Bee Measure

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My Favorite Advice & Data Viz of the Month

My Favorite Advice

How to Get Donors Coming Back for More.

My first meeting back after summer vacation was a planning call for a client’s year-end campaign. Even though 2020 has us all feeling stuck in a never-ending nightmare time warp, year-end fundraising season is indeed quickly approaching. That means now is the perfect time to think about overhauling your donation page. You want potential donors to feel confident when making a gift to your organization and ensure the process is simple. What does that mean about how you set up your donation page? It doesn’t mean include more text, more images or more donate buttons. It means include text that aligns with your organization’s mission, an image that speaks to your value proposition and an easy-to-complete donation form. If you’re looking for recurring donations, make a monthly recurring donation the default choice. It will help your organization stand out since “most nonprofits that offered monthly donations did so as an optional step.” And if your nonprofit has a lengthy donation checkout process (and you want to find out where users are dropping off and how to prevent it), check out this article on setting up a Funnel Visualization report on Google Analytics.

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What Companies Are Doing With Your Data, A World Without Cookies & Banner Ads Are Back

Content Marketing for Dummies

This article from Search Engine Journal touches on something important: Content that doesn’t convert is just that… content. If you want content that drives interest and donations, you need to look at your metrics. If you’re creating content, it should have a clear purpose and lead people to take another action — whether that’s to learn more, sign up for an event, download research, or donate to your organization. And don’t forget that content drives SEO… just make sure you’re writing like a human and not keyword stuffing in the hopes your post ranks higher on Google.

No More Cookies… Now What?

With the new restrictions browsers are putting on cookies, I wonder if we need to prepare for a cookie-less world. It’s better we accept it now and learn how to survive rather than be annoyed and taken by surprise when they are *actually* blocked. This article offers great advice with specific tactics to successfully advertise without cookies. Which one are you trying? I’ll definitely be using my own first-party data since it’s proven to drive higher conversion rates.

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Google’s Advice for Ads, Drowning in Donor Data & Political Ads Online

My favorite part of December isn’t the decadent food, cheesy Netflix movies or the endless holiday parties (though, I do love all those things). It’s the year-end “best of” lists. This month, however, is not only the end of 2019… it’s the end of an entire decade. That means an abundance of 2010s nostalgia lists.

Everyone from Buzzfeed to The New York Times is pondering how this decade will be remembered (What will we wear to the 2010s theme parties of the future???). Journalists can argue about whether this decade’s key historical contributions were meme culture, smartphones, YouTube or #MeToo. But I feel like a decade’s culture doesn’t quite solidify until well into the next one.

What seems so clearly defined in retrospect is fuzzy and haphazard when you are living through it. But in reading through these lists, one thing *is* clear to me. The digital world is ever-changing. Staying up-to-date with the trends and skills ⁠— from targeted ads to better UX to online privacy ⁠— is both more important and more difficult than ever. For me, writing this newsletter has been an excellent way to keep up, and I hope you all feel the same.

So raise your glass to the end of 2019 and the start of the 2020s! 🥂

From Fake News to Full Transparency

The 2010s can be described as the decade “fake news” became prominent as a buzzword online. Yes, it’s been around for longer than that, but digital media secured its prominence. People are very skeptical these days with so much fake information out there, so it’s important we keep that in mind as we create new digital content and products. Designing for transparency should be our goal in 2020 (and beyond).

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Your Website Redesign, Online Fundraising & Building a Data Culture

Not Another New Year’s Article

I know it sounds cheesy, but put better data collection at the top of your list of new year’s resolutions. This article is written by Salesforce to promote Salesforce, so take it with a grain of salt, but they have good suggestions about what organizations should be focusing on in 2019. For example, committing to a data collection tool and making sure it is set up correctly ensures your nonprofit can be confident in the data you collect – and the decisions you make from it.

When It’s Time to Redesign

If you want to start fresh in 2019, this handy UX research process explains the steps and timeline for redesigning your website with users at the forefront. One thing that stuck out to me was their emphasis on the importance of combining generative (user interviews) and evaluative research (A/B testing, mouse tracking, remote usability testing). Hot tip: since you want the research to define the direction of your design, “put generative techniques at the beginning.”

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