level.

1. Identifying the user needs
2. User test concepts for the new site
3. Usability advice
4. Experiences and user counts after the launch
5. User count Google Analytics
6. Online marketing with specific targets (KPI’s)
7. A/B tests
8. Search engine optimisation (SEO)
9. Google Ads rants (Free Google Ads)
10. Social networks
11. Your ideas?

1. Identifying the user needs

WNF has been investigating for years what it is that people try to find on its site. The search words entered in the search machine are investigated and the most important reasons for visiting the site are listed via online surveys.

Initially, wnf.nl gave information mainly about its own activities and about the animals that the organisation tries to protect, such as the tiger, the panda and the polar bear. It appeared both from words entered in the search engines and from online surveys that visitors were looking for information about a variety of animalsallerle.

In 2003, it was decided to use information about animals as traffic generator: The new ‘Animals Library [‘Dierenbieb’] had to be the best animal site of the Netherlands. The Animal Library is currently a separate heading where information can be found about over 1,000 animals. This keeps the visitors searching for animals better on the site and yields extra visits via Google. When searching for information about animals, the attention of the visitors can be drawn to the work that WNF does, which ultimately may yield donors.

Towards the end of 2006, before building the new site, WNF conducted an extensive on-line survey. Information about animals was still on top of the list. Also, notably: registering as a donor, changing personal data and information about nature conservation projects, were high on the list.

Registering as a donor: When building the new site we paid much attention to the place and the button ‘How can I help. Later on, the button ‘Make a donation now’ was added to each page.

Changing personal data: The site now has a ‘My WNF’ section where donors can change their personal details, including their address. This facility is used very often (some 900 times a month on average).verandering van gemiddeld

Nature protection projects: The part ‘What WNF does’ is opened up by a Google Maps map and new search panes. WNF is currently working on improving the accessibility, among other things by a better layout.

Permanent users investigation

WNF permanently conducts users investigation with the Surveymonkey.nl tool. The contact page has a link to an online survey “Join in to help improve the site!”. More than 1,000 people completed the survey in the period 2007-2008]. For example, in November 2008, 10% was searching for information for a school talk, and the same percentage for contact information.

2. Users test concepts of the new site

The new site was built in the course of 2007. Since the interest in animals was so great, WNF wanted to show many pretty pictures of animals on the site. This sometimes resulted in large images of animals but also pushed further information nearly from the page. The home page and the portals of the headings have a large block with the image of an animal plus an updated text and a number of links. Please see the home page above and the portal of the heading ‘What WNF does’ below.

The draft website was tested by 6 testees selected from the direct environment of WNF staff (these testees did not know the WNF organisation from within). They had to carry out various assignments and think aloud. WNF staff watched the process and this resulted in important perspectives:

• They did not find it unpleasant that many pages had the button ‘How can I help’ (WNF staff had doubts about this: how far can you go?).
• This button was noticed well, but not everyone noticed that you could click on the buttonverwachtte. (Only after launching the site it registered with us that this button was not seen as clickable.)
• People liked the large block, but did not always use it as a navigation tool.
• It proved that specific information about campaigns and projects was difficult to find. The testee visitors were trying to find this information in very different ways, such as via the Animals Library. Moreover, the sub-button ‘fields of activity’ (i.e. the various fieldse in which project activities are classified by WNF) was not very clear. On the one hand, a better division and clearer buttons were necessary. On the other, we had to realise that search behaviour is very diverse. The information about ‘What WNF does’ had to be accessible also via the Animals Library.

3. Usability advice

Ben Vroom has given usability advice to WNF for many years. In this context we would like to refer to the article Usability bij het Wereld Natuur Fonds. He also made comments on the draft pages and scrutinized the site before being launched. It showed that there were flaws in the design with the result that the launch of the site was delayed for a couple of weeks to remedy the detected flaws.

Though it was not so evident from the test, Mr Vroom thought that the content of the pages was shoved too much aside by the large animal pictures and the large blocks on the portals of the headings, and the search possibilities within the various headings was pushed too much to the bottom of the screen (see image 3 above).

4. Experiences and user numbers after the launch

The new website was launched towards the end of 2007. It soon proved that the large blocks on the portals did not function properly. People who visited the site for the first time, including colleagues at WNF, did not use the block for navigation, nor did they use the navigation tools under it. They only clicked on the buttons above (main and sub-navigation) or on the first news item that came into view on the block. The button ‘How can I help’ was not used either. The visitors figures from Google Analytics gave the same picture.

This lead to the following adaptations:

• Home page: The different articles on the block move one by one into sight. The related button illuminates, which makes it visually clear that it is a link. The button ‘How can I help’ becomes bigger when moving the mouse onto it, which also suggests that this is a button.
• Portals of the headings: Almost all large blocks were removed in the course of 2008. WNF opted per heading for the best way to access the content. For example, the portal of ‘What WNF does’ brings the content of the heading and the different search panes into vision in the best possible way. The portal ‘WNF Video’ now looks like YouTube.

At present (early 2009) the original portal of the Animal Library has not been adapted. Here you see how this page looks now, and here how it will look in the near future.

 

5. User numbers of Google Analytics

After the launch, WNF made more intensive use of the web statistics of Google Analytics. Every day we examine the following:

• how many times the site was visited
• via which media the visitors entered (email, banners, Google Ads, direct traffic)
• what queries were typed for entering
• what search words they enter in the WNF search engine and in the various search panes of the items
• which pages were viewed well and which ones were visited poorly
• the way they clicked on
• where the site was left

This showed among other things that banners on other sites do not yield many visitors and that only a small number of them become donors, and that many people search for ‘cancel subscription’ with the WNF search engine. This was the reason why we built a separate service page for the latter item.

The separate search pane of the Animal Library has the text “Search for an animal” (see illustration 6). Here visitors can enter the name of an animal. However, 20% of the queries were ‘search for an animal’, which means that no text was entered. And 40% of the queries in the ‘WNF Video’ were ‘search for a film’. This proved that it was not clear and that it was better to keep the search pane empty.

Online marketing with concrete targets (KPIs)

For years, WNF has worked with ‘Key Performance Indicators’ (KPIs), or concrete targets in figures. An example for the targets in the period from March 1, 2008, to March 1, 2009:

• 50% more visitors (especially more visitors via Google and Google Ads)
• 25% higher online conversion
• Decrease in the average refusal percentage (the average percentage of people leaving the site after viewing one page) from 40% to 25%

Presently, early January 2009, wnf.nl has already had more than twice the number of visitors than it had on March 1, 2008. The number of visitors that entered via Google and Google Ads tripled in 2008. For many forms, the conversion on donor forms was doubled and some forms even increased fourfold.

What efforts did WNF take to produce these results since spring 2008?

First of all, we tried to attract visitors more effectively via online marketing techniques, especially via Google, Google Ads and better usage of web statistics. To do so, WNF asked the help of Traffic4u and Netprofiler.

Traffic4u gave special assistance in increasing the number of visitors by Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and deploying Google Ads. Traffic4u also helped lay out Google Analytics to give better user data and by designing the A/B tests.

Right after WNF had won the Usability Award 2008, Netprofiler conducted a web statistics analyses combined with an expert usability review. This resulted in concrete points for improvement. WNF also learned how an analysis of the statistics could be used for actions for improvement. In addition, WNF started A/B testing on the advice of Netprofiler.

The expert analysis made more than ever clear that every page is a ‘landing page’ opnieuw (a page on which people can enter the site). This means that every page must prompt people to click more on the site and must offer a solid action perspective (e.g. download the ‘fish chart’). That is how the ‘Donate now’ button came about, and this button is placed top right on every page.

The Google Analytics figures showed that the pages in the heading ‘of topical interest’ had high refusal percentages, which means that this was the page where many visitors left the site. And soon it was figured out why: the news pages did not invite to click on. They were strongly isolated as is seen in the image below.

WNF will now add relevant action subjects in de right bar (download the fish chart, other news, register for the news service) and gives links to projects and activities.

Moreover, the new Wonders Campaign of WNF attracted many new visitors.

7. A/B tests

In July 2008, WNF started conducting A/B tests. With the help of the Google Website Optimizer (a function of Google Analytics), it measures the conversion of various variants of the pages. It focuses on the page from which visitors enter from a Google Ad. Half of the visitors arrive at variant A of the page, the other half at variant B. Subsequently, the Website Optimizer gives figures about clicking on and about conversions.

This also demonstrated that pages with images only resulted less often in the desired click-on behaviour than the more informative pages. Conclusion: images are nice and pretty, they match beautifully with WNF and are informative in their own way, but they should not push the informative texts from the screen.

WNF also wondered what the motivation was of new donors. The traditional idea was that people found it important to see what they get when they subscribe, e.g. a cuddly bear. The een uernene De test hiervan was een eyeopener. A/B test (A = cuddly present, B = information about nature protection) proved that the substantive B variant yielded 4x as much registrations. This was for WNF a real eye-opener.

8. Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)

To attract more visitors via Google, the text will be rewritten so that wnf.nl will be higher in the Google lists with all kinds of queries. WNF examines with Google Trends which queries are often used on the Internet. They are included in texts (titles, headings, texts, tags and ALT-texts). An international example: if people search the web for the phrase global warming; the texts that handles climate change were adapted accordingly.
Together with Internet Bureau Evision and Traffic4u WNF ensured that all animals in the Animals Library were found more easily. Adaptations:

• improving the navigation
• making images clickable
• providing images with ALT-texts
• providing file names with relevant and much-used queries
• html links in stead of links in Flash.

9. Google AdsGoogle Grants (Free Google Ads)

Every year, Google donates Google Grants to WNF as a charitable organisation. These grants consist of free (Google Ads). At the time that WNF gets free publicity, such as news reports aboutWNF actions ,WNF Ads are placed with connected subjects.

In this context, WNF has recently received much publicity with the Panda action on Museumplein in Amsterdam(). Less than one hour later there were WNF SA-Google Ads next to the news. This way WNF reinforces its online free publicity with clear ‘Calls to Action’.

WNF examines in Google Analytics how effective online marketing actions are, e.g. an email action, Google Ad, the Google banner or our own banner on certain sites (MSN, missed programmes, the daily Telegraaf, etc). The figures from Google Analytics demonstrate how many clicks and conversions were yielded from such actions. The most effective kind of actions will be used again. The online marketing budget will thus be put to better use.

10. Social networking

We have mainly dealt with adaptations that follow directly from users surveys, statistics and advice. Moreover, WNF also tries to follow new possibilities and trends. This has created more than 60 WNF Hyves. WNF will offer the makers certain content which they can put on their Hyves pages. Moreover, WNF wants to start listening: what motivates WNF fans? This is how WNF always tries to find and implement improvements and utilise new possibilities.

11. Your ideas?

Please think along: how can WNF further improve its website and online marketing? Should you still see possibilities that we are not using, please react to this article. Indicate how you think that your idea could help us. Thank you in advance!

See also the Dutch version of this article.