Indiegogo Tipping Case Study

Overview

Tipping

Creating new revenue streams on our creator platform by engaging backers

Indiegogo enables creators to launch campaigns and raise funds for their projects. As part of the growth team, I identified an opportunity to boost revenue by introducing a feature that allows backers to leave tips for during the checkout process. The goal was to encourage user generosity through engagement and ultimately increase revenue for the company.

Goals

How might we engage users with a low-involvement way to support Indiegogo’s core business?

Somehow anticipating the explosion of tipping features in the pandemic and post-pandemic world, I suggested we ask backers for tips, as gratuity for excellent service provided is a major part of the cultures we served.

Is this a worthwhile investment?

Success looks like:

We prove that this will bring in FR >$100,000, allowing us to hire another designer or developer at the minimum.

Failure looks like:

We are spending too much FTE on an initiative that does not cover the cost of the time lost.

Discovery

Leading backers to a painted door

I ran a painted door test with 71,559 backers who transacted in a 3-week period. Feasibility of the feature would be determined by the number of participants that clicked through our test email and opted into email updates on a landing page for the feature. The email was the proxy for an item of value to the backer, as extra gratuity would be valuable to a backer during a transaction.

Signals of interest

Out of 3 approaches (1 was a control) there was significantly more interest in providing tips to the platform, and interest was especially pronounced in the approach that hinted we would donate the tips to charitable causes.

Given the interest, I next needed to forecast how much revenue the feature would bring in against our goals.

Design Process

Drafting the feature

To gather conclusive data, I decided to prototype out potential solutions and put those in front of users.

Analyzing the tipping space

I reviewed similar features in the same space — creator economy, non-profits, social good — to see what patterns were effective.

I narrowed down design explorations to 3 patterns: buttons indicating the tip amount, dropdowns to select an amount, or text fields to input an amount.

Maximizing the potential for interaction

I decided to display all tip options upfront to make selection easier for backers. I also wanted to utilize our existing components to make this low-lift, and we had a radio button selector component that worked well for the feature. Initially wanted to put it on the thank-you page (post-purchase) but after reviewing with another designer, we decided to put it on the checkout page and monitor for negative effects to conversion.

Second round of testing

We ran another painted door test with a small segment of our user base and projected ~$2 million in revenue per year from this feature alone. We saw no hit to conversion or increase in dropoffs during the test, so we quickly linked the feature to our payflow to start capturing revenue.

Solution

Optimizing the feature to maximize revenue

We calculated the tip amounts as a percentage of the order subtotal. For order amounts below $20, the amounts would start at $1. The tip amounts were capped at $75, or 15% of $500. We also included a “Pay what you wish” option (Other Amount), since we had a radio button selection component that included a custom input field.

OUtcomes

Outcomes

Upon fully launching the feature, the actual revenue feature was less than projected. According to the project goals, we were successful. We saw no hit to conversion or increase in dropoffs during the launch.

Takeaways

I’m especially proud of this product because Indiegogo decided to donate one-third of the tipping revenue quarterly to charitable causes chosen by the team. It feels good and is important to me that companies are responsible stewards of the resources they accumulate, and culturally it was great to see my teammates rally together to support these causes.

Next Steps

A recent look at Indiegogo’s checkout page revealed that this feature is still present, though with a different design pattern. With tipping fatigue a hot topic in the U.S., I’d be curious to see how this feature is holding up.

Dylan Ginoza