Designing Trust At The Moment Of Giving:

Making Donation Payments Feel Faster, Safer And More Personal Across Three Distinct Regions.

The Challenge

GivenGain’s donation journey was one of the most commercially and emotionally important experiences on the platform. It had to turn a moment of intent into a completed donation while serving donors across the United States, United Kingdom and Rest of World.

The challenge was not simply to make checkout look cleaner. The journey needed to work for people who were often donating quickly, on small screens, after arriving from social media, email or a fundraiser’s shared link.

We had limited tracking data, but we knew that around 80% of donors completed payment on mobile. That meant the donation experience needed to be designed mobile-first, not adapted from a desktop checkout.

At the same time, the journey had to accommodate regional requirements and expectations:

• United States: Local currency, familiar payment methods (incl checks and bank transfer), tax receipt expectations and address requirements. We also added new payment integrations for Crypto and DAFpayments (Donor Advised Funds).

• United Kingdom: Gift Aid eligibility and declaration, GBP payments and GDPR-compliant consent.

• Rest of World: Varied currencies, payment methods, address formats and privacy requirements.

There was a crucial additional commercial and mission-driven consideration. As an NGO ourselves, GivenGain offered donors the option to add a voluntary contribution on top of their chosen donation. This supported continued investment in the platform, additional fundraising services, and GivenGain’s own charitable giving.

The design challenge was to make that contribution feel transparent, useful and optional, i.e, not like a hidden fee.

My Role

I led the product design work from discovery through to final UI design.

This included:

• auditing the existing donation experience

• synthesising donor, charity and internal stakeholder needs

• defining a mobile-first information architecture

• mapping regional rules and experience differences

• exploring low-fidelity interaction models

• designing high-fidelity UI and reusable components

• collaborating with product, engineering, payments, legal and customer support teams

• defining success measures for launch and optimisation

The Problems

The existing donation journey worked, but it created unnecessary friction at the exact moment donors were deciding whether to complete payment.

Several problems emerged through journey audits, behavioural data, support feedback and usability testing.

1. The emotional reason for donating disappeared too early.

2. The mobile experience felt dense and demanding.

3. Regional variations were layered onto one generic form.

4. Communication around transaction fees and who was responsible for covering them lacked clarity.

5. The GivenGain contribution option lacked clarity.

6. Trust signals were present, but not at the moments donors needed them.

Research and discovery

I treated the journey as more than a checkout flow. It was a trust journey. The key question was:

How might we help donors feel emotionally connected, fully informed and confident enough to complete payment quickly?

Inputs & Data

My research combined several sources:

• funnel analysis across device types, regions and payment methods

• review of drop-off points and payment failure states

• customer support themes and donor complaints

• usability testing of the existing journey

• interviews with fundraisers, donors, and internal support teams

• competitive review of leading charity and consumer checkout experiences

Key Insights

Donors needed reassurance, not more information

People did not necessarily need a longer explanation of every payment or privacy detail. They needed the right reassurance at the right moment. A clear donation summary, charity context, recognised payment options and transparent totals were more effective than overwhelming people with dense legal content.

Mobile donors needed fewer decisions per screen

The existing flow behaved like a desktop form squeezed onto a mobile screen. The redesigned journey needed to use progressive disclosure: ask for only what was needed at each step, make one decision feel manageable, and keep the donor’s commitment visible throughout.

Donors wanted to understand the total before payment

The selected donation amount and GivenGain contribution needed to be clear before payment details were entered. The donor should never feel that the final amount changed unexpectedly.

Gift Aid needed to be conveyed as what it was, not an extra cost, but an extra opportunity for the charity to receive more funds

Gift Aid is valuable to charities, but it can be confusing when presented as legal copy inside a long form. It also looks like extra work to do when the donor wants to just pay and leave. The experience needed to explain the benefit in plain language, establish eligibility clearly and keep the declaration separate from marketing consent.

Regional complexity should be handled by the system, not the donor

Donors should not have to work out which rules apply to them. The product should identify the region early and present the right fields, payment methods, currency, consent language and tax information automatically.

UX Exploration

Before moving into visual design, I explored several different flow structures.

Option 1: One-page Checkout

The first option kept everything on one screen: donation amount, contribution, donor details, Gift Aid, consent and payment. This reduced the number of steps but created a long, intimidating mobile page. It also made regional complexity harder to manage.

Why it was rejected: It prioritised technical simplicity over donor confidence and mobile usability.

Option 2: Traditional Multi-Step Checkout

The second option used a more conventional sequence:

1. Donation amount

2. Donor details

3. Payment

4. Confirmation

This reduced form density, but it risked losing the donor’s sense of context between steps. There was clearer progression and reduced cognitive load.

Option 3: Contextual, Mobile-First Donation Flow

The final direction combined the clarity of a multi-step checkout with a persistent donation summary and region-aware logic. The journey was designed around three primary stages:

1. Choose your donation

2. Confirm your details

3. Complete payment

The donor could always see:

• fundraiser or campaign name

• charity name

• selected donation amount

• GivenGain contribution

• final total

• currency

This became the basis of the final experience. I still needed to incorporate possible new payment methods like Crypto and DAF payments as well as showing Gift Aid options for the UK region.

Measuring Success

The redesign was intended to improve both donor experience and platform sustainability.

The most important measures to track after launch were:

• mobile donation completion rate

• conversion rate by region

• checkout abandonment by step

• payment failure rate

• time taken to complete a donation

• usage of Apple Pay, Google Pay and other accelerated payment methods

• Gift Aid declaration completion rate in the UK

• contribution acceptance, adjustment and opt-out rates

• donation-related support requests

• repeat donor behaviour

• donor satisfaction or post-donation trust feedback

Outcomes

I redesigned a high-stakes global donation journey where trust, emotion, regulation, payments and mobile usability all had to work together.

The goal was not simply to reduce friction, but to help donors feel confident that their money was going to the right cause, in the right amount, through a platform they could trust.