I was sad to hear about exercism’s financial situation in the recent blog post. I don’t make a lot of money so I wanted to see if I could help out in another way :)
I’m really into UX design so I wanted to give some tips on how you could increase your donations.
You’d be surprised how much friction matters in the donation process.
In order of importance:
- I’ve done a couple of exercism tracks in the past but I only learned that I could donate to exercism and that it was a non-profit recently. Don’t be afraid to sprinkle donate buttons on the pages people commonly visit. The “Help us keep exercism free” footer is really easy to miss, people rarely check out footers. A good place for the donate button could be next to the overview button (in exercises > hello world). Make sure to give it a color that stands out.
- The donation options are invisible on the exercism.org home page, they’re hidden behind the
Morebutton and in the footer. For maximal effect I’d put a donate button in the middle of the page, centered horizontally and vertically. Other options are next to the explore languages button, or perhaps the easiest of all, instead of the learn more link. Learn more could be placed after “not-for-profit” organisation. Sidenote: in the page “is an independent, community funded, not-for-profit organisation.” really does not stand out. - On the donate page, the 198,956.29 for total raised stands out, to a normal person this obviously seems like a lot of money. This may also lead people to conclude that you don’t really need their donation. It’s better to have a progress bar with next to it, the goal that more donations would achieve, like “Hire third employee”. “Please log in to donate…” can induce dread and turn people off, I assume this is the top option because it provides the best rates. I would try out centering (again vertical and horizontal) the donate buttons to funnel people to them. The increase in e.g. paypal donations due to it’s ease of use could offset its higher rates compared to other donate options. Setting up a patreon button could really help as well, many people already have a patreon account and this provides them with a very easy way to donate. General note: don’t try to appeal to logic to get people to donate, focus on creating the warm feeling of supporting exercism and learning.
- Paypal provides slightly reduced rates for non-profits, you can check those out if you have not already.
This kind of feedback can be annoying, but I believe taking care of the high priority suggestions could significantly boost donations. By the way, the general design and ease of use of exercism is very good! I wish you good luck for the future 