Monday, April 18, 2011

WeFeedBack – Charity in Web 2.0

I decided to analyze interesting initiative that uses internet and social networks not to create a profit, but raise awareness about serious global issue and get people engage into solution. Wefeedback is a new initiative of the UN World Food Program (WFP) that started its public beta in March 2011. Its mission is to “Enlist your help and the help of your social networks in the fight against the chronic hunger that burdens families all over the world.” To start from the theoretical framework, successful fund raising for charity should take care of three main critical success factors:

  1. The value of giving
  2. The impact of social factors
  3. The role of emotions

The value of giving should lower the costs of giving and increase the benefits in the eyes of the donor. The social factors are important in strengthening or weakening the pressure to donate. Our thoughts about expected behavior of others impact our donations. Despite the preceding factors, eventually, emotions drive the donation decision. Establishing pro-giving / spending emotions is key for any charity and any advertising. Let me analyze, how this three critical success factor have been implemented at Wefeedback.

Wefeedback image

The main idea behind the site is to make people share with their social network which food they like and how many underprivileged children have they fed by donating the price of the food to WFP. Desired user behavior on the site follows three steps:

  1. User utilizes Feedback Calculator to estimate how much children can be fed by her favorite food
  2. User donates the price of the food to WFP by PayPal or Credit Card
  3. User shares the information with her social networks

Idea of the Feedback Calculator removes typical donation mental barrier of “how my money can make a difference” or “only large sum of money is needed to make a difference”. In fact, the calculator uses simple equation that every $10 feeds 40 children no matter which type of food you choose. However, choosing the particular food is important to activate user’s imagination of how many children in the third world could eat it she would sacrifice monetary value of her meal. Additionally, the type of food plays important role when sharing the message in social networks. In general, the Feedback Calculator explains the value of the donation and marginalize its costs. The value of donation are the content children and the costs are represented by one favorite meal instead of money.

Second step consist of sending the donation via PayPal or credit card charge to WFP. Immediately after the donation, user home page is updated with information about number of children fed and pre-edited message to be shared on social networks.

Ultimately, sharing information about the donation on social networks has many effects. It serves as a peer-pressure for friends to donate as well, distribute the message of how high relative value of our favorite meals have in the third world, and ultimately brings traffic to the Wefeedback site. The typical pre-edited social network message looks in following way “feeding 40 hungry children with the cost of my favorite meal. How many can YOU feed? #wefeedback http://tinyurl.com/3uxr7no” is spreading the “guilt message” how well do we live and how easy it is to help the less fortunate ones. Every user also has a public web page with information about her donations, which increases donors visibility even more. It also fulfils the second success factor of a charity fund raising campaign, building up the impression that giving is socially desirable esp. when both the costs and rewards are so tangible as in this case.

Last but not least, the emotional part is present at Wefeedback by the short one minute videos showing the children together with WFP activist in a Wefeedback T-Shirt, who is explaining how the donation is used. User gets emotional bond with the children and also understand global reach of the WFP.

Wefeedback also re-used some ideas from other internet projects like badges well known from the X-Box Live or FourSquare. And what is the behavior Wefeedback rewards with badges? Obviously these are donations, but also sharing information on social networks and donations by the referees from the user.

Hence, Wefeedback aims to create viral campaign at social networks that attracts as much users to the community. The users can donate money immediately to existing WFP program so that unlike many other internet projects, this one creates positive cash flow from the day one. The results so far seem to be promising. In more than a month of existence, Wefeedback converted web traffic to 6,925 registered users that already donated $27,000. Moreover, 3,186 people like Wefeedback on Facebook and 528 follows it on Twitter. Based on the data from iSpionage, Wefeedback spent between $1,029 to $1,608 on on-line advertising generating between 1,988 to 2,473 clicks.

According to Alexa, it current site visitors are highly educated users under the age of 35 who have more than one child. Prevailing groups are women between 18 to 24. Approx. 17% of the traffic is coming from the USA.

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Chart 1 – Alexa Daily Reach (% of global internet users)

However, judging from the Chart 1, it still unclear whether traffic to the site and consequently number of registrations will start exponential growth. Also, the bounce rate of 65% is typical for PPC campaigns of sites without customized landing page. It seems that Wefeedback is yet to reach the critical mass of users that will fuel the future growth.

I believe that Wefeedback is doing a lot of things right, but there is still room for improvement in its on-line presence strategy. I would recommend to undertake following measures:

  • Attract more attention of influential bloggers
  • Optimize the “Deal Flow” by reducing number of clicks from site entry to donation
  • Create customized landing page for the PPC campaign (it should halve the bounce rate)
  • Lighten the site front page to reduce page load (it will improve the SEO)

In conclusion, Wefeedback is one of the first charities to completely embrace web 2.0 concept. Despite minor drawbacks in the design of the site, the main elements of the idea are set correctly while keeping in mind critical success factors for fund raising.

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