Let's ask people to support us

[chadwhitacre]

Picking up from gratipay/inside.gratipay.com#78 (comment).

• only show message to people who are active users but aren't giving to Gittip
• style buttons a bit more
• wire up buttons—should immediately change the user's tip and replace the box with a "Thank you!" message and update the "Giving" amount in the header.
• close button should be deemphasized
• close button should set a bit in the db so we don't bug them further
• make the 7% statistic dynamic (website.gsupport?)
• adapt call to action to current percentage ("Will you join them?" over 80%, "Will you help us reach xx%?" below that)
• adapt the gift amounts to what the user gives/receives now (25¢/$2, 50¢/$5, $1/$10, $10/$100).
• make a page to explain what we've done recently and what we're working on next
• show the banner on the homepage
• make it responsive
• prompt to add credit card if necessary
• more confirmation on pricing page after clicking personal payment button
• internationalize (i14e?)

[chadwhitacre]

Should we make this a campaign about going from 7% to 50% or something like that?

[chadwhitacre]

[chadwhitacre]

What if we totally automate this?

if actual < 10% goal = 20%
elif actual < 15% goal = 30%
elif actual < 20% goal = 40%
elif actual < 30% goal = 50%
elif actual < 40% goal = 60%
elif actual < 50% goal = 70%
elif actual < 60% goal = 80%

Once we figure out where the "normal" level is, we'll drop the goal when we're within sight of it. Don't need to automate for this PR, though.

[seanlinsley]

50¢ and $1 might be a better fit than $5 and 50¢

[Changaco]

I like it, but I think we need to explain the situation better.

We've seen people who thought Gittip was a "normal" crowdfunding site funded by fees (#2515), it should be made clear that tips from users are our only source of income.

I think we also need a link to a page that explains what the tips to the Gittip team fund: hosting and other related costs, improvements to the site (those we've recently made, and those we're working on now). Maintaining a list of improvements manually might be a burden, so we could try querying the GitHub API for open and recently closed PRs on the www.gittip.com repo.

Finally, I'm not sure that the percentage of active users tipping Gittip is a good metric. I suggest using the existing "goal" feature, we can set one for the Gittip team and use that as the campaign target.

[chadwhitacre]

I'm not sure that the percentage of active users tipping Gittip is a good metric.

Why not? Seems like a great metric to me. It's about social validation. "Be like everyone else!" and/or "Be better than everyone else!" No? Why is it not good?

[chadwhitacre]

50¢ and $1 might be a better fit than $5 and 50¢

What makes you say that, @seanlinsley? To me 50¢ and $1 are not very far apart.

[chadwhitacre]

How about dampening it until hover to lessen potential annoyance? Adds explanatory text per @Changaco's suggestion. We can link to the explanatory page both from this explanatory text and from our /Gittip/ profile.

[chadwhitacre]

Widened buttons, futzing with text, added a link for more info:

[chadwhitacre]

@dsernst @clone1018 @ericmeltzer @tshepang et al. I'd love your feedback on this.

[chadwhitacre]

@chrisdev @colindean ^^^

[ericmeltzer]

Love it!

On Tue, Aug 12, 2014 at 6:00 PM, Chad Whitacre notifications@github.com
wrote:

@chrisdev https://github.com/chrisdev @colindean
https://github.com/colindean ^^^

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#2629 (comment)
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Eric Meltzer
@wheatpond https://twitter.com/wheatpond
http://theopencompany.net
+1 408 874 6552

[chadwhitacre]

@ericmeltzer 💃

[chadwhitacre]

Switch to italics for second row to keep contrast from first row without dropping the text size too small, and moved dismiss button to second row as text link.

[colindean]

Me gusta.

I think the word "direct" should be in the explanation.

• "We don't skim! Gittip is funded by your voluntary payments. Learn more..."
• "We don't skim! Gittip is funded directly by your voluntary payments. Learn more..."
• "We don't skim! Gittip is funded by your direct, voluntary payments. Learn more..."
• "We don't skim! Gittip is funded directly by your weekly payments. Learn more..."
• "We don't take a cut! Gittip is funded by your directed, voluntary payments. Learn more..."

Also, "Will you help us reach 20%?" Proper grammar feels better.

[chadwhitacre]

Also, "Will you help us reach 20%?" Proper grammar feels better.

Had that (scroll back). Felt like too much text, I wanted to whittle it down. I had "Help us reach 20%!" but that felt too pushy.

[colindean]

Hmm. OK.

[chadwhitacre]

@colindean What do you like about the word "direct"?

[chadwhitacre]

@colindean Does "direct" get at the same idea as "solely" in earlier screenshots? I.e., this is it! We're not funded if you don't fund us!

[ericmeltzer]

I like direct or solely

On Tue, Aug 12, 2014 at 6:17 PM, Chad Whitacre notifications@github.com
wrote:

@colindean https://github.com/colindean Does "direct" get at the same
idea as "solely" in earlier screenshots? I.e., this is it! We're not funded
if you don't fund us!

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Eric Meltzer
@wheatpond https://twitter.com/wheatpond
http://theopencompany.net
+1 408 874 6552

[chadwhitacre]

Another take on wording:

[chadwhitacre]

Brought back "solely," rearranged the sentence so learning links conflict less with action buttons.

[colindean]

What is "this"? I've never been a fan of "make this possible".

Solely indicates that there is no other funding source, e.g. ads, VC, selling info, membership plans, etc.

Directly indicates that

1. We don't take anything off the top.
2. You support Gittip in the same way you support the people and projects you support.

[ericmeltzer]

Prefer learn more

On Tue, Aug 12, 2014 at 6:24 PM, Colin Dean notifications@github.com
wrote:

What is "this"? I've never been a fan of "make this possible".

Solely indicates that there is no other funding source, e.g. ads, VC,
selling info, membership plans, etc.

Directly indicates that

1. We don't take anything off the top.
2. You support Gittip in the same way you support the people and
   projects you support.

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Eric Meltzer
@wheatpond https://twitter.com/wheatpond
http://theopencompany.net
+1 408 874 6552

[chadwhitacre]

"Directly" to me leaves room for, "What else do they rely on? They must have foundation money or something." "Solely" seems more to the point.

Maintaining a list of improvements manually might be a burden, so we could try querying the GitHub API for open and recently closed PRs on the www.gittip.com repo.

@Changaco Any interesting user-facing changes should have a blog post. Seems more natural to link there instead of GitHub issues.

[chadwhitacre]

@rummik Hehe. :-) I had it transparent except on hover at first, @oakes wanted it to be ugly like Wikipedia. :-)

[rummik]

@whit537 I saw that while I was reading back up :P Either way it's going to stand out. Though, the transparent on a darker background thing makes it a bit difficult to read, so it probably isn't ideal either.

[chadwhitacre]

@rummik You were mostly responding to the gold on the homepage, right? How about changing it there and leaving as-is on inside pages?

[rummik]

@whit537 Looks good to me :) 👍

[tshepang]

\0/

[chadwhitacre]

How's this blog post look?

https://medium.com/@whit537/72bd471332e5

[chadwhitacre]

Hrm, no notifications on closed PR, and can't reopen without restoring the branch I guess?

[chadwhitacre]

Here's the blog post we ended up with:

http://blog.gittip.com/post/95126362826/we-depend-on-voluntary-payments

[chadwhitacre]

https://twitter.com/Gittip/status/501475840279207936
https://twitter.com/Changaco/status/501654010487914496
https://twitter.com/Gittip/status/501793847639556096
https://twitter.com/Gittip/status/501793944037232640
https://twitter.com/jdalton/status/501809990420926464
https://twitter.com/helloanselm/status/501813230764064769

[ericmeltzer]

Looks great!

-E

On Tue, Aug 19, 2014 at 6:23 PM, Chad Whitacre notifications@github.com
wrote:

Here's the blog post we ended up with:

http://blog.gittip.com/post/95126362826/we-depend-on-voluntary-payments

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Eric Meltzer
@wheatpond https://twitter.com/wheatpond
http://theopencompany.net
+1 408 874 6552

[chadwhitacre]

Thanks for the revision, @ericmeltzer! :-)

[webmaven]

So, now that we have data, what happened to percent of active supporting users after the change?

[chadwhitacre]

Started at 8% and now we're at 13%. Best chart we have is:

.

https://gratipay.com/Gratipay/

[chadwhitacre]

Without knowing any better, I think the difference is probably statistically significant? :-)

Actually, kidding aside, this might be a good exercise, to determine the statistical significance of this change.

[webmaven]

Patrons increased (to some extent a vanity measure), but $ didn't.

[chadwhitacre]

Dollars did increase, though admittedly not by as much as patrons. Patrons increased by 155%, whereas dollars only increased by 22%:

[webmaven]

Dollars were already increasing. The slope didn't get steeper, therefore little (if any) of that can be attributed to the change you made.

[seanlinsley]

@webmaven I would tend to disagree. We can look at the actual data, but I expect that those 200 new supporters are all donating small amounts, which is what I would expect to see from this campaign.

[webmaven]

@rohitpaulk If the goal was only 'increasing the percentage of patrons' without expecting any commensurate effect on $, then, the experiment was a success.