How can you learn if you don’t test?

Even in my few years of working in fundraising and marketing here I’ve noticed a real shift in mind-set from the very top. We’ve stopped thinking we know everything! Instead of thinking we’re right without question, we’ve adopted an approach where our decisions are increasingly based on insights. We’re listening to our supporters more than ever and they inform the direction in which we move.

Stop being so vague and give us an example

Ok, ok. I’ll cut to the chase. I joined a Digital Spoke in 2016 to help design and develop a personal account for our supporters to use. Without going into the exact details of the product, it changed our team’s way of working beyond just this project. We worked in synergy with the Digital team and learned so much about adopting an agile approach to tasks while also gaining a huge amount of experience of different digital tools!

But I don’t want to talk to you about all of that. As exciting as it was, I think the way our team worked independently post-Spoke is the most impressive part of the project.

What’s so great then? Spit it out already!

The first thing we did was to maintain our daily stand ups which helped keep everyone focused. Each morning we huddled around a screen which showed all of the bitesize cards on our Trello board and we’d assess their progress. Reviewing this frequently really helped to keep things front of mind while also holding people accountable for completing tasks.

Both before and during our series of recruitment communications we held testing plan meetings where we could vote for which ideas we wanted to test using an effort vs. impact matrix. Where possible we’d go for what we felt were low effort, high impact tests! By holding these meetings in between each recruitment drive they also acted as an evaluation of the previous tests which was very useful context for planning.

What about when people signed up?

During the Spoke we gained a lot of experience at creating and manipulating dashboards and custom reports on Google Analytics. This allowed us to understand in real time how users were interacting with the product, what was working well and where we should be focusing our attention. Of course we sought expert advice for more difficult queries, but for the most part we were self-sufficient which was very encouraging.

Some of the trends we spotted through analytics caused us to implement real time optimisation tests. For example, when we spotted a dip in the conversion rate on the registration form we A/B tested different wording and infographics using Optimizely in an attempt to bring this up again.

How did people know what you were doing?

One of the key principles of agile working is to share progress and learnings with stakeholders and the wider organisation. Although we did this regularly with key stakeholders, we wanted to improve how we communicated to the wider organisation. It required an adjustment to how we approached the project but it definitely helped improve our skills and confidence at presenting. We’d give engaging updates every two weeks or so where anyone could show up and listen. The best thing about them was the questions we’d get asked which provoked thoughts and ideas we hadn’t previously considered.

To make this more accessible, we’d record the presentations and upload them to our Wiki page which increased our reach. This also allowed us to re-watch each one retrospectively to hone and improve our public speaking skills.

So what’s happening next?

This is a really exciting time to be working for Cancer Research UK. The direction we’re moving in as a charity is becoming inevitably more digital and we’re facing this challenge head on by devolving skills, knowledge and expertise into the product and marketing teams. This success of this Spoke is simply one example. The way we’ve carried these skills on post-Spoke and continued this way of working has really helped to take this project from strength to strength – but this is a process that is becoming more prevalent in all areas of the charity.

Graham Goodings
Digital Producer