World Vision’s Child Sponsorship Digital Acquisition Journey.
Client
World Vision Australia
Services
Product Design, Design Research, Customer Experience, Usability Testing
Industry
Social Impact
Year
2023
Impact
The redesign of World Vision’s Child Sponsorship platform doubled the emotional connection between sponsors and children. It also boosted product understanding by 30%. We transformed a complex, ethically nuanced donation process into an engaging journey that empowers Australians to change lives. Personalised sponsor child selection and impactful visualisation empower more Australians to join World Vision’s mission of eradicating child poverty across 96 countries.
Value
The redesigned digital acquisition journey demonstrated remarkable improvements across key metrics. Testing showed a doubling of emotional connection between the existing and new design, a 30% increase in potential sponsors’ understanding of the program, and a 20% improvement in perceived usability. These gains positioned the platform to drive increased sponsorships and expand World Vision’s community-focused solutions, where each sponsored child’s support benefits four additional children.
The platform’s success stems from strategic improvements in user experience and content presentation. By reducing overwhelming messaging and removing distracting calls-to-action, the team created a clearer path to sponsorship. The introduction of explanatory content throughout the journey helps users understand the program’s impact, while the new child selector facilitates meaningful connections through preferences like gender and birthday matching. Statistics and impact statements were integrated to build trust and demonstrate World Vision’s global reach.
Process
The redesign process began with establishing a baseline through heuristic evaluation, usability testing, and analysis of existing data and analytics. Our team identified key drop-off points caused by distracting calls-to-action and poorly timed communications, which informed our decision to streamline the homepage and focus primarily on Child Sponsorship.
Research indicated that child sponsorship is a high-consideration product, prompting us to introduce explanatory content throughout the journey. The findings from the first round of usability testing further revealed the need for both guided and self-directed child selection paths, leading to the addition of a “choose for me” option that significantly improved the user experience.
These comprehensive insights directly shaped our redesign of the digital acquisition process. To measure our impact objectively, we compared both versions using the AttrakDiff methodology, which revealed significant improvements in product understanding, usability, and the emotional connection between sponsor and the sponsored child.
Mindset
The project was driven by a deep understanding that digital optimisation could directly translate to improved lives for children in need. This perspective guided every design decision, from simplifying the user interface to highlighting impact metrics, ensuring that each improvement would help World Vision better achieve its mission of partnering with everyday Australians to make a difference in the world.
