Website Redesign Experimentation Drives Significant Results

With over 3.8 million members and supporters, Sierra Club is the longest-standing and influential grassroots environmental organization in the United States. Every day, the Sierra Club fights to defend everyone’s right to live in a healthy world.

The Challenge

To meet the evolving needs of Sierra Club and to best serve its members and constituents, the organization embarked on a website redesign. While the effort was intended to further the Sierra Club mission, it was imperative donation volume wouldn’t be negatively affected, and ideally, increase as a result.

The Solution

Because Cro Metrics had worked with the Sierra Club to build a Culture of Experimentation, they recognized the value and necessity of testing the redesign to ensure it didn’t adversely impact their objectives of recurring monthly donations, 1x donations, and list building. We designed a prioritized roadmap of tests for the new user experience with a focus on primary KPIs. This included down-funnel optimization around the donation experience, but also global elements including site structure and hierarchy and new site features such as the addition of a “My Account” portal.

To inform Sierra Club’s ongoing growth efforts and the Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO) program, we also developed a series of persistent analytics reports such as marketing campaign efficacy, down-funnel analysis, and donation conversion and frequency by opt-in, enabling Sierra Club’s ability to make data-driven decisions.

The Results

Not only did incorporating CTAs in key areas outside the donation funnel led to a 22% – 40% increase in monthly donations, and 14% in monthly gifts, it also prevented a major potential loss by visitors who would have otherwise missed those cues. Additionally, personalizing the donation experience drove a 30% lift in monthly donations, and extensive testing around global navigation ultimately led a 9% increase to donations, against an initial -4% loss. Cro Metrics continues to work with the Sierra Club on both analytics and website optimization to drive results in an ever-changing political landscape.

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