‘why seeing options other than the expected one would make me less likely to follow through’
I think the key is that ‘following through’ can mean several things that are similar from the perspective of GWWC but quite different from the perspective of the person pledging.
In my case I’d already been giving >10% for quite a while but thought it might be nice to formalise it. If I hadn’t filled in the pledge it wouldn’t have made any difference to my giving. So the value of the pledge to me was relatively low. If the website had been confusing or offputting I might have given up.
There are others who will already have decided to give 10% but haven’t yet started. The pledge then would have a bit more value if there’s a chance it could prevent backsliding but assuming the person had fully committed to giving at this level already, the GWWC pledge wouldn’t be crucial to the potential pledger.
Finally, there are people who for whatever reason come across the website without yet having decided to give 10% (or even 1%) and make a decision to sign up when they’re there. This is where the more standard marketing theory comes into play.
For the first two groups, the non-conversion is something like ‘I can’t even see what I’m meant to be signing up for. Never mind, it’s not going to affect how I’ll actually give anyway.’ Friction in this case is anything that makes it harder to identify what the 10% pledge is and how to sign up to it. I spent a couple of seconds looking between the three options but it was ultimately pretty easy to work out which one was the one I wanted. This would be even easier if it was the one main option.
For the third, it could well be ‘There’s too much choice, maybe I don’t want to do it.’ At any rate, it will be much different from people who had already committed to giving 10%.
The ‘loss’ to GWWC for all three looks the same but there’s only a substantial loss to the wider world with the third group.
I know people not always remembering what’s in their minds can be an issue but I doubt it would be a problem on something like ‘did you intend to give 10% when you arrived on the GWWC website?’ and certainly not on ‘have you already been giving 10%?’ There’s such a difference between the groups it would be really helpful to at least get an indication how they split out.
I think the key is that ‘following through’ can mean several things that are similar from the perspective of GWWC but quite different from the perspective of the person pledging.
In my case I’d already been giving >10% for quite a while but thought it might be nice to formalise it. If I hadn’t filled in the pledge it wouldn’t have made any difference to my giving. So the value of the pledge to me was relatively low. If the website had been confusing or offputting I might have given up.
There are others who will already have decided to give 10% but haven’t yet started. The pledge then would have a bit more value if there’s a chance it could prevent backsliding but assuming the person had fully committed to giving at this level already, the GWWC pledge wouldn’t be crucial to the potential pledger.
Finally, there are people who for whatever reason come across the website without yet having decided to give 10% (or even 1%) and make a decision to sign up when they’re there. This is where the more standard marketing theory comes into play.
For the first two groups, the non-conversion is something like ‘I can’t even see what I’m meant to be signing up for. Never mind, it’s not going to affect how I’ll actually give anyway.’ Friction in this case is anything that makes it harder to identify what the 10% pledge is and how to sign up to it. I spent a couple of seconds looking between the three options but it was ultimately pretty easy to work out which one was the one I wanted. This would be even easier if it was the one main option.
For the third, it could well be ‘There’s too much choice, maybe I don’t want to do it.’ At any rate, it will be much different from people who had already committed to giving 10%.
The ‘loss’ to GWWC for all three looks the same but there’s only a substantial loss to the wider world with the third group.
I know people not always remembering what’s in their minds can be an issue but I doubt it would be a problem on something like ‘did you intend to give 10% when you arrived on the GWWC website?’ and certainly not on ‘have you already been giving 10%?’ There’s such a difference between the groups it would be really helpful to at least get an indication how they split out.