The Big Issue were looking to modernise their digital approach on how they promote and support Big Issue Vendors. They wanted to improve their existing user journeys and explore other financial avenues for users to support the cause.
Working with a creative agency we audited the platform to assess the various journeys and tools to financially supporting The Big Issue.
UX Design
UI Design
From the audit we established the following:
Working with The Big Issue team we mapped out a new digital strategy that would improve revenue through online sales and contributions. With no contribution mechanism in place we thought this was the best place to start.
Taking inspiration from successful online publishers such as The Week and The Guardian, we created a new destination for contributions where users could either make a one-off or ongoing contribution (subscription).
We utilised Stripe for the Credit/Debit card processing as it has a solid API, includes Apple and Google Pay and has SCA (Strong Customer Authentication) built in. We also included PayPal as another option to maximise potential contributions.
To point people to this page we created a support banner containing a call to action to the contribution page. To assess the effectiveness of the banner we suggested testing different messages via an A/B testing tool in combination with Google Analytics event tracking. Through the testing tool we created 3 different messages spread across 3 groups, A,B and C.
We built the banner to not be intrusive, so when the banner is closed it won’t appear again after a set amount of time. In conjunction with this, we added a link to the contribution page from the main navigation so a user can still access the page even if they have closed the banner.
The Big Issue decided to use a reliable external e-commerce provider for their magazine subscription purchases rather than build their own which speeded up delivery time and reduced costs. Happy with their recommendation we simply suggested that the purchase page reside on a sub domain, and that it provided an easy way back to the main platform. We did help design and build a subscription page that promoted the service which pointed people to the sub domain.
The new digital strategy has only recently been launched but we’re already seeing positive results with contributions and magazine subscriptions. Valuable data from the A/B testing is currently being analysed and the banner messaging adjusted for optimal performance.
The Big Issue were very happy with the work we carried out and we continue to work with them in developing their digital strategy.