Podcast Donation Portal

We wanted to build on an experiment that addressed a longstanding issue: How might we convert podcast-only NPR listeners to member station donors?

NPR bylaws stipulated that only member stations could solicit donations from listeners. NPR could refer potential donors, but they weren’t always familiar with their station.

As a result, they were being referred to stations at a very low rate. For those who did donate to their station, attributing that donation referral to the podcast they love was nigh-impossible.

Pictured: Version 1.0

I was brought onto the team to guide design strategy and execution towards a more scalable portal.

We wanted to maintain the simplicity of the first iteration while expanding the experience to support more shows, direct more traffic to the portal, and gather more useful donation data.

The solution I designed accomplished this through supporting all strategic podcasts, establishing a memorable URL scheme, clarifying UX copy, and cleaning up a few interaction patterns. This allowed us to:

Let hosts verbally direct traffic to the right place
Attribute traffic to a specific podcast
Attribute referrals to a specific podcast
Get a list of userIds that interacted with the donation portal