Optimising the donation journey for one of the UK's most recognised health charities

The problem

The Cystic Fibrosis Trust is the UK's leading charity dedicated to fighting cystic fibrosis, funding research, providing support and campaigning to improve lives. It operates at national scale and relies on its website as a central channel for awareness, engagement and donation. It wanted to understand how data-driven insight and A/B testing could help achieve its digital objectives, particularly around the donation funnel, where small improvements in conversion translate directly into research funding. The challenge was not simply technical: it required a genuine understanding of who donates, what motivates them, and where the digital experience was falling short, before a single experiment could be designed.

What we built

We were brought in across two workstreams: data-driven optimisation and A/B testing, and management of the Sitecore platform. We began with stakeholder interviews to establish the KPIs experiments should be measured against, which confirmed the donation funnel as the highest-impact target. A combined analytics and heuristic review identified the biggest pain points in the journey, and we built a picture of the needs and motivations of typical donors, grounding every test in audience understanding rather than assumption. From there we designed and implemented a programme of experiments in Google Optimize, focused on improving the copy, messaging and value communication around donation. Alongside this, we managed the Trust's Sitecore platform, handling development requests and keeping the technical foundation stable.

What came after

One experiment alone, improving the copy and messaging around donation, increased visits to the donation page by 29%: a direct impact on the Trust's ability to fund research. The work demonstrated the tangible value of structured experimentation for a charity operating at scale, and established the foundation for a continued programme of optimisation.