Sightsavers

Sightsavers is an incredible charity, working hard to combat blindness in developing countries. I’m picking on them only because their poster caught my eye this morning.

It’s an effective poster with a strong call-to-action; “Text now”. They’ve even included a QR code with it.

Due to the proximity of the code to the text, I thought scanning the code would allow me to donate to them.

The Code

The code is well sized and uses a small URL, so it’s easily scannable.
The only problem is – you guessed it – it redirects to a non-mobile-friendly page.

This isn’t particularly easy to use, and there’s no simple way for a visitor on a mobile to quickly donate to the charity.

It doesn’t have to be this way.

Sending SMS via QR Code

The QR specification allows us to request that the scanning phone sends an SMS.
The syntax is really simple.

smsto:70800:TALLA

That tell the phone to send the message “TALLA” to the number 70800.

What It Looks Like

Scan the code above. Your phone will ask you if you want to send the message. Hey presto – instant donation. No mistyped keywords, no confusion over what number to send to, no hassle.

Find Out More

I’ll be running a workshop at OpenTech about QR Codes and how charities and government can make the best use of them. Tickets for the conference are only £5 – so register now!

Update!

Douglas McDonald made this excellent observation.

@edent @Sightsavers And why not use an sms with a url in the reply? loads more response than qr

11/05/2011 11:25 via webReplyRetweetFavorite

@DMcDonald01

Douglas McDonald

I’m not sure if Oxfam were in the audience that day. But if they were, they missed the point. QR codes are a solution for quick interactions with mobile phones. Let’s investigate the Oxfam QR code seen in Metro.

The Advert

So, can donate by scanning the code? Well, it’s not really made clear what the QR code is for. There’s no text associated with it.

The Code

Let’s take a closer look at the code.

That’s a huge URL stuffed into a tiny code – making it hard to scan. Ideally, codes should use black ink – the blue used here shouldn’t cause too many problems, but coupled with the small size reduces the scanability.

The URL

Let’s take a quick look at the URL before moving on.

https://www.oxfam.org.uk/donate/paypal/index.php?ito=4373

Good: Use of https for a secure connection.
Bad: Just about everything else. Why is this so long? Why didn’t Oxfam set up a redirect so that oxfam.org.uk/4373 went to the right place? If that’s not feasible, drop the redundant index.php.

https://www.oxfam.org.uk/donate/paypal/?ito=4373

Even better, just direct to the target page. In this case

https://giving.oxfam.org.uk/

Doing that would have resulted in this smaller and more easily scanned code.

The Website

This is where things go from bad to worse.
The first thing I saw – on several phones – was this certificate error. Given that Oxfam are expecting me to give them money, this doesn’t give me confidence.

But, it gets worse.

Yes, that’s right. Oxfam have decided to send my mobile phone to the full version of their website. Rather than provide me with an optimal experience, they’re making it slow, costly, and awkward for me to give them money.

PayPal Mobile

After clicking through a few screens to try and give them some cash, we get to PayPal.

Perfect. At this stage of the transaction – if the user has even got this far – PayPal provide their optimal mobile user experience.

Conclusion

• Poorly formatted code.
• Mobile unfriendly landing page with security issues.
• Multiple clicks to donate.
• Overall, why bother?

If anyone from Oxfam is reading, the interaction should go:
Scan – mobile friendly landing page – straight to donation. No more than 3 clicks including the original scan of the code.

If you’re on mobile, you can view the mobile friendly version of the slides.

Audio and video coming later.

The gist of the talk is – use QR codes to drive mobile donations. Use return SMS to encourage people to share with their friends.

So, I was a little surprised to see this advert for #tweetsgiving on my mobile.

What is tweetsgiving?

For now, let’s ignore the perils of assuming that your country is the entire market place. It’s a common problem which, sadly, is prevalent in the USA. I clicked on the banner like a good consumer – hoping I’d find out what #tweetsgiving was.

Unavailable

I’ve talked before about having your service ready for the floods of people who are going to visit. You only get one chance to make a first impression – this first impression says “We’re broken”. Would you trust this site with your money? With your time? Would you click on the same banner again?

Well, I’m, a fool. I waited a few hours. Teething problems, I reckoned. Later on in the day – when I saw the same banner – I clicked.

Oh Dear

I was greeted by an unfriendly error page.

Third time’s the charm. In my pursuit of finding the worst Mobile Badvertising out there – for you, dear reader – I clicked. Once more unto the breach…

That's It?

So this is what the advertising campaign is for? A block of text. No images. Nothing to convince me that it’s genuine. No details about the charity – if it is a charity – or the projects in Tanzania. And – were I charitably minded enough to pay – no method of payment for those outside the USA.

How To Fix This

• Friendly error pages.  Things break, that’s a fact of life – but when they do, ensure that they fail gracefully.  Make sure that your error pages are still useful to your prospective customers.
• If your site is broken – or under severe strain – withdraw the advert until you are sure you can satisfy demand.
• If your offer is limited by region – try to ensure that it is never seen outside that region.
• Given that the Internet is international – offer alternative ways for foreign customers to pay you.
• Make your site attractive.  You don’t need to go overboard, but a few images, links to other sites or pages, downloadable content, will attract more customers that plain prose.
• If you’re asking for money for a charity – show your potential donors that you are genuine.  In this case a link to the charity’s site would have helped.  In the UK, all charities have to be registered – I don’t know if the USA does something similar.

While I’m sure that the aims are laudable, this is truly a perfect example of Mobile Badvertising.  The site doesn’t work and, when it does, you wish that you hadn’t bothered.  What a waste.

Bootnote

There is one good thing about this Badvertising. The link to Quattro Wireless does go to their mobile page and not to some Flash-ridden abomination.

Quattro Wireless's mobile page

A team consisting of myself, Luke Razzell, Improbulus, Karina Brisby, Priya Prakash, and a few other lovely people whose names have slipped my mind were tasked with finding a way to raise money for clean water.  Specifically targeting families and using mobile payments.

Me describing our team's idea

The Proposition

1. The ability to donate your unused minutes to charity.  Text “10″ to NNNNN to donate 10 minutes to help dig a well.
2. Feedback from the project.  “Since digging the well, 500 people have got access to clean water”.
3. Rewards for donating.  Free ringtone, a wallpaper of your project, mobile videos.  Possibly even extending to tax benefits.
4. Social Network. “@edent just donated 15 minutes to build a water sanitation plant. Donate by texting …..”
5. Ensuring local people are employed to staff the project – giving training in building, maintaining and IT skills

Here’s how it looked when we were done with it.

The finished article

There are two end goals

1. You see a poster which says “It takes 6 hours to drill a well. Donate 10 minutes – text 10 to [SHORTCODE]“.
2. You text “Unused” to [SHORTCODE], any unused minutes at the end of the month get donated to charity.

I was really excited with what we’d come up with in just 30 minutes.  However, it’s not all plain sailing.

The Problem

What constitutes “unused” minutes, what are they worth, how are they donated?

Pre-Pay Customers (where you load your account with credit):

With pre-pay, you may only have a set time period in which you can use your credit. If your credit expires after, say, 30 days, that amount is donated to the charity.

The “donation” question is quite easy.  If you have £9.37 on your account and you donate £1.00, you’re left with £8.37 to spend.

The “minutes” question is quite tricky. On some plans, the first few minutes are charged at a high rate, subsequent minutes at a lower one.  Minutes to mobile phones are often cost more than to landlines.  How do we get a standard definition of what a minute is in order that donors understand how much they’re spending?

Contract Customers (where you pay at the end of the month):

The “minutes” question is easy.  You have a plan which gives you 600 minutes, you donate 10 minutes, you’re left with 590 minutes until the end of the month.  If you go over 590 minutes you’re charged your out of bundle rate (making a nice little earner for the operator).

The “worth” question is trickier. If you have a £35 plan which gives you 500 minutes domestic calls, 100 minutes international calls,  700 text, 500MB data, and insurance – how much is one minute worth?  To you it’s simple – fewer minutes on your plan.  But how much is given to the charity?

The “donation” question is also tricky. If your plan includes different types of minutes – domestic, mobile, international, video calling – from which class is the donation taken?

Operators

[Disclaimer: I work for Vodafone Group - this is my personal blog. All opinions are my own and represent no one other than myself. I really have very little idea how operators plan their airtime budgets]

MNOs (Mobile Network Operator) get some great benefits from a scheme like this.  The good PR that comes with highly visible CSR is one – the fact that charitable donations can be tax deductible is another.

Again, there are some downsides.

The main problem comes with unused credit. I am sure (but I don’t categorically know) that MNOs budget for the average user only utilising 80% of their inclusive minutes.  Most people err on the side of caution and will take more minutes than they’ll actually use to ensure they don’t get bill-shock.

(No doubt there are some customers who regularly exceed their inclusive allowance – but they can’t donate what they’ve already used!)

So the customer thinks they’re paying £30 for 600 minutes (5p per minute) whereas the operator knows that they’ll probable only use 480 minutes (so they’re being charged 6.25ppm).  Is an operator really going to be happy donating £6 (5p * 120 unused minutes)  from their profit margin every month? Probably not.  Even the tax breaks won’t help there.

For that reason, I think donating “unused” minutes as cash idea is probably a non-starter. It’s the most attractive – you literally do nothing and you get to make a donation – but it directly attacks the MNOs business model.

A Solution?

We’ve already discussed how much a minute is worth.  Perhaps the easiest thing to do would be to charge customers – pre-pay and contract for the donation.  If a contract customer donated 10 minutes, she find an extra £1.50 charge on her phone bill that month?

Perhaps the “unused” minutes could be donated to the charity in the form of minutes. Literally.  You donate 10 minutes, the charity has 10 minutes worth of calls wiped from its monthly phone bill.  The MNO gets to write off the bill to charity, the charity has money freed up for good causes.

Next Steps

I’m going to be thinking more about this issue throughout the week – I really want to take this idea further. I’d welcome any thoughts, feedback or criticism.