Referring to fees as ‘costs’ has no meaningful impact on conversion rates
Fundraising tools: Classy Studio
Test period: 08-29-2024 to 09-23-2024
Hypothesis:
Framing the request as ‘covering transaction costs’ rather than ‘covering transaction fees’ will lead to higher donor conversion rates and an increase in the total amount of fees covered during checkout.
Design:
Control
- Toggle with ‘transaction fees’ language
Test
1.1% conversion lift
- Toggle with ‘transaction costs’ language
Results:
| Name | Control | Challenger | Lift |
| Visitors | 7266 | 7358 | N/A |
| Overall donations | 1244 | 1274 | N/A |
| Fee coverage rate | 70.8% | 71.2% | 0.6% |
Test results did not reach statistical significanceKey learnings:
Our hypothesis was disproven: Donors showed no significant preference between covering ‘fees’ or ‘costs’ when supporting the causes they care about. In every comparison, conversion rates, average gift sizes, and the likelihood of donors opting to cover fees remained consistent regardless of the terminology used. This suggests that reframing fees as ‘costs’ does not significantly impact donor behavior in these areas.
So what: The current ‘fees’ language will remain in use, as conversion and fee coverage showed no difference between terms.