
Mayday.us - avibryant
https://stripe.com/blog/mayday
======
aresant
If a user used Stripe "the chance that a visitor would abandon their donation
at the Checkout step halved from 22% to 10%"

You can see even in Stripe's earliest UX the desire to dramatically limit the
"pain" that goes into entering CC details online.

When they added the "remember me" button I said to myself this is going to
wind up being the "billion dollar checkbox" once merchants really understand
the power of not forcing people to re-enter their CC details.

It's still somewhat mind-boggling to me how badly browser "auto-fill"
solutions fail at this incredibly valuable problem.

Amazon and Apple, IMO, basically hold onto their dominating positions in
physical & digital content respectively because their hold so many CC's and
it's just so much damn easier to not have to re-authorize, re-input, etc etc.

~~~
swartkrans
When I see that "remember me" checkbox I thought about how they were storing
that information. There's usually no obvious indicator someone is using
stripe, you just see a form asking for credit card input. I tend to never
check such a box and in fact prefer it if there's a payment option with a
company that already has my credit card info, like paypal or amazon, so that I
have less surface area for having that information stolen and less places to
update once I have to renew or replace a card.

~~~
funkyy
Your CC is probably insured anyways and if you have good bank they will deal
with any fraud in matter of days releasing you from any responsibility.

If not - change a bank.

~~~
swartkrans
Yeah that is true but I could just not expose my credit cards and not worry
about catching fraud in time to avoid having to deal with problems. These days
you have to read your credit card report carefully to see if you've been
victimized. I didn't realize I was until I saw a $29.99 charge every month for
someone else's credit report. I didn't think it was a mistake until I canceled
mine and still saw that charge there months later. It's not enough to be
covered by your bank, at least not for me.

------
mrfusion
Do we know how MayDay is performing in this election? I was disappointed not
to hear any mentions of it on the news leading up to the election? Have they
actually upset any elections.

~~~
aaronlifshin
We were in two primaries, and our candidate won in one of them, in another he
moved from 9% to 24 or so of the vote.

Today is the day we learn more. Hopefully some of our candidates will win.
Another important factor to keep in mind is that this an experiment. The
knowledge we generate about what it takes to move elections on this issue, and
the attention we have brought to the issue of money in politics are an
important part of our goals.

(Disclaimer: I work for Mayday)

~~~
mrfusion
That's interesting, thanks for the response. I've been getting the email
updates and it's hard to get the big picture from those.

So the biggest goal of this process is learning how to move elections?

I shouldn't be concerned that the media isn't mentioning MayDay as a factor in
the elections or control of congress?

~~~
aaronlifshin
More specifically, the experiment is about how to sway voters on the issue of
money in politics. I particularly like this page for the big picture:
[https://mayday.us/the-plan/](https://mayday.us/the-plan/)

Looking back, thinking about where we've come from against this plan from May
1st I'm pretty amazed. But of course, there is a lot more work ahead.

A lot of the media narrative around the election is "which party controls the
senate" and so they would not necessarily cover non-partisan Mayday.

But we have gotten a LOT of media coverage.

This is a blog post I happen to really like:
[http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-foster/the-impact-
inves...](http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-foster/the-impact-investor-a-
mod_b_6083244.html)

And here is an in-depth example of analysis of a race Mayday is involved in:
[http://www.nationaljournal.com/politics/is-michigan-s-
most-p...](http://www.nationaljournal.com/politics/is-michigan-s-most-
powerful-republican-really-in-political-danger-20141021)

------
mirashii
It's a bit concerning that this page doesn't really reference the order of
magnitude of data that they're working with, statistical significance, or
anything to indicate that the difference between the two percentages they're
comparing is something that's actually worth comparing, and not something that
can or is likely to be explained away due to small sample size.

~~~
minimaxir
From the downloadable dataset of donations, the current total amount of
donations is 62,769 donations with 50,802 unique donators, which is a healthy
amount.

However, that doesn't indicate how many users fell into the "had a Stripe
account already" bucket. (I'd wager not many.)

(Off topic aside about data integrity: the downloadable data, from October
onward, has donation dates from 2018.)

~~~
rio517
This is Mario from Mayday PAC. Yeah, our last release had those 2018 issues.
The data actually comes from several different vendors and we plan on
normalizing it all better post election. The 2018 data should have been
registered as 2014. (Obviously not 2018)

------
exratione
It's amazing how much goes to line the pockets of politicians and their
cronies, and with the flimsiest of expected outcomes on the part of those who
give, in an age in which creating actually worthwhile things, new technologies
and scientific progress, is cheaper than ever.

Watching this sort of thing, knowing that the researchers behind many very
worthwhile lines of medical research that might bring great benefit to
hundreds of millions struggle to raise a tenth of this amount over the course
of years, is ever eye-opening.

We're not a very rational species.

~~~
aaronlifshin
Yep. This is precisely what Mayday.US is fighting.

------
lifeisstillgood
>> But on the last day of the campaign, mobile use doubled: 32% of donors
donated from their phones or tablets instead of waiting to get to their
laptops

This is to me a killer insight. I just sent my first invoice from my mobile
phone. I have always always assumed I could not use my mobile for a complex
website but it was relatively painless - and 1000 times more convenient (at
work, not on clients network etc)

I only did it because I "had to", and it worked because the company
(freeagent) has put enough effort in. Now I can do more accounts on my mobile
- and all those who donated above will be likely to donate earlier me time
than the last day because it worked this time round.

------
brey

      Looking at repeat donations prompted us to ask: do people donate more or less 
      their second time? On average, the answer is roughly 50% more. While first 
      donations had a mean of $88 and a median of *$30*, repeat donations had a mean 
      of $114 and a median of *$50*.
    
      Average doesn’t mean typical, however. If you look at each repeat donor one by one, 
      it turns out they’re split almost exactly into thirds: 33% donate less the second time 
      (most commonly half), 35% donate more (most commonly double), and 32% donate 
      exactly the same. The averages get pushed up because doubling (and the 
      occasional tripling or even quadrupling) makes a bigger difference overall 
      than halving does.
    

that's odd. wouldn't you expect the median to stay about the same if 1/3
donated less, 1/3 donated the same, and 1/3 donated more?

~~~
brey
ah, no, I was wrong - the median only stays the same if only people in the
lower half beforehand gave less, and only people in the upper half gave more.

if people cross the old median, this is perfectly possible. although initially
counter-intuitive ...

~~~
corin_
Not just if they cross the median, the median might cross them - for example
what if the only people to come back to donate a second time were above the
median in their first donation, then even if they all donated the same amount
the second time, the median of second-donations would still go up.

------
charliepark
If I understand Checkout correctly, a user on Site A enters her card details,
and then when she's on Site B, her details are shown back (with some
obfuscations). Does this ever alarm users? I'm sure the goal is that it would
be a seamless experience, but I'd be curious if anyone here has used Checkout
and heard positive / negative feedback from users.

~~~
aaronlifshin
From our users, the most feedback we have heard about this functionality is:
"I want to change my card details, but it keeps bringing up my old card"

The solution is to put the cursor in the card number box and hit delete, but
this is not obvious in the UI.

I am not aware of Mayday users raising the concern that their details have
been saved.

~~~
aaronlifshin
Overall, we have mostly positive feedback about Stripe, and have been happy
with the usability for our users as well as on the back end. It's been
especially great for mobile.

Our audience is heavily from the tech community, and people like seeing the
latest technology used on a site. I remember at least one email coming in to
that effect.

------
justcommenting
i appreciate the value of excellent UX and kudos to stripe for sharing this
but personally, i've never been so fickle about a donation or purchase that
the UX was the difference between me completing the transaction vs. not.

there have been times i've had to 'abandon' a checkout step and return later,
but i can't recall any times that a financial transaction was important enough
to make but not important enough to return to, e.g. if i didn't have a
particular card with me.

stripe sees things differently--and probably for good reason--but i wonder if
they might be inferring user intent from user behavior too directly.

