UserTesting success story: how Kiva uses human insights to help alleviate poverty around the world

UserTesting recently awarded Kiva, an international nonprofit, founded in 2005 and based in San Francisco, a grant of pro bono studies through our OneWorld program for nonprofits. UserTesting OneWorld helps charitable organizations create better fundraising and donor experiences, thereby increasing their impact in the community.

We sat down with Pete Campion, Director of Product Management at Kiva, for a quick Q&A to talk about the successes his team achieved on their website through their partnership with UserTesting OneWorld. The team conducted two different studies, which Pete addresses separately, below.

Conversion rate improvements

As part of an initiative to improve the conversion rate for new users, Kiva recruited participants who had never visited the site before to go through their normal site flow. They particularly focused on the point of the funnel where people need to choose who to lend to, as it was the biggest weakness in the funnel.

What did you learn and what changes did you make based on these insights?

We identified issues that some users encountered with our interface. Some users were not understanding how to add a loan to their basket, and some were having difficulty assessing the differences between loans.

We updated our interface to more clearly indicate buttons, we added space to reduce the information overload, and are now experimenting with additional ways to differentiate between loans.

Do you have any metrics you can share? How do you know the changes you made were successful?

Year over year, we've seen a 24% improvement in the overall conversion rate for the segment of site visitors that we were focusing on.

Marketing research

Kiva tested different product marketing brands and information for a new subscription product, Monthly Good.

What did you learn and what changes did you make based on these insights?

We learned that users saw value in the idea, were most drawn to a descriptive name that intuitively made sense (“Monthly Good”), and we learned about outstanding questions they had about the product.

We ended up proceeding with building the product in part based on the interest we saw with UserTesting and went with the brand that seemed to resonate most in the feedback we saw. We were also able to proactively address most of the common concerns by building FAQs around the questions that came up in user testing.

Do you have any metrics you can share? How do you know the changes you made were successful?

We are in the early stages of marketing the product, but for those users who have subscribed the CLV (in terms of loan volume) is projected to be three times that of a standard Kiva lender (e.g., a non-subscriber).

Additionally, the lifetime revenue from these users is projected to be 72% higher.

The results, while early, are promising and they hope to do more testing to better identify the best marketing messaging.

This sounds awesome! Are you working on anything else?

We ran a number of other tests including a half dozen sessions related to a completely new product offering that we are in the process of defining/validating. Our hope is to launch an MVP of the new product towards the end of this year!

Want to learn more?

If you’d like to learn more about how UserTesting can help you understand your customers through on-demand human insights, contact us here.

You can also learn more about and apply for a UserTesting OneWorld grant here.