- Increase completed registrations on the Memory Walk website
- Drive more donations and fundraising
- Encourage more teams to walk together
- Improve integration with JustGiving (the fundraising platform)
The results:
- £7.1m raised since May 2017 (up by £2.9 million)
- 92,000 sign-ups (increased by 14k)
- 45,000 individual sign-ups
- Team leader sign-ups increased by 2,000
- Team members increased by 1,500
- 37,000 JustGiving pages set up
- 500 more volunteers
A bit of history
We started working with Alzheimer’s Society in 2014. Their business goal was to get 300,000 new walkers on Memory Walk by 2020. Back then there was no way of registering online for a walk, while JustGiving - their partnered donation platform - was not integrated. Moreover, the website's design was not responsive on mobiles and other devices. Together, we hatched a five-year digital plan with the aim of refining and strengthening their digital presence.
The first step was to create a bespoke microsite dedicated to its annual Memory Walks. The site would provide support through from initial sign-up to post-event activity. Every year we would meet again to update the site and make sure it was still meeting user needs.
Since launching the site in 2015, participant sign-ups have continued to grow year-on-year. And, as agreed, we have continued to enhance the site by conducting and implementing changes based on feedback from the people who really know: the fundraisers who use it.
User-centric design refined year-by-year
We met with Alzheimer’s Society in late 2016 to discuss their priorities and business objectives for the next year. Their ambition for 2017? To register more walkers and raise more money through sponsorship and donations. Alzheimer’s Society itself had rebranded in early 2017, so we were tasked with bringing the Memory Walk site in-line with this. At the same time, we needed to ensure it retained its personality as a flagship fundraising event.
The key focus in 2017 was to provide a clear and easy way for prospective participants to find and sign up for an event or walk. They also asked us to concentrate specifically on the team registration journey. Teams mean more fundraisers and it was of paramount importance that we reduced any drop-offs during the sign-up process due to frustration or bad usability. We also needed to make sure the third party social platforms and JustGiving would integrate with the site seamlessly.
Putting the user into focus
We created a series of design prototypes that we tested with twelve users face-to-face. They were a carefully selected group of existing and potential fundraisers for the Memory Walk. As well as interviewing the participants to get their qualitative feedback on the site and their experience of it, we tested how they actually used the Memory Walk website, guiding them through all its features and functionality. This research let us investigate the effectiveness of ‘real world’ solutions we were proposing before we started developing them. With our help, the Memory Walk attracted over 90,000 registered walks in 2017.