WaterForward(waterforward.charitywater.org)
waterforward.charitywater.org
WaterForward
https://waterforward.charitywater.org
16 comments
I really despise this sort of tug-on-heart-strings, give-no-details-how-you'll-help charity marketing blitz.
Reading through this review it seems like this is a problem that extends far beyond their website. I would urge everyone to read the review before promoting this charity any further.
Reading through this review it seems like this is a problem that extends far beyond their website. I would urge everyone to read the review before promoting this charity any further.
While I don't represent charity:water, I wanted to include the charity navigator rating:
Full 4 star rating Financial: 66.22 / 70 Accountability & Transparent: 70/70 Overall Rating: 67.3 / 70
http://www.charitynavigator.org/index.cfm?bay=search.summary...
Full 4 star rating Financial: 66.22 / 70 Accountability & Transparent: 70/70 Overall Rating: 67.3 / 70
http://www.charitynavigator.org/index.cfm?bay=search.summary...
Nice site. Couple of pages and my feeling was "Shut up and take my money". Then more clicking. Oh, you want me to spam my friends? Hmm, I'd rather not do that. Ok, I'll click that scary button anyways. As an IT pro I know you can't actually send emails on my behalf. Good, there was actually a way to proceed without sending emails. Then click-click-click, more pages. Hey, now I can finally give some money! Page even says that payments are processed by PayPal. But.. Something is missing, I can't see any button to actually pay via PayPal.
Summary: giving should be easy. Nowadays I'm not very likely to give money (or even purchase stuff) if I can't do it via PayPal.
Summary: giving should be easy. Nowadays I'm not very likely to give money (or even purchase stuff) if I can't do it via PayPal.
I understand the storytelling nature of what they're trying to do. But for more functional folks like you and I, they really should have a button in the middle of that bottom black bar that says "Donate now" and skips ahead.
I mentioned this about the Apple Mac Pro page when it came up on this site, and I'll say the same thing about this page:
It's very well done, but it's just a slide show.
It's a good presentation, but it has very little to do with UX if the only user interactivity involved is clicking a button to go forward.
EDIT: The title of this story has been changed since I and others made this and similar comments. The previous title said something to the effect of "Story Telling: Some of the best UX I've seen."
It's very well done, but it's just a slide show.
It's a good presentation, but it has very little to do with UX if the only user interactivity involved is clicking a button to go forward.
EDIT: The title of this story has been changed since I and others made this and similar comments. The previous title said something to the effect of "Story Telling: Some of the best UX I've seen."
I am not sure why they have a big blue button to go to next slide. I expect some kind of in page action for a button. As Centigonal said its just a slideshow. The message is good and everything but the design is not very.
The way I see it, it's a nice set of slides -- barely any UX though. I also think the UX is flawed because there is no visible way to go back to the previous slide or to the beginning (other than the browser's back button so it's not _terrible_, but many people associate the back button to the previous site).
If you are instead trying to spread the word about this in an indirect manner, I understand, smooth move.
If you are instead trying to spread the word about this in an indirect manner, I understand, smooth move.
Wow, the slide in sharing with friends had one of those microscopic "skip" links that I usually associated with services trying to trick people into buying a paid upgrade. I was stuck on the slide to share it with my friends and was thinking, "OK, so this is like some massive chain letter, everyone will KNOW about the water crisis, but no one will be able to donate..."
This site is a good example of the interpassivity in activism I find so frustrating. Without actually doing anything except clicking a few buttons, we are made to feel like we are active in solving problems.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interpassivity
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interpassivity
The term I would probably use is "slacktivism":
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slacktivism
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slacktivism
Hmm, $40 million to 'benefit' 2.5 million water. That statistic doesn't exactly state if those 2.5 million now have access to clean water. However assuming that, then the charity can provide access to clean water for $16/person. Assuming furthermore that it'll cost the same amount to give water to the remaining 800 million people, it should cost about $12.8 billion to give access to clean water to everyone.
The total foreign aid per year is more than $100 billion, so using effective foreign aid access to water could be solved easily. Unfortunately, foreign aid is extremely inefficient.
The total foreign aid per year is more than $100 billion, so using effective foreign aid access to water could be solved easily. Unfortunately, foreign aid is extremely inefficient.
Very cool.
What if instead of asking me to send a form email to my friends it had a phone based call to action? All manual, but wouldn't it be cool if it showed a short video of someone calling a friend and just explaining it?
"Write down 5 of your friends' names on a piece of paper or in a text editor and one-by-one give them a ring and tell them about this."
Not sure if that would annoy some people even more, it just seems like email is the easiest thing ever to disregard.
What if instead of asking me to send a form email to my friends it had a phone based call to action? All manual, but wouldn't it be cool if it showed a short video of someone calling a friend and just explaining it?
"Write down 5 of your friends' names on a piece of paper or in a text editor and one-by-one give them a ring and tell them about this."
Not sure if that would annoy some people even more, it just seems like email is the easiest thing ever to disregard.
They want you to use email because they want to get your email address and opt you in to their email list. (Note that you opt-in by default unless you specifically choose to opt out.) The messages that go to the friends are a nice side benefit, but they're not really the point of the exercise.
A valid, working email address is very valuable to fundraisers, because they can then hit you up directly in future for additional donations. Can't do that if you tell people to go offline and call their friends.
This also answers the question elsewhere in this thread of "why not ask people to share it via Facebook/Twitter instead of email?" In those cases there's an intermediary (Facebook/Twitter) who can stop your marketing messages. So your email address is more valuable to them than, say, your Twitter handle.
A valid, working email address is very valuable to fundraisers, because they can then hit you up directly in future for additional donations. Can't do that if you tell people to go offline and call their friends.
This also answers the question elsewhere in this thread of "why not ask people to share it via Facebook/Twitter instead of email?" In those cases there's an intermediary (Facebook/Twitter) who can stop your marketing messages. So your email address is more valuable to them than, say, your Twitter handle.
How about instead of a one-off donation of 20, they had a further site for recurring payments? I got to the end (without spamming my friends), hit the payment page (would have auth'd with paypal but no option to), then didn't end up doing anything. It's well presented but needs more than one funnel for people who give up at the end.
[deleted]
hey guys - CEO of the company here (Waterforward was made by my team at The Monkey Inferno here in SF).
Thanks for the feedback, hopefully we'll be able to improve the site. It's an awesome cause, and I'd love to see this raise money and awareness for them.
Here's a bit of background info:
We made the site, because we've been supporters of charity:water for years. They have a wonderful story, and are a top notch non-profit (they give 100% of donations to the cause...even going so far as to reimburse credit card fees).
One challenge they face is finding ways to scale. The vast majority of donations come in through the web, but those are from supporters they create in offline events. We wanted to find a way to grow their base of supporters, by telling their story simply and elegantly (that's the plan at least). Put more simply, we wanted to "make charity go viral". They have raised over $95M in the past 5 years, but they are trying to tackle a $1B problem here, so we did our best to scale their efforts. We normally work on for-profit ventures (www.monkeyinferno.com), so this was a unique challenge.
Attempt #1 took a year, and ultimately failed. (too complicated, viral coefficient = 0.7)
http://techcrunch.com/2011/11/08/michael-birchs-waterforward...
Attempt #2 is the product you see now at waterforward.org
30+ iterations in 30 days, trying to make this slide-show story concept work. We just went viral overseas (4M shares so far), but unfortunately haven't raised a ton of money. Biggest problem is that we are super viral in India, but can't process Indian Rupees.
Anyway - thanks for the constructive feedback. We'll work out some of the UX issues over time, but for now, we appreciate the general support.
-Shaan @shaanvp
Thanks for the feedback, hopefully we'll be able to improve the site. It's an awesome cause, and I'd love to see this raise money and awareness for them.
Here's a bit of background info:
We made the site, because we've been supporters of charity:water for years. They have a wonderful story, and are a top notch non-profit (they give 100% of donations to the cause...even going so far as to reimburse credit card fees).
One challenge they face is finding ways to scale. The vast majority of donations come in through the web, but those are from supporters they create in offline events. We wanted to find a way to grow their base of supporters, by telling their story simply and elegantly (that's the plan at least). Put more simply, we wanted to "make charity go viral". They have raised over $95M in the past 5 years, but they are trying to tackle a $1B problem here, so we did our best to scale their efforts. We normally work on for-profit ventures (www.monkeyinferno.com), so this was a unique challenge.
Attempt #1 took a year, and ultimately failed. (too complicated, viral coefficient = 0.7)
http://techcrunch.com/2011/11/08/michael-birchs-waterforward...
Attempt #2 is the product you see now at waterforward.org
30+ iterations in 30 days, trying to make this slide-show story concept work. We just went viral overseas (4M shares so far), but unfortunately haven't raised a ton of money. Biggest problem is that we are super viral in India, but can't process Indian Rupees.
Anyway - thanks for the constructive feedback. We'll work out some of the UX issues over time, but for now, we appreciate the general support.
-Shaan @shaanvp
Want to give money to an effective charity? Look for rules like these: http://www.gatesfoundation.org/~/media/GFO/Documents/Who%20W...
Why is there only email? This isn't 2000; there should be Facebook and Twitter share links.
[deleted]
I've always been a fan of water.org
"Charity evaluator GiveWell published a review of charity: water in December 2012. Their overall conclusion was that charity: water "stands out from other organizations we have considered in some respects (such as conducting evaluations that include frank discussions of problems), but we remain uncertain about the humanitarian impact of their work and the relative effectiveness of their partner selection process."
http://www.givewell.org/international/charities/charity-wate...