By heatherbird on Tuesday, June 23rd, 2009 in New on JustGiving
First of all, we’re really sorry about the problems that some of you have been having with the launch of the new site. We know how frustrating and worrying they have been for lots of you who are currently raising money and making donations, and we have our tech team working round the clock to fix them.
We’d like to give you an update on:
- what’s been fixed
- what’s outstanding
- how we tested the site before going live
- why we decided to launch on Saturday (20th)
1) These things are now fixed
- Email receipts, alerts and reminders are now being sent out. If you made a donation over the weekend, you will receive an email receipt from us by the end of the week. To make sure everyone receives a donation receipt, you might receive it twice, but don’t worry - it’s just for the one donation.
- Photos are now showing up on JustGiving pages
- Charity logos are now showing up on JustGiving pages
- Widgets are now working
2) These things are outstanding and being worked on right now
We are really sorry that some of you are having problems logging in. We’re working on it now and expect to have it fixed by the end of the day. For now, please follow our advice here.
There are still some problems with people seeing pages and making donations. These are being looked at urgently and will be fixed by the end of the day.
3) Testing
Some of you have asked us about our testing of the new site. We just wanted to let you know how we tested, because it’s one of the most important parts of any new release.
We’ve been through some really rigorous testing, but in any new website launch, the transition to live environment throws up issues that it’s just impossible to 100% guarantee against. Here’s Sunny Bhowan, who leads the testing:
“Here at JustGiving, we have conducted both function and load testing on the site in our testing environment, and finally we tested through a replica of the production environment. During our extensive load testing we replicated millions of requests on our system - we performed saturation tests as well as sustained load tests. We take a test-driven approach to our development, building unit tests and functional integration tests to ensure that all changes to our application are fully regressed.
Over the past year, our core technical teams have, at every point of the new build, gone through both usability and functionality testing processes. We are grateful everyone who has brought to our attention the issues and shortfalls you’ve found. We can assure you that each and every piece of feedback and comment is being looked at by a team member from our in-house pool of experts to provide a solution.
Our website is your website and together we will work to meet your expectations and help you to achieve your goal, which is to raise much-needed funds for your chosen charities.”
4) Timing of the new site
We’ve been asked why we chose Saturday 20th June to deploy the new site. Unfortunately, there is a never a perfect time to launch an ambitious project like a new site with new technology – it will always coincide with some events. We looked really hard at when the least impact for you would be, and while there are plenty of events in June, we find it’s a relatively less busy month than the rest of the year.
Here’s Zarine Kharas, our CEO:
“I know that many of you have suffered a high degree of extreme frustration and I really am sorry for that. Thank you for bearing with us through these first few days of teething problems. We’re confident they will be resolved - this might just take longer than we originally thought. But the end result will be a much-improved site that helps you raise even more money for the cause you’re passionate about. Please believe me when I say that we really have got people working all night and all day to get these things fixed.”
As soon as we’ve fixed everything that’s not working at the moment, we’ll be working on more adjustments to the site, so we would really appreciate your feedback. Please send your ideas to suggestions@justgiving.com
Finally, Liz Kessick, who has been involved in the redesign of JustGiving, will be posting tomorrow to explain more about the choices involved in the redesign.
Tags: new JustGiving, service update, update
87 Comments | permalink
87 Responses
Ham said...
June 23rd, 2009 at 5:15 pm
“We looked really hard at when the least impact for you would be, and while there are plenty of events in June, we find it’s a relatively less busy month than the rest of the year”
Please could you provide the stats to back up that statement? Otherwise, it sounds far too much like other spurious claims made like “This upgrade has gone really well” which appears on these pages.
This is because it flies in the face of reason and - admittedly unscientific - stats that we can gather. Using Google searching on the string “”Event Date: ddth mmm 2009″ and counting the hits for all Saturdays produces the following:
June 20 - 114, 27 - 95 July 4 - 63, 11 -91, 18 - 120, 25 - 21 (!!) Aug 1 - 139, 8 - 15 (!!) 15 - 50, 22-31, 29 - 18 Sep 5 - 47, 12 - 94, 19 -26, 26 - 21, Oct 3 - 37, 10 - 33, 17 - 18.
Also, the location of events clearly shifts overseas where logic says the number of people involved will be less.
So, unscientific but as a snapshot it seems to run contrary to your assertion that all weekends are the same, that the 20th was a low usage weekend, and the common sense that says more events are put on in summer.
Martin Johnson said...
June 23rd, 2009 at 5:17 pm
Please make sure you ask everyone to stay behind and man the phones tonight so people can donate by phone.
Really important in regaining your credibility.
Rgds
MJ
Martin Johnson said...
June 23rd, 2009 at 5:21 pm
in 2) above, you say donation-related problems will be fixed by end of day….Mike said the same thing yesterday….
What has happened to make you confident that this assertion has high credibility?
Rgds
MJ
pete said...
June 23rd, 2009 at 5:34 pm
Here’s your problem, you chose to use the .net platform
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/06/23/just_giving_website_relaunch_problems/
David said...
June 23rd, 2009 at 6:14 pm
You should not be asking people to call in on an 0845 number because your site isn’t working properly. It costs a lot more to call 0845 than standard numbers and you keep a share of the call. It means that the more problems you cause the more you earn. If you’re giving that extra money to charity you should tell people this, if you’re adding it to revenue then we really should know.
SteveK said...
June 23rd, 2009 at 6:17 pm
I know it seems like you’re getting a kicking at the moment and I’m sure you know where the mistakes were made so you don’t need me to tell you.
So I just wanted to say good luck, take your time, the damage has been done so there’s no need to rush and make things worse, especially as it gets late and you get tired.
heatherbird said...
June 23rd, 2009 at 6:32 pm
Thanks for your comments, I totally understand your point of view but this is a relatively less busy time to launch the site for a couple of reasons.
Donations peak in April and May for the London Marathon and whilst there are still events in June, the volumes of traffic to the site do start to decrease at this time.
Fundraising is not just about the date of events but also the months of build up to them. People collect donations for events, such as the London Marathon, as much as 9 months before. So we understand that it has coincided with a number of events but the fundraising for them will have started a long time before and will continue for another 3 months or longer if the page owner so chooses.
The tech team is working round the clock to fix the problems and the rest of the team is answering emails and phone calls to try get to people as soon as possible.
Unfortunately we cannot take donations over the phone for card security reasons.
heatherbird said...
June 23rd, 2009 at 6:34 pm
Hi again,
I just wanted to clarify that our 0845 helpdesk number is charged at a local rate and we do not profit from it in any way.
Martin Johnson said...
June 23rd, 2009 at 6:36 pm
I agree somewhat on the “tired” comment above, but sometimes folks are their most creative, resourceful and determined when under a little pressure….get the team spirit high, bring in good-quality food and drink (no alcohol) and pull an all-nighter if necessary…..,
your customers will all stay with JustGiving if we see the pain being shared and progress being made….think “Start-up” and kill the beast….
oh, and man the phones….
Rgds
MJ
David said...
June 23rd, 2009 at 6:56 pm
Heather, that is simply not true. It is one thing to mess people around
over charity donations, it is entirely another thing to give
false information about call charges. ‘Local rate’ ceased to exist
about 10 years ago. Since then 0845 and 0870 numbers have been
used by businesses to earn money via call sharing from
unsuspecting callers. I suspect someone gave you the answer you wrote earlier.
You need to ask them if we’re not getting our cut then
who is? Calls to 0845 cost well in excess of
standard calls and are extortionate from mobiles. I would like to
know what you’ll be doing with your revenue share.
AC said...
June 23rd, 2009 at 7:24 pm
This response doesn’t ease my frustration at all.
What’s the point of fixing email receipts and alerts WHEN MY FRIENDS AND COLLEAGUES CAN’T GET ON TO DONATE IN THE FIRST PLACE!! It’s pathetic.
I have 10 days to achieve enough sponsorship to cover the costs of my trip or I won’t be going and this has been a crucial weekend and week with an influx of people wanting to donate and I could literally cry everytime someone says they’ve tried to get on and can’t!!
It’s hard enough to get people to donate and alot do it as a spur of the moment when they receive my email and now it’s all been wasted.
I could get on here last night and then not all day today and I can get on it tonight, but it doesn’t fill me with confidence for tomorrow.
Such a crucial and important website..how did you get it so wrong?
You should be ashamed.
Richard said...
June 23rd, 2009 at 7:35 pm
David - I suggest you stop hassling the poor people that are working hard to resolve the issues.
Who cares if it’s an 0845 / 0800 number or just a standard number. JustGiving have made a number available in the downtime and manned the phones - they are no doubt working flat out to resolve the issues and interference and comments from you will only be slowing things down.
Get off your soapbox and go put the effort into raising some money for charity and leave these poor people alone to do their jobs and get the site back up and running.
heatherbird said...
June 23rd, 2009 at 7:36 pm
Hi David
Can I assure you that I am not giving false information about call charges. We do not make any money from our 0845 helpdesk number - it is charged at the same rate as a BT local rate call. This is verified on numerous web sites, for example,
http://www.08numbers.net/08_call_costs.html
In fact for many BT landline users the call will be free:
http://bit.ly/sj7G3
I will give confirmation from our telephone systems provider in the morning but I cannot get hold of them at the moment.
Jo Green said...
June 23rd, 2009 at 7:49 pm
What would you suggest for someone that’s donated, has received a confirmation email thanking them for the donation, yet the donation is not showing up and neither has it gone from my bank account. Should I try again or wait and see? How long should I wait?
Also, a friend of mine has also donated (twice as she didn’t think the first one had gone through). She has not received email confirmation yet it appears to have been taken from her bank.
The donation site is to http://www.justgiving.com/LouiseForman who has just lost her mum and could do without the worry of this. There’s still only £5 showing at the moment yet many people have donated.
Thank you.
Anna said...
June 23rd, 2009 at 8:19 pm
I just can’t understand why you weren’t able to revert to the old system while you fixed the new one - surely if, as you state, going live can cause issues you can’t guarantee against - there should have be a contingency… I don’t think there is any excuse for having the site down so long.
The phrase some of / many of you experiencing problems is interesting… I know of many people doing the same event as me and we are ALL having problems….
It is hard enough in current times to ask people to donate, but making this a difficult task for them, or your suggestion I just send them another email later in the week, just feels very uncomfortable and inappropriate - in fact good job I didn’t do this today when I would be assured the site would be back, as they would have still have had problems!
The fact I don’t like the new site is irrelevant right now.
Andrew said...
June 23rd, 2009 at 8:20 pm
Once upon a time someone told me the following “There is the belief and there is the evidence and when the two are different the truth is what the evidence is.”
The statements JustGiving are making about testing are not credible given the amount of simple errors I am experiencing. The level of problems being expereinced is not that of normal teathing problems, it is a sign of a badly implemted system. JustGiving is a trusted finacial partner for many charities and should be treating the upgrade of its core systems more seriously.
Why didn’t they run the old and new systems in parallel until they satisfied with the new system and then they could turn off the old system?
Dan Hannon said...
June 23rd, 2009 at 8:21 pm
Could you please put a notice about this on your homepage? It’s really embarrassing directing people to a broken link. There’s nothing to say that this is out of our hands.
Paula said...
June 23rd, 2009 at 8:21 pm
Nice speech about testing, looks like you didn’t do any compatibility testing though. I’m still using IE6 (SP3 for those that are interested), and have got your default 404 error substitution page at nearly every click through your site.
Did you do any testing on any other browsers? It would be interesting to see the list of those that you tested this website against.
As a professional web tester I’m appaulled at what appears to be a major lack of testing of this site. It’s such an incredibly important site to get right as people want to show support for those they care about by donating to their chosen charity.
I’m trying to make a donation for someone who is doing their fund raising event this Saturday. What happens if you don’t get this fixed?
Stuart said...
June 23rd, 2009 at 8:29 pm
I wouldnt mind so much having these issues with a major new rollout if there were actually some new features which I felt were of benefit but there are none in fact the pages look worse now than they did.
There is no ability for users to customise pages in order to create a personal and engaging site for their sponsors to visit, the only choise is to pick one of four colours (how individual). Looking at any other community based website you are years behind and have completely missed the web 2.0 boom. It seems mad to go through all this pain and not to have given any value, I am a software developer myself and cant think of any company that would undergo all the time and expense simply to change the underlying technology to .NET without using it to offer new features to the customer as they are the most important people after all.
Why cant I have the gift aid and outside dontations included in the total if choose rather than in the smallest text possible at the bottom of the page?
Why is the main text area limited to a few lines with a tiny “read more” button that my granny is unlikely to see or think about clicking?
Why does the text editor only have bold italic etc and not more advanced features?
Why can I only have one photo on the page?
Why do the sponsors comments now take up more area now meaning you cant get many on a page and have the same colour as the backgroud making them hard to read?
Why is the name of the event repeated twice (once with the date) at the top left?
Why does the target indicator now take up so much room and not look like anything (at least a thermomenter was representative)?
Sorry for the rant but I feel that you are completely missing a trick.
Paul said...
June 23rd, 2009 at 8:57 pm
You state in point 1 that “Photos are now showing up on JustGiving pages”.
Not on mine it isn’t !!!!! I have cleared my cache and forced numerous page reloads but it does not work. The image URL is as follows:
http://www.justgiving.com/Utils/imaging.ashx?type=convert&imagetype=frpphoto&width=250&image=V2Images/7908eb5c-5601-411c-bb47-379ed255080b.png
Also, the “sponsor me” button on my external site is still not loading. It references the following URL
http://www.justgiving.com/design/1/images/badges/justgiving_badge5.gif
freedom_phil said...
June 23rd, 2009 at 9:21 pm
I’ve wasted 3 hours today due to problems on the site. The breadth and depth of problems since launch is staggering - which companies have been involved - we really should know for future reference. I hope that you will be getting full recompense and that this will be being passed on to the organisations who have lost out.
With the best will in the world we all know that most people will try to give once or twice and then give up. It would be very interesting to know how much has been given in the last week, relative to every other week this year and to this time lst year, and then measure that against the next few weeks donations - i would imagine that certain organisations have lost a lot of money.
Anyway good luck - i will try again tomorrow
Tim said...
June 23rd, 2009 at 9:44 pm
The fact that the change implementation has not worked is obscuring the clear complaints about the new page design.
1) Current fund raisers have carefully written their text to have pertinent information on a single page. It is disrespectful (at least) to have this effort unilaterally discarded by re-formatting onto two pages.
2) The new design is not successful:
- The ‘read more’ link is poorly placed at the top rather than the bottom of the text. Besides second pages of text will not be read.
- comments by recent donors now have too much prominence.
- the nice compact list of donors has been made less accessible.
- the new %complete graphic is too large and busy for the simple data point that it has to convey. Besides it is ugly.
- and so on.
3) But in any case the design changes seems to be misguided. The changes will not enable fund raisers to create individual innovative and creative fund rasing pages. Rather the reverse. The fund raisers now have even less control of the look and feel of their pages than they had before.
I’m not against change. I do feel that these changes have been poorly concieved and executed.
Gordon's Girlies said...
June 23rd, 2009 at 10:06 pm
As a first time ‘end user’ of JG, which is a brilliant concept,we are so disappointed that due to the timing of the site rebuild and consequent collapse, many of our potential supporters are not able/might not donate to our chosen charity.
We have tried to contact you by phone to be told ‘calls are not being taken’..This is not good enough
When you have a website blip such as now June 2009 ..Go 24/7 with a dedicated pledge phone line, not help line, to pick up all the people (night shift workers too) who cannot donate on line Reply to your email queries personally, not just an automated message It will take a bit longer but the donating public will wait if it’s a direct reply Hugely appreciate the problems you are encountering, but we are about to lose a serious amount of money for a big charity as ‘momentum’ doesn’t last forever Hope these comments are useful Good luck with ‘going live’
Gordon’s Girlies Race for Life 5/7/09 Wirral
John Ager said...
June 23rd, 2009 at 10:11 pm
Its Tuesday evening and I seemed to finally been able to log in to update my page only to find I typed in a complete account of my sponsored ride at the weekend on the basis I wanted to send out a short email followup post my ride to both inform sponsors and remind those that hadnt got around to sponsoring that they still could. Sadly I hit the Save button and my new text/account of my ride was not written back to the page. (Grh!!)
Also a number of people have approached me and said they tried to sponsor but hit problems on the site and didnt get a confirmation of payment. Deeply frustrating as reckon I could have gained a couple of hundred pounds today/yesterday if I had striked while the iron was hot for my charity. Can I trust the blue button below this box that says “Submit Comment”.
Simon Pardoe said...
June 23rd, 2009 at 10:16 pm
What’s that, Rigorous testing you say? I don’t think so. My experience has been nothing works and are being sequetially fixed.
I cannot view my page, then cannot see pics, then cannot accept donations, then cannot log in, now cannot edit pages.
I know you will have take a hammering of negativity but in fairnes you’ve overlooked the most fundamantal part of any update - usability.
Not to mention so far as I can tell all the changes have been cosmetic and no fuctionality is actually that diffferent or improved.
Anyway, on a positive note at least this gives me a reason to e-mail everyone again and raise some more awareness.
Just comminucate it next time please!
Richard Goldsby said...
June 23rd, 2009 at 10:19 pm
Disappointing. What surprises me the most is that normally a major application change is communciated to users well in advance, I knew nothing about this until things looked different and stopped working and I’ve been checking my page daily for weeks. If you had communicated effectively maybe people would have layed off the self promotion for a few days, reduced the load on the website, given chance to sort out problems and reduced the embarrassment. I’ve no idea if you could have phased the upgrade in rather than “big bang” but clearly that would have given opportunites for fixing problems and reducing impact.
Good Luck on resolving everything, I’m sure it’s tough at the moment.
Regards
Richard
David said...
June 23rd, 2009 at 10:20 pm
That site is for a company that flogs those
numbers! BT offers free calls to 0845 & 0870
if customers sign up to certain packages because
so many customers had had enough of the 0845 & 0870
scam. Look at saynoto0870.com for the real story. I
am livid because my fund raising has suffered (yr claims
about people collecting over months so it’s not a
problem are laughable). And then to offer a revenue
earning number to people who are already losing money
demonstrates significant cynicism or lack of knowledge of IT & telecoms. 0845
is there to earn revenue, I say again: if you’re not earning
from this you should be asking your supplier where
the money has gone. And please don’t give the line
about better phone services for customers, that’s already
been tried.
Alan N said...
June 23rd, 2009 at 10:20 pm
As a frustrated donor - told by your problematic website to call your friendly helpdesk and by them to log on to your website I am in the ultimate catch 22 - I would like to know how much money you have lost for charities today!
Kerry said...
June 23rd, 2009 at 10:20 pm
This mess has been going on for 4 days now. Myself and friends took part in the Edinburgh Moonwalk on Sat 20th June and lots of family, friends and colleagues waited until the last minute to make a donation. I have been inundated with phone calls and emails from people who made or tried to make donations on Saturday and since who are not sure if the transaction was successful or not. This is totally unacceptable. We were given the choice of using your website or another similar one - in future I will definitely go with the other one.
Any IT professional will tell you that you don’t run an update without testing, testing and testing again. Teething problems can be excused but this is ridiculous. Frankly, if your IT team really have been working ’round the clock’ to fix this then you want to think about replacing them. Total disgrace.
Dipti said...
June 23rd, 2009 at 10:56 pm
Justgiving launched a new site on Saturday. It is now Tuesday and I am still having trouble accessing my fund raising page. Having completed a midnight walk on Friday evening i am disappointed that i cannot update my fundraising page on our achivement.
But most importantly sponsors can not donate after a race.Whilst the midnight walk is still fresh in many peoples mind, it is important that you fix the errors urgently. Why should sponsors be charged extra to call 0845 number. Justgivining should be setting up a free phone number. I note you take a percentage cut from the gift aid, surely you can use this to set up the freephone number.
I cannot log into my account, keeps coming up with error message.
I sent an email to your helpdesk 3 days ago and have still not received a response.
You state that June is a quite month. There are a number of race for life events across the Country taking place and also Hospice walks in June. These small independant charities rely so heavily on donation. The launch of this new site should have been tested before hitting a number of charities.
Justgiving has lost it credability.
Dipti said...
June 23rd, 2009 at 10:59 pm
Please advise what this error message actually means. What exactly are you fixing & when is this going to be resolved.
We’re really sorry for the problems you’re having with our site.
We’ve recently had a major update and we still have some issues that need to be resolved. We promise we’re working around the clock to fix these.
Ade said...
June 23rd, 2009 at 11:06 pm
What on earth did you use to migrate the page content?
The underlying html is all over the place, it looks like it was copied and pasted from word with all sorts of unnecessary formatting bloating the page size to massive proportions. After completely removing and re-entering the content it now looks ok (although it took half a dozen attempts to get it to save).
Also, the new editor is a complete dog. I hope it’s going to be extended in the future to offer more than just bold, italic and link/unlink.
I’m glad I missed all the shenanigans over the weekend but it sounds like there is still a lot of work ahead to get it in to any sort of reasonable shape. I’d fire the test team, roll it back and start again
andy black said...
June 24th, 2009 at 6:26 am
well guys is it fixed or not keep your customers informed at least 3 or 4 updates a day during this outage !
andy black said...
June 24th, 2009 at 6:29 am
anybody notice to you cant donate with valid until date on a card after 2013 mine is 2014 schoolboy/girl design error please sort out and let your user community know how about a status button on your main page and details about outage on mainpage !
Victoria Evans said...
June 24th, 2009 at 7:31 am
This is a message to David. You really are quite rude and over-opinionated!
My organisation has an 0845 number - it does NOT charge people at anything other than local rate pricing which is the lowest price band you can get otehr than free. Nor do I or my organisation profit from the calls made to that number. In my dreams! It would be another vital source of income - which it is not.
I would hope that I - as someone who owns an 0845 number - would know if I am being shafted, and having had the number in operation for over 3 years now I would certainly know how much it cost me to phone the office.
Cut the JustGiving people some slack for goodness sake. Yes the glitches are annoying but they are doing the best they can to rectify problems. Unless you yourself have designed and created a website and coding from scratch yourself, and upgraded a website and its coding personnal, you cannot understand how frustrating it is for the people involved to test and retest a site in advance thousands of times to make sure its working only to have the upgrade take place and other glitches appear.
Stop the whining and whinging and instead get on with the business of being SUPPORTIVE, the ethos and spirit of what JustGiving is about not just to charities and non-profit organisations but towards fellow man.
Nick Tal said...
June 24th, 2009 at 7:48 am
As an IT consultant I cannot believe you have allowed this service to be down for so long - absolutely unacceptable. Was there not a rollback plan to revert to the previous site (which functioned perfectly adequately)? - the timing could not have been worse for me as my email to contacts requesting sponsorship went out on Sunday - the site has been down now for over 48 hours. This kind of service needs to be high availability because people will hit the site once and won’t return.
The clear thing to do is to restore the old website version while you re-test the new before deploying
Leon said...
June 24th, 2009 at 7:51 am
Apart from this issue - which i’m sure you’re going to rectify very soon - you *need* to bring back the ability to see all donations on one page. Two reasons:
- Nobody likes clicking next. It’s a pain in the backside. Why do people like google and apple over microsoft? Because they don’t make people click “next” or “do you really want to” all the time. It’s poor.
- MORE IMPORTANTLY - you lose the benefit of social proof. People look at the list of who’s already donated to decide how much to donate. If the last ten givers happen to have donated less (which is very likely if you’re adopting a sound donation strategy - ask people likely to give more first) then the list I see is lower. This means less money for charities, less money for justgiving and people using your site find it harder to reach their goals.
Bottom line - you will raise less money because of your “let’s get them to click next - yeah, everybody loves clicking next” idea.
John Sutton said...
June 24th, 2009 at 7:53 am
When dealing with technical issues the number one priority as far as communicating with your customers is telling them the truth. Half-truths and falsehoods only get people’s backs up. So, no, your widgets are NOT working, and your claim that mid-June is less busy than the rest of the year is just risible.
Dee said...
June 24th, 2009 at 8:03 am
I agree with David. My phone bill ( currently with Virgin and Orange) both show that a one minute call to an 0845 number is more expensive than a 0207 number….and everyone knows a call to a 0845 number is always more than 10 minutes long as they keep you on hold forever.
Additional with all the telephone bundles people get now non 0845 or 0870 numbers are normally free of charge anyway so the call to this website is more expensive on that basis anyway.
A friend of mine has tried to call to make a donation but she gave up after 12 minutes if not getting anywhere.
Perhaps to make up for this error the website should lower the return it makes on money raised in June until the problem is fixed as numerous people have been unable to donate to my page set up this month for a charity walk I did on the 19th and its the charities that are missing out which seems unfair.
Perhaps also those people trying to donate should get a more informed messgae of when to try again rather than a number to call which doesn’t actually help.
pete said...
June 24th, 2009 at 8:52 am
I find it ammusing that I keep on getting last minute tips (event starts on Thursday) giving me advice on reaching my fund raising target. I am currently at 90% and going by the emails I have been receiving I would have reached already my target and then some but as the site is still rather flakey, I still remain at 90% of my target
Last night I managed a couple of donations but again this morning the site appears to not be 100%
Hope you guys are having luck sorting out the issues. I still wonder it would have been better to roll back the site until you could have sorted out issues instead of using us and the charities as guinea pigs.
Good luck.
Louise Batchelor said...
June 24th, 2009 at 9:25 am
This is very frustrating and embarrassing. Trying to add in offline donations that people have given us since the bike ride to Brighton on Sunday and not being able to. Am sure folk think we have skedaddled with their cash! Please get this working soon! I have another event to create a page for and am having second thoughts about using JustGiving which is a shame…
Matt said...
June 24th, 2009 at 9:37 am
I do find this whole situation very disappointing and really struggle to work out why when the issue was identified you did not revert back to the old set-up until the ‘issues’ had been ironed out.
I agree with other comments that the statement from the tester is flakey to say the least.
Working in IT myself and a large proportion of my job is to ensure projects go live with minimal disruption, so i am keen to know what kind implementation plan did you follow?
how much testing occured beforehand?
and why was there not a roll back plan in case it did not go right?
It is really difficult in this current climate to encourage people to sponsor you and with a donation site which is not fit for purpose at the moment does not help.
To try and get back some creditability you may want to consider waiving the charges that you charge these charities to use this service, which they clearly are not getting at the moment and/or making donations to the charities who use this service.
Please just accept this issue is not an easy thing to fix and roll back to the old page until fully satisfied the new site works.
Hew BG said...
June 24th, 2009 at 9:50 am
Trying to access my page redirects to the (new) error page with this message:
So…
Whilst it’s good that you have actually got a “sorry” page, you are clearly now hacking in fixes.
STOP IT. NOW.
Roll back to the old site, throw away this upgrade and do it again properly. This is a big big fail.
It’s not just failing performance testing, it appears to be failing from a UAT perspective - it is not fit for purpose.
It should have been rolled back on ~Sunday morning when it was clear just how bad the problems were.
This could be JustGiving’s “new Coke” moment if you aren’t careful.
Joan Simpson said...
June 24th, 2009 at 10:01 am
I have been in the unfortunate position with going live with my fundraising page at this very time. My details were emailed to over a hundred people and some of these have also sent them forward to their friends and colleages. I dont know or will never know how many of them tried to make a donation and may not try again. Some of my own family made donations that have failed to appear on my total raised and this is very embarassing for me as they are asking me why and i dont have any answers. I do wish that i had been informed that changes were being made at the weekend and i would have waited a few days to launch my page. I think the damage has been done to my fundraising as their is no way of knowing who tried and failed to donate . I sent an email on the 22nd about one donation of £100 from my mum that hasnt appeared on my total and as yet havent got a reply. I was so excited by going online with my fundraising effort and i feel very dissappointed at the moment. I hope that things are sorted out soon for all our sakes.
Paul Lule said...
June 24th, 2009 at 10:01 am
Can you positively confirm that JG is now officially operational and safe ?
Paul Lule said...
June 24th, 2009 at 10:02 am
Can you confirm that JG is now fully operational ?
David said...
June 24th, 2009 at 10:22 am
The great British public! Do you remember the Not the Nine O’clock News Sketch: “I would willingly sell my house and family to pay the new BBC licence fee…”
Local rate doesn’t exist! 0845 & 0870 are mainly used for revenue sharing! If you want to give extra cash to an organisation because it has let you down then you go ahead, and you can send me my share as well. People who work hard to raise money for charities should not be penalised in this way. Unless you’re on a BT package you will pay at least 4p/minute to call an 0845 number - even while you’re waiting in a queue! That compares with costs as low as 0p per minute to call a normal number. And if you call from from a mobile you will pay anything from 15p per minute to 40p if you’re on pay-as-you-go to wait in that queue! Why on earth would you make people willing to give their time and effort for fantastic causes do that?
Have a look at at saynoto0870.com, Ofcom’s website and various groups that represent vulnerable people. Have a look at what happened when the police issued an 0845 number for worried relatives after the 7/7 bombings - everyone denied there was money being made until someone (a whinger, probably on their soapbox) explained how 0845 worked and the comms company concerned grudgingly donated the revenues to a charity once it had been found out.
I have every sympathy with companies going through I hard time (I am a crisis PR consultant) but what they should not do is make things worse by making people pay extra to find out what’s going on. I have no doubt that many organisations believe that no-one is gaining from this but you have to ask yourselves where that extra call revenue is going.
Kuz said...
June 24th, 2009 at 10:33 am
just to add, donations page is still down. The event I take part in is on Saturday so its very important for me to have the donations in by then. I understand you guys are working hard to resolve this, but surely the priority of a donation website is to ensure donations can be made, rather than putting photos on the page and enabling widgets?
Will you be alerting us all to when the donations page is working? or do we have to keep checking back every now and then and attempt a donation to find it fails after you have tried?
Cheers
Steve said...
June 24th, 2009 at 10:36 am
Given that noones answering the phones anyway over the past 2 days when I’ve tried, despite claims that its manned 8am-8pm its all pretty academic. Isnt it about time for an update since we cant get any information any other way? And this time the truth please. This isnt just a few teething problems for a few people..
pete said...
June 24th, 2009 at 10:37 am
a colleague just tried to make a donation and got as far as entering the credit card details before getting the error page. As he sits near me he has been privy to my cursing about the problems the site has been having. As a laugh he tried to ring the number and all he got was an automated message saying “Sorry, there was a fault” before being disconnected.
*sigh*
If I resort to the good old method of taking actual money (gasp!) from people wanting to sponsor me, how do I actually get it to my charity? I see on the account page there is a field for Offline donations, but cant find anything in the help about the usual process for paying this money in?
Would have been a positive encouragement if I had been able to reach my target before my events starts tomorrow, but now is probably not going to happen. To think I was only had £50 to go
BTW, I am taking part in London to Paris cycle race.
R said...
June 24th, 2009 at 10:38 am
Agree with all the negative comments. Regardless of how hard people are working, some extremely poor choices (technical, design) were taken, and you have to suck up the pressure you’re getting.
Just revert to the old system, for goodness sake!
Quite apart from the horrible technical problems, your new design is vile. Previous version was clean, simple, lots to see on the first screen visible without scrolling, readable comments (not in nasty coloured boxes), could see both the comments and the total on the same page, etc. Tim’s remarks above all extremely valid. Useability - down by a long way. Visual feel - revolting. Somebody needs firing for choosing this way to redesign. Yuck.
Fiona said...
June 24th, 2009 at 10:44 am
Absolutey appalling!!!!
Will we ever see the missing donations? I have had frends tell me that they have donated over the weekend but their donations have not appeared.
I tested with a donation myself & did not get the option to add gift aid or to pay by paypal - but my donation has shown up.
I emailed a lot of people on Saturday with sponsorship requests - what bad timing - I won’t get a second chance with people. My charity will lose hundreds of pounds over this issue.
Alan Davies said...
June 24th, 2009 at 10:53 am
Well most of my anger and frustration has been covered by everyone else. What has really got me down is that my challenge was at the weekend. Like most other people in my situation, I’ve been focusing all my energy towards this weekend over the last 9 months and the final push “remember I’m doing this at the weekend” is completely wasted.
In my experience, charity events usually take place at the weekend so why not change the site over mid week? That way if there are problems you might have them fixed before the event itself. June quiet? Don’t think so - you can’t compare the rest of the fund raising year against the London Marathon that’s ludicrous! I believe there are lots of events attempting to take advantage of the weather in June.
As far as the “improved” site is concerned - the old site had a welcoming hand built feel about it. The new logo isn’t flash enough to tick the professionalism box nor is it “cutesy” enough to be warm and friendly. The so called amazing new thermometer looks really awful to me and increasing the space taken up by donations and text but actually showing less of both is just daft. As another contributor noted we put a huge amonut of effort into striking the right tone in the words used and to only be able to see half of them is maddening.
Alex Jevon said...
June 24th, 2009 at 10:55 am
I’ve just noticed that the image I was using as a link to my justgiving site has now changed its location, thereby breaking the links on two blogs I run. You say Widgets are now working, but in my experience they’re not, thanks to this one file moving. If I hadn’t have noticed this, we’d have lost out.
Added to this our page is up and down like a yoyo at justgiving.com/wackbangerrally
Your previous site was fine. If it ain’t broken, don’t fix it.
John Jennings said...
June 24th, 2009 at 11:14 am
As someone who has been responsible for implementing large tech change programmes, I am sympathetic with your situation - up to a point. Page loading and login issues are one thing, being unable to make payments is another and is quite unacceptable given the nature of your business.
From a personal point of view, I estimate that these issues have cost our charity, Macmillan, over £1000 in donations as we had a big campaign over the weekend with a charity summer ball and over 1000 emails sent asking for donations.
I have now had 20-30 mails and numerous calls saying people cannot donate. With just a week to go until our main event, this is little short of a disaster for us. I would like to know if the proceeds from the 0845 number can be donated to us to compensate for the lost donations. No doubt other fund raisers would benefit from this and it would go a considerable way to repairing your damaged image.
Alan Davies said...
June 24th, 2009 at 11:16 am
CONTINUED: There is little or no improvement as far as photos are concerned and they are a real benefit to boosting fundraising. Even the most basic forum sites have better photo ability than this. Overall the design functions are really dull and make it difficult to make tempting. Ultimately we are trying to “sell” our events and I’m no web designer but I could make a better fist of it than this. I am a regular eventer and I think JG needs to take a look over the fence at what your competition are doing - I think I’ll be going there next time.
Liz Rice said...
June 24th, 2009 at 11:23 am
Just wanted to add…
* A word of encouragement to the folks at JustGiving - I’m sure you’re pulling out all the stops to get everything fixed: good luck.
* Another word of encouragement to JG design team regarding complaints about the way the new site works - I’ve been involved in other site relaunches and you always have a lot of people complaining to start with. I’d agree that the old site was looking a little tired and it was due a refresh - and I’m sure there are plenty of folks who would disagree. The key thing will be to see how your metrics compare in a couple of weeks’ time to a year ago, once everything has settled down.
* Having said that (and I’m again speaking from experience) it does seem odd not to have run a beta test phase where both sites were available in parallel. There have been some pretty fundamentally broken things that would have easily been shown up in a beta test process. Is it too late to allow people to revert to the old site if they are having problems?
* I do agree with an earlier comment from Tim about the reformatting of the pages we’ve carefully built, to the point where our text is being split into two pages. If I could actually get in to edit my page I’d do so to make it work better in the new format, but I can’t….although it’s kind of irrelevant since at the moment it seems no-one can donate on my page anyway.
Pete - see you at the London to Paris ride
Liz Rice said...
June 24th, 2009 at 11:26 am
One more thing - never mind about the costs of 08xx numbers (a subject I got a bit aerated about recently, incidentally - http://lizrice.blogspot.com/2009/05/08-what.html)
I know for sure that most of the people I’ve asked to donate would be a lot more comfortable donating online, and frankly won’t bother with picking up the phone, however much it costs.
Skew said...
June 24th, 2009 at 11:33 am
We’ve given up. Go here
http://www.charitygiving.co.uk/
Simple site that works.
Adrian Bardsley said...
June 24th, 2009 at 11:35 am
I have tried over & over again to log in to manage my page, after following your advice about cookies etc & its failed every time.
Re alternatives such as taking cash money can I point out that there are other web providers of a similar service to JustGiving such as http://www.charitygiving.co.uk and as a fall back it might be a good idea to set up a mirror page on that for sponsors who are unable to donate via JustGiving.
pete said...
June 24th, 2009 at 11:51 am
for those who have subscribe to this thread, there is a new update just been posted
http://blog.justgiving.com/2009/06/24/new-on-justgiving/update-on-the-new-justgiving-wednesday-24th-june/
Interestingly now when I try and access my page I get redirected to the host http://original.justgiving.com/ but get a 404 page not found. Maybe they have taken note of all the unhappy people and are in the process of setting up the old site which worked while they can work through the issues with the new site.
Fingers crossed my page starts working again soon
dannielle said...
June 24th, 2009 at 12:05 pm
I have tried twice now to donate for my friends charity run. I know the first didn’t go through on Saturday and I have no idea if today’s attempt was successful. Both times I entered my card details so I could end up donating twice. How does that get sorted? I have tried your 0845 number but it just rings and then cuts off. Updates are never perfect straight away but if you are going to issue a number for people to check their donations have gone through at least answer the phone.
Ruth Bender Atik said...
June 24th, 2009 at 12:06 pm
This is so disappointing. We have lived for ages with the frustration of being timed out of JG pages (because of taking a phone call in the middle of something) and repeatedly having to log back in. But that was small fry compared to what’s happening now. After days of chaos, today’s message lists all the things that are working properly. The only thing is that they’re not - I still can’t get in to a whole range of fundraising pages.
As for design - I agree with comments already made re the page-owner’s text being limited (irritating), unclear (colour, font size), and the donations page showing only the latest transactions. The previous version gave a much stronger impression of the sheer number of donations.
This is really bad news, JG and a great shame considering how much we have gained from the company up till now.
Dipti said...
June 24th, 2009 at 12:11 pm
Hurrah I can see my sponsorship page. However still cannot get into my account to make any updates.
Did Justgiving do any pilot survey on what charities or general public would like to see on their donation page?
My story - you should be able to see your full story rather asking donors to click on read more.
List of Donation received - like other comments on this page you should be able to see full details of sponsors to date, rather asking people to click on next button.
I know my charity have lost out on donation to date, as people are getting frustrated with error message appearing.
Susan said...
June 24th, 2009 at 1:03 pm
The updated blog says: “JustGiving pages are now accessible.”
Not so. I have just tried yet again to access my page at 12.58 and still getting the error message:
“We’re really sorry for the problems you’re having with our site.
We’ve recently had a major update and we still have some issues that need to be resolved. We promise we’re working around the clock to fix these”
As for the comment in the blog at the top of this page:
“As soon as we’ve fixed everything that’s not working at the moment, we’ll be working on more adjustments to the site, so we would really appreciate your feedback.”
You are kidding us, aren’t you?
Mike said...
June 24th, 2009 at 1:11 pm
The most disappointing and frustrating thing for me here is that had JustGiving had the courtesy to notify users that an upgrade was planned, I would have held off on sending out emails and text messages on Saturday, while en route to our 3 Peaks Challenge. Several people tried to log on to make donations in response to those last minute requests, and so far, none of them have yet been able to make a donation as my page has been unavailable.
This has clearly lost huge amounts of money for charities, and has certainly also lost goodwill for JustGiving. I am doing 2 more events later this year, and will not be using JustGiving for those, as if this has happened once, it can happen again. What a shame, because most of the mess could have been avoided by proper communication (let alone proper testing).
pete said...
June 24th, 2009 at 1:43 pm
To be fair they did send out a message on the 10th of June saying the site was changing and leading up to the change there was a link telling people to view what the new site was going to look like.
However, like most people I just ignored this thinking “Oh, they are just adding some new features, neat”.
I definitely agree with the feedback that the new site design is too heavily focused on the money aspect instead of the story behind the person trying to raise the money
Mark Shaffer said...
June 24th, 2009 at 1:58 pm
Blog of 24th - please *stop* calling these teething problems - it’s far worse than that - perhaps a symptom of the wrong attitude being shown throughout your organisation?
Still no real detail about what actually went wrong and why your “testing” didn’t show up any problems and why you didn’t roll back. I’ve emailed Zarine and Dominic directly as well as the helpdesk and no response…the least that we could expect is a full and open statement from senior management surely….
Rachele said...
June 24th, 2009 at 2:15 pm
The donations problem is a very serious issue!!!!!!!!
I have the same problem as Jo Green, Fiona and many others that I have written on the blog (people donating getting confirmation and amount not appearing on my site). I managed to get through someone this morning and I have been told that my sponsor has to try again. But even more people are now donating on my site and are having the same problems. We are talking about hunderds of pounds lost and not sure if people will be bothered donating again…just because the site doesn’t work.
A very bad launch and at an extremely bad time with the London to Paris event happening in 2 days!!! The old site wasn’t as good in the design, but it worked. As this is about charity I think functionality and ensuring the donations go to the charity should have been in your number 1 priority when testing!!!!!
Sue Chessher said...
June 24th, 2009 at 2:16 pm
I wish I’d known that the website was being re-designed this weekend. My company sent out an all-staff e-mail late Friday requesting sponsorship for an event taking place that night. I’m really concerned that people tried to sponsor me and gave up because of the difficulties. And why was it only TODAY that I discovered what was going on. Also, what’s with the strings of coloured liquorice in the photograph. Can somebody enlighten me as to what these are?
Keith said...
June 24th, 2009 at 3:06 pm
Very very dissappointing.. Like many people I have had to send out apology emails to the 100’s of people that I have asked to donate to my cause. It becomes very intrusive on their time and makes them less likely to donate. I have seen all the notes from executives of Just Giving saying how sorry they are, but these words are meaningless. I have seen the notes from the IT team about how much they tested, and they are laughable…At the moment all we are getting is lip service, promising a better service and saying that all will be better in the future.. That is too late for my charity.
So here is my challenge - if Just Giving really is sorry for this absolute debacle, why don’t they offer to waive, or at the very minimum, substantially reduce their fee against all donations for the last few days. Whilst I do not think that even this goodwill gesture would recoup all the money that my charity has lost, but at least it would show some understanding of how angry and upset this has made people and how their “service” has let people down. Does anyone agree ?
Peter said...
June 24th, 2009 at 6:56 pm
I am completely flummoxed. JG has one of the highest transactions fees for online donor fundraising and I guess I expected more for that sort of money. Given the fees we were a bit on the fence about them, but this cinches it. We will no longer encourage our supporters to use the site. Anyone know if any other good platforms? I’ve tried dojiggy, but was not to happy about that.
Dipti said...
June 24th, 2009 at 10:19 pm
Peter try - http://www.charitygiving.co.uk
Shawn said...
June 24th, 2009 at 10:23 pm
Can’t believe what a total shambles the upgrade is.Like almost all on here, I much prefered the old style where the full story and list on donators could be seen…..Imagine how many click throughs you would have to do on Phil Packers Page!!!
My event is due to take place on Saturday (fortunately I have spent 3 months drumming up donations) but I was hoping for a bumper last week which just isn’t happening. One hardy soul managed to get through the minefield, but have lost countless others that I know of…..Don’t feel like I can do a last big mailshot as I just don’t believe I can trust the reliability of the site.
Mark GuideDogs said...
June 25th, 2009 at 11:43 am
Any news please? I want to send out a mailshot and have been holding off because of the disastrous update. I will only do it when you give the all clear, as people will refuse to waste loads of time donating unsuccessfully, and will be loathe/forget to try it twice.
Upgrade problems are understandable, it is IT after all. However, it’s the humans behind it who should have had a back up. As my friend, Mr Hindsight, says, when your business is based solely around the giving donations over the web, the technology really needs to be ‘always there’, even in it’s basest form.
I’m sure you are all doing your best, but regular updates, however trite and unspecific, do help us frustrated users to be more forgiving.
Kevin said...
June 25th, 2009 at 1:50 pm
Currently (1.30pm on 25th June), everyone’s fundraising pages are inaccessible (randoming clicking on friends’ pages has not found a single one that works).
There’s no access to personal accounts either, although our charity’s account is working OK.
I really wish I hadn’t sent out an e-mail asking for support yesterday!
Kevin said...
June 25th, 2009 at 1:55 pm
A quick PS
You can access the ‘old’ format of fundraising pages through Justgiving’s secure subdomain
Click on https://secure.justgiving.com/blowe4bkit and you’ll see what I mean
JustGiving - Raise money for charity online said...
June 25th, 2009 at 2:03 pm
[...] Click here for Tuesday’s update. [...]
sc said...
June 25th, 2009 at 3:35 pm
Website is completely unusable with the opera web browser
heatherbird said...
June 25th, 2009 at 4:47 pm
Hi Kevin,
Thanks for your comment about accessing your old JustGiving page via the hostname secure.justgiving.com.
The ‘secure’ and ‘original’ host names are being used for charity-branded pages that are still live under the old system. While it is possible to view your old JustGiving page this way and make a donation that part of the system is really reserved for those charities. We can’t guarantee that donations made through those pages that are not charity branded will be correctly processed.
To make sure your donation is processed properly, we strongly advise that you use the http://www.justgiving.com URL.
julie sansome said...
June 25th, 2009 at 5:59 pm
Hi - a small thing i guess in the grand scheme of things and seeing just how many problems there have been - - but my badge isnt linking/working - - is the image still at http://www.justgiving.com/design/1/images/badges/justgiving_badge10.gif ???
Leana said...
June 26th, 2009 at 8:44 am
Can you let me know the timescales to sort out this problem? I am entered into a charity event next satuarday and have no other way of collecting donations apart from your site. so far I have a grand total of £20! Totally gutted!!
As soon as I click on my page I get an error message so I cant even click on to see the content.
Can someone look at it? an update would be nice to knwo someone is looking at my problem. Not a very good ‘new’ site is it!
Helen said...
June 26th, 2009 at 9:24 am
Why was there no update yesterday. It’s nearly a week since the update and the issues still haven’t been resolved.
People still can’t donate. If I search for my name the system says there are no results !!
john amandini said...
June 26th, 2009 at 8:14 pm
STILL no Pay Pal link! What a shambles Just revert tot the original set up. It waas clear consise and most impotantly of all, it worked.
John amandini
sarah said...
June 27th, 2009 at 8:45 pm
I can’t even set up a page now for my daughter. I get some random web page link even after its accepted her name and saying its available.
http://www.justgiving.com/rashassan-13sdafd
Whats that all about? Not good people, not good
Nigel Doggett said...
June 30th, 2009 at 4:08 am
I suggest you change your website about how wonderful you are winning awards etc until you get this sorted out. It is acutely embarrassing to write and rewrite to friends saying things are now fixed when clearly they are not; no access to site, some payments going through and not showing, some double payments etc. My key event was on Sunday, so lead up week and pre-week were absolutely ruined by this. It would also be nice to have the courtesy of a response to some of my emails. Nigel
jason hyde said...
July 6th, 2009 at 7:33 pm
This web page has been a hassle from the start. Many friends not being able to access it and many who have donated and not showing up.
Now when you go onto the page it says that you have either typed in the address wrong or the page has been cancelled!!
This is appalling, and for such a sensitive appeal as mine is, I am totally devastated at the problems we have been having.
Please sort it out. Or just scrap your new system and go back to the old.
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