By heatherbird on Wednesday, June 24th, 2009 in New on JustGiving
Thank you so much for bearing with us over the first few days of teething problems with the new site.
Our developers have been working day and night to resolve the problems you’ve been having, and in the vast majority of cases these are now fixed. There may still be the odd glitch for some people, so please get in touch and let us know.
Fixes are in place for these things:
- You can now log in to your account
- JustGiving pages are now accessible
- Images are now appearing on JustGiving pages
- Emails are now being sent (and donation receipts are on the way if you donated earlier this week)
The site is still working slightly slower than normal because of the work being done on it at the moment. It should be working faster again by the end of the week, so please bear with us while we keep working on it.
We know that a minority of people are still having problems donating, so our advice, to lessen frustration, is to hold off on sending any donate reminder emails until later in the week when the site is running more smoothly.
We would like to make it clear that the problems you are experiencing on the site are nothing to do with Quantiv, as reported on www.theregister.co.uk yesterday. This is a software solution that powers our transactional systems and has proven to be a major success for JustGiving since 2001. The systems that support our website are designed and developed in-house. We take full responsibility for addressing and resolving the problems that you are experiencing, something we are currently working very hard to do.
We’re still working to fix these things:
- PayPal - we’ll keep you updated on when this will be back on JustGiving
- Some people are still having problems with old-style widgets - please send the page address to help@justgiving.com
We’ll carry on updating the blog to let you know what’s happening.
Lots of you have been asking why we’ve changed the design of JustGiving pages in the way that we have. So we asked Liz Kessick, who looks after our usability and was involved in the redesign, to talk a bit about it:
“The new JustGiving pages are the result of over a year’s worth of research on our side – we spent a lot of time (approx 40 hours of user testing and about 20 user groups) speaking to our users, from page builders and sponsors, to the charities which use the site. A few themes kept emerging in all of our discussions – the first was that the current pages were looking a bit tired and generic. Which was fine – we could soldier on with that. But, more importantly, our users told us that our current site didn’t allow them to express their personality as much as they’d like – and that we weren’t emphasising the things that they thought were really important, like the fundraising thermometer.
Rest assured that the new fundraising pages are not going to stay the same forever – our vision over the next few months is to offer people more themes to personalise their pages, and some options for how the pages display too. We’d love to hear your ideas on how you’d like to customise your page – we’ll be reviewing everyone’s suggestions over the next few weeks, and we’ll be making changes based on feedback.”
Thanks for all of your feedback on the blog and over email, so far. Please keep it coming - there are already trends emerging in the things you would like to see and it’s going to inform the work we do to develop the site for you.
106 Comments | permalink
106 Responses
pete said...
June 24th, 2009 at 11:37 am
I am not sure where you come up with “We know that a minority of people are still having problems donating…”. Of the dozen or so people who have tried to sponsor me over the last 24 hours only 2 have been successful.
I dont have the luxury of waiting till later in the week as my event starts tomorrow.
Being a software engineer myself, I know for things to look for. Every time I get the error page, this seems to be the related error message this
<!– ERROR: Exception on page ” occurred in module ‘GivingGroup.Facades’ — An existing connection was forcibly closed by the remote host–>
Now I know I have seen these kind of erros before during my own development. and without wanting to tell you how to do your job, 9 times out 10 these kinds of errors are usually caused by some service being overloaded, an invalid SSL certificate or a load balancer being setup incorrectly.
Just my 2 cents
stevek said...
June 24th, 2009 at 1:33 pm
I have raised 134% of my target, the MASSIVE graphic obscures the ‘my account’ and other links at the top of the page in IE7, so I have to refresh the page and then click on the link before the MASSIVE graphic appears.
Is the MASSIVE graphic the fundraising thermometer? It’s certainly emphasised now.
Certainly the feedback here seems to be that people liked to be able to read the full story and the comments without having to click around. My view, which I’ve expressed elsewhere, is that the emphasis on money and targets takes away from the human aspects of people’s stories and the messages of support. It’s no longer about the challenges people are doing, why they are doing them and the people involved, it’s now just about the money.
At least, the current ‘theme’ used on the pages suggests that it’s just about the money.
Customisation: I’d like to be able to have my story and updates on one page. I’d like all the messages of support on the same page. I’d like to be able to pick the style and size of the MASSIVE thermometer. I’d like the amount I’ve raised be consistently reported (it’s one value on the main page, and another on the donate screen because of the gift aid).
Errors:
- I’m still having problems accessing my page and navigating once logged in.
- viewing this blog page in IE6 gives me a javascript error that means Elizabeth’s comments don’t appear.
The error is:
Line 34
Char 3
Error: Object doesn’t support this property or method.
Andrew said...
June 24th, 2009 at 2:39 pm
Tried to donate with two cards and didn’t work. Most companies now TEST their websites before going live. What a joke and charities are losing out you should be ashamed of yourselves.
Nik said...
June 24th, 2009 at 2:49 pm
Stevek - which is your fundraising page - I’m interested to see how the “supergraphic” thermometer is working at >100%.
Cheers, Nik.
Nik said...
June 24th, 2009 at 2:51 pm
Oh I see (just looked at someone elses page) - the “star” goes supernova and takes up even more of the screen!
Well done on your fundraising efforts!!
Nik.
kari ann said...
June 24th, 2009 at 3:04 pm
I would like to state that i agree with stevek’s comments above regarding the (at least visual) priorities of the ” new look”. It does seem very money oriented. In addition it is no longer easy to jsust view the page without having to navigate it.
When i first set up our justgiving sponsorship page 2 weeks ago, i marvelled at the ease of it, and everyone i sent it out to also appreciated the look (reading everyone’s comments on one page) and how simple it was to make a donation. That service lasted a week and a bit, right up until the afternoon of our event, the MoonWalk Edinburgh (20th June). Then just a few hours before starting the walk i was unable to log in and write an update for our sponsors to read. At that time i noticed the “new look” and found it boldly different, a bit more busy and not so easy to read at a glance. I figured i’d figure it out the next day… However, since that time i have consistently had difficulties accessing our account.
I would like to update our page with photos and our experience of the MoonWalk. I would also like to remind people that if they haven’t already donated, but are now inspired by new photos and stories, that they can still make a contribution. I would also like to thank people who’ve recently made donation to us, which does show up on the page when i manage to get it up, but i have not been made aware via emails at the time of their making donations, as was the case prior to this new look. Another glitch, which means that our supporters are not being acknowledged.
I did send an email to the help desk on that first occassion, and received a reply which has been helpful on two occassions. Unfortunately, the advice given has not consistently helped. Overall the last several days of hiccups have been a big bother.
John said...
June 24th, 2009 at 3:04 pm
Yes agree re the supernova effect as I’m at over 100%.
What is really hacking me off is the comment “teething problems” like not being able to logon or accept donations.
I would hate to see your definition of major implementation problems,
I will not be using justgiving again, I wouldn’t trust them to run a proverbial in a brewery.
pete said...
June 24th, 2009 at 3:52 pm
I just tried to update my page and when clicking save I got the error message that the stories are limited to 10,000 characters.
Now I know I can ramble sometimes but I was sure I didnt write that much of a story.
As there was no character count on the edit page I checked with a text editor and I am only using 1200 characters. Hmmm, maybe someody forgot an extra 0 somewhere. To think we were told they use thorough test driven development methods, would love to see what the code coverage is like (sorry for the geek talk).
Simon said...
June 24th, 2009 at 4:09 pm
As others have said, I think it’s important that you have the option to view all donations on one page. I just looked at a friends page with 100+ donations and I got fed up of looking after a few clicks. When they were all on one page it was easy to see, at a glance, who had given what and when. The same page also has reached over 100% target so the counter is huge! Again, I’m not sure why it has to be so large. I’m sure this causes people to give more! Same with the ‘Story’ part - I’m not sure what the logic is in hiding some of the text.
The page design just seems to have too much white space. All the wasted space could be used to display more donations! It looks a bit too much like Twitter and I’m not sure what the current fascination is with making all web pages look like Twitter with iPhone icons… I’m not saying the old JG pages were perfect, far from it, but they worked and while I’m all for expressing my personality, I use JG mainly as a tool to collect money and spur people to give. The old site was very good at that!
Simon said...
June 24th, 2009 at 4:11 pm
The sentence “I’m sure this causes people to give more!” in my above comment should be ignored - I meant to delete it. Sorry!
Jayant Patel said...
June 24th, 2009 at 4:24 pm
The followings are not true in my case.
“Fixes are in place for these things:
- You can now log in to your account
- JustGiving pages are now accessible
- Images are now appearing on JustGiving pages
- Emails are now being sent (and donation receipts ”
I sent out about 140 emails requesting sponsorship this morning. The list included my own two emails. Thus far none have materialised. Often pages jump to error messages.
Bob said...
June 24th, 2009 at 4:25 pm
None of us like change but so far it looks like you have created a million problems, wrecked one of my event’s fundraising and made the whole thing worse both aesthetically and practically. You could consider putting it all back as it was .
elephantgirl said...
June 24th, 2009 at 4:28 pm
I cannot even access my fundraising page at the moment (but could earlier) so sporadic access is even more frustrating; do I risk one last push (as suggested by latest tips received) when there is a very real risk no one can get to the page in question?
New website VERY disappointing-as others have commented, it isn’t always all about the money. Raising awareness, support etc are all important, especially for local events and small charities. Having to click to get the full story reduces the impact of the information provided (and why have the smileys been taken away?) The new format of listing donors gives too much emphasis to the name, rather than the comment…..if I want to search, as the fundraiser, that’s fine, but some donors may find the prominence given to their name off-putting?
I appreciate that glitches happen, but they are affecting real people-how many donations are going to be lost while these problems continue-collecting funds the ‘old-fashioned’ way suddenly becomes very appealing!
Zoe said...
June 24th, 2009 at 4:34 pm
I am unable to create a page or view any details for any charity, I think these are a bit more than teething problems for a ‘few’ people…..
Ali said...
June 24th, 2009 at 6:34 pm
I can’t create an account, I keep getting this error:
Ali said...
June 24th, 2009 at 6:34 pm
– ERROR: Exception on page ‘http://www.justgiving.com/fundraising-page/creation/default.aspx?cid=11387&pcid=c56d6306-d107-45cf-a97e-6ff15ab3d456′ occurred in module ‘GG.Web.Website’ — Object reference not set to an instance of an object.–
Stuart said...
June 24th, 2009 at 7:00 pm
I think it is very easy to be critical of someone, especially when you are not in the driving seat. So to through in a positive I am just off the phone to Just Giving, I spoke to a very helpful man, who gave me an accurate time frame in which the problems would be fixed, which I can report back to my Board of Directors in the morning. He has also taken my email address and will email me to confirm when things are up and running.
In summary, to make something better it often has to get worse first. I’m sure what Just Giving are doing is intended to be in our best interests, and whilst this has gone ‘titsup’, from my point of view they have made this up with great customer service.
Good Luck getting things sorted out.
heatherbird said...
June 24th, 2009 at 7:50 pm
Hi all,
A quick update from us - we’re really sorry that some of you are continuing to experience problems. We’ve just gone through all the issues that have been flagged to us today with the technical team who will be working on the remaining bugs overnight. We are currently testing some new releases which we hope will fix the major issues and we’ll give you an update first thing in the morning.
Leon said...
June 24th, 2009 at 7:52 pm
When are you going to fix it so I don’t have to click the “next” key in order to be able to see all of the donations? This is a rubbish, stupid and, most importantly, donation-reducing feature which needs to be removed straight away. I mean - you could roll back to the old version of the page.
Is the fact that you’ve monumentally screwed up this launch (and if I appear vitriolic it’s only because your incompetence has cost my chosen charity real cash money - which they could be using to help people in real need) anything to do with the fact that Virgin are launching a competitor? When all the dust has cleared I think your customers deserve to find out the real truth about what happened.
Jane said...
June 24th, 2009 at 7:55 pm
This is insane. I still cannot login and a number of my friends said they’ve received error displays when they tried to donate. I will never use Just Giving again. And whoever is in charge of technology should be taken to task.
Jane said...
June 24th, 2009 at 7:58 pm
Oh and as someone else said, I find the “teething problems” comment odious. It tries to diminish the importance and trust users place in your product. The fact that I cannot raise money on software designed to help me raise money is a bit more of a problem than “teething” implies.
Duncan said...
June 24th, 2009 at 8:00 pm
The widgets are still broken!
malcolm said...
June 24th, 2009 at 8:55 pm
I realise you’ve had a few problems with the revamped site, but my donation (I have a reference) is not showing on the concerned party’s website nor as a debit on my bank account. Before I re-donate, please can you advise whether this is just a back-log and will eventually go through ….
Russell said...
June 24th, 2009 at 9:00 pm
I cannot even register on the site! IE8 Windows 7
it all breaks when it comes to entering my address
Anne Lawson said...
June 24th, 2009 at 9:02 pm
I can’t set up an account (9pm 24th) and I NEED to do this tomorrow as we go to print on Friday morning (26th) with a group newsletter which has to have the justgivng page ref for a big local WaterAid fundraiser. When will I be able to set up an account?
Thanks. Anne
Richard said...
June 24th, 2009 at 9:45 pm
Nope - still not working. Despite you guys saying problems have been resolved… I now get this..
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.
Please go to the blog to find our latest update: http://blog.justgiving.com
You can find answers to frequently asked questions in our help section at: http://www.justgiving.com/help
If you were trying to make a donation, entered your card details successfully and want to check if the donation has gone through, please contact our helpdesk at help@justgiving.com or on 0845 021 2110.
If you did not enter your card details your donation won’t be processed. Please try again at a later time
Please rest assured we’re working flat out to make sure the new system runs perfectly. Thank you for bearing with us.
The JustGiving Team
Ian MacLeod said...
June 24th, 2009 at 9:59 pm
Just tried setting myself up on your site…., and keep getting bounced out with various error messages!!!!
alistair said...
June 24th, 2009 at 11:19 pm
I still cannot update my account which is very frustrating, but I agree with others on here that by having to click to another page to read more about the charity you are raising money for, your personal story and to view other donations and comments seems to go against any claim of making it easier to use.
Surely the less clicking the better. Someone has ballsed up big time!
Fiona said...
June 24th, 2009 at 11:28 pm
I cannot believe you went ahead with this so-called update with obviously so little testing. The site is next to useless and losing a lot of charities much-needed cash. No-one wants to click through ten-plus pages to see other donations to a chosen charity - when they were all on the same page it was MUCH better. The Donate Now button obscures other, more interesting, information. This new site is terrible and will put a lot of people off using JustGiving. Bring back the old site!
Dorothea Dnn said...
June 24th, 2009 at 11:31 pm
I have tried for two days to donate on site, and have felt really exasperated that I still have not offloaded the goods! I think in the current climate that this is not doing anything for charities who already are having a lean time. The awful thing is that people just may not return to the site to try again.
I would have thought that an alternative system could be rolled in while the “real” system is mended??
Dorothea
Danny said...
June 24th, 2009 at 11:32 pm
Just switch back to the old site. Dont fix these bugs live.
Several people have been trying to spondsor us. You are costing the charities money.
You already cream off far too much as it is.
Anna said...
June 24th, 2009 at 11:37 pm
’still may be the odd glitch for some people’…??? seems to be everyone I know.
I don’t think the constant comments that it is fixed / will be fixed by the end of the day are helpful - clearly it isn’t accurate.
I am very fed up, and think this is an absolute scandal - I am convinved I would have met my target by now if this hasn’t happen.
I agree with all the comments re the list of donations - I had some large sponsors at the beginning - deliberately asked people to do that - and now they aren’t visible. Also the comments re read more on the personal information.
People don’t want to wait for screens to reload.
So frustrated with you Just Giving - ruining the run up to my event.
James said...
June 24th, 2009 at 11:44 pm
My site is not working in so far as donations cannot be made, also I cannot update offline donations.
I agree with the previous comment that you should restore the previous system until you have got your problems sorted out.
You really should have tested the system out properly beforehand to prevent this scale of disruption which is clearly going to be expensive to those of us trying to raise funds for hard pressed charities.
Steve H said...
June 25th, 2009 at 12:10 am
Hi Heatherbird,
Please tell me that there is a mistake in your report when Liz Kessick said:
“The new JustGiving pages are the result of over a year’s worth of research on our side – we spent a lot of time (approx 40 hours of user testing and about 20 user groups) speaking to our users, from page builders and sponsors, to the charities which use the site. A few themes…..”
40 hours of user testing??? Even if that was 40 hours for each of the 20 user groups = 800 hours, I would say that this is hugely inadequate for an application of this complexity.
JustGiving have had such a market lead in the charity giving business, but they have just opened the door very wide for the competition to get in - and I hope they do because we need greater choice.
Steve
p.s. I think your diplomatic skills are excellent, but you cannot possible mask a cock up of this magnitude.
Lee said...
June 25th, 2009 at 12:15 am
Lost donations and lost for words!!
We need this site up and running!
I’m sure you are all working around the clock to fix it,but we need realistic time scales of when the site will be up and running!
Rich said...
June 25th, 2009 at 1:38 am
Can someone please take responsibility for what can only be described as a complete mess. Stop pretending it is only teething problems and admit the true scale of the issue. Also stop saying that the majority of issues have been resolved. You’ve been saying this since Monday yet people still can’t access my site.
Fiona said...
June 25th, 2009 at 5:17 am
I tried to set up a page to raise funds and it would not let me. Any ideas?
John C said...
June 25th, 2009 at 7:13 am
JustGiving said:
“Wednesday 24th June
Our developers have been working day and night to resolve the problems you’ve been having, and in the vast majority of cases these are now fixed. There may still be the odd glitch for some people, ”
Hi, our “odd glitch” seems to be a little more, in as much as the site still doesn’t work at all.
I expect you are already on it, but after reading the post about the majority of sites being fixed I thought I had maybe better bring your attention to one that is still broken.
Thanks,
John
Kevin Moore said...
June 25th, 2009 at 7:14 am
My event is Sunday!!!!!
No-one has been able to access my site since yesterday morning!!
The one donation that did get in yesterday morning was NOT notified to me via e-mail!!!
Can’t see that there has been much of an improvement myself, and I am very concerned that people will just not bother to sponsor me!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Jon said...
June 25th, 2009 at 7:15 am
It is simply not good enough, we are at a critical stage of our fundraising and we have now experienced significant down time with people not being able to access our site and donate.
My worry is that all the team doing our event have been emailing and chasing all their contacts over the last few days and when they try and donate, the site is down. Now I know what people are like, they are busy and if they can’t donate then there is the chance they will not come back again!
I made a suggestion yesterday that justgiving should be collecting email addressess from those trying to donate and send them a reminder when the site is back up.
The blog said it would be sorted by close of play Wednesday, it’s now first thing Thursday morning and it’s down again!! There was no need to tamper with the blxxdy site in the first place it did it’s job but I am sure there are some fluffy types in offices somewhere justifying their jobs by tinkering…….well perhaps they will be tinkering with their CV’s after the P45 hits their desk!!!
Lesa said...
June 25th, 2009 at 7:48 am
I can not create a new acount !
Lisa Walden said...
June 25th, 2009 at 7:53 am
The new design features are an improvement, but the fundamental donating piece is hugely worse than before. It’s crazy not to have all donations on one page - the font is too big for each donation, it’s a clumsy display and the target button is just a bit superfluous. Loads of wasted white space on the LHS. If you only fix one thing, revert the donation pages to before, where you could easily glance through people’s funny/inspirational comments.
Kuz said...
June 25th, 2009 at 8:36 am
I went to my donation page this morning - straight to the error. Please can you email us when you guarantee that the donations can be made?
Adrian Bardsley said...
June 25th, 2009 at 8:40 am
You say “You can now log in to your account”
RUBBISH - its still bouncing me to your stupid error message page. I’ve had it with you guys & will be using http://www.charitygiving.co.uk next time - its simple & it works
Richard said...
June 25th, 2009 at 8:43 am
An unmitigated disaster. I will not use justgiving again. Whoever oversaw this ‘upgrade’ should be fired.
Nix said...
June 25th, 2009 at 8:44 am
Can’t create a page for my event, can’t donate, can’t do very much really - and running out of time before my event.
Lose my entry if I don’t raise the money on time - not great.
When when when?
N
Aberdeen said...
June 25th, 2009 at 8:53 am
I am a donor and just tried to donate and got a very suspicious message. Now I am wondering if your website is just phishing for my credit card details.
Unfortunately now I will think twice before using your website again. I suggest you test your website works before launching it. Your reputation as being able to perform a simple task such as debiting someone’s credit card is probably important to many of the users of your site.
max mistry said...
June 25th, 2009 at 8:58 am
I’m unable to create a new donations page - help! Only 2 weeks to my run and my mates are waiting to sponsor me with money ready…..
Nicola Williams said...
June 25th, 2009 at 9:32 am
I have lost so many donations and people can’t put comments on, used this web page in the past with great results, but sorry you are costing my charity money will be looking for a new webpage in the future.
Its not us that miss out its the charities you are taking the money from.
Laura said...
June 25th, 2009 at 9:32 am
I’ve been trying to create a new page over the last few days, but its still not working. Our event is looming and we really need to get sponsors in. I really hope you get things sorted asap. Its normally a great site, but maybe with all these problems you should revert to the old site (if possible!) or perhaps you can?
Good Luck!
L
Fiona said...
June 25th, 2009 at 9:38 am
Wouldn’t it be a good idea to send an email out to all account holder alerting them to the problems that have been occurring?
Many fundraisers seeking sponsorship may be blissfully unaware that people have been unable to donate.
This is one of the first things that you should have done.
James said...
June 25th, 2009 at 9:41 am
Hi - does anybody know when it is likely we may be able to actually set up a new page. I seem to get all the way to the end (after entering all the personal and event details) and then get bounced back to the error please read our blog page!!!
Its a step further than before but not really much help as our company are entering an event at short notice and only have a week to drum up as much support as possible.
Does anybody know any other good fundraising sites?
Menno said...
June 25th, 2009 at 10:04 am
I have had lots of people being unable to donate. My event is in a weeks time. Please sort it out.
Also please read my comments on the forum about the new page layout which, as other here have also said, is worse than the old layout!
http://community.justgiving.com/forums/13781/ShowPost.aspx
Rouska said...
June 25th, 2009 at 10:14 am
You should never release a site like this with so many bugs in it. Ever heard of BETA testing?
Especially with so many people relying on it for fundraising.
Unbelievable that someone gave the go ahead to release this in the state it’s in.
Simon D said...
June 25th, 2009 at 10:15 am
As others have said, can we go back to having all the donations on one page? The site didn’t need, imho, such a major redesign anyway. This site looks modern *and* lets you see everything at a simple glance:
http://www.charitygiving.co.uk/
http://www.charitygiving.co.uk/bikeride - good example of how a page can look ‘up to date’ and still let you see all the details. Who cares how big the % thermometer is?
Jo said...
June 25th, 2009 at 10:29 am
Can’t set up a new fundraising page and wanted to email everyone today about my event. I guess, after reading the above, the only saving grace is that I haven’t caused my friends loads of trouble in trying to donate. The thing is if I get people to donate directly to me then the charity will potentially lose out on gift aid. How can anyone possibly go ahead with the launch of a new site with so many fundamental problems (these are not ‘glitches’!)? The testing must have been atrocious. It’s an unmitigated disaster.
Jayant Patel said...
June 25th, 2009 at 10:29 am
Today I sent an email to myself to see if it works. No it didn’t work. Thus far the sponsorship request email has not materialised.Then I tried to donate a sample sum. After puting in all the informatio I clicked the confirm button. I got the error message. Then I did the ‘back’ and once again clicked the confirm button. This time it worked. How many future sponsors would do that if they failed the first time.
Elly said...
June 25th, 2009 at 10:37 am
my page still wont open! we completed our event on Saturday and no one can access our page to complete sponsorship!
Jo said...
June 25th, 2009 at 10:38 am
another fundraising site is http://www.bmycharity.com. according to this site http://uk.virginmoney.com/virgin/giving/how-we-compare.jsp
more money goes to the charity too (although annual fee is much larger)
heatherbird said...
June 25th, 2009 at 10:51 am
We’re still testing the fixes that our tech team worked on last night.
We know it’s not much of a consolation, but we want to make sure we test the fixes thoroughly.
And we wanted to make sure you know the latest. We’ll have another update for you after lunch.
We’re so sorry for the continued frustration. We so badly want to get this fixed - we know it’s unacceptable to everyone trying to raise money and donate at the moment.
Paul said...
June 25th, 2009 at 11:13 am
I read from Heather Bird that:-
“our advice, to lessen frustration, is to hold off on sending any donate reminder emails until later in the week when the site is running more smoothly.”
Question1. Why was this only on the blog? Why has Just About Giving not e-mailed every person who has a current page? It is hugely embaressing to ask people for money and then find out that they can’t give.
Question 2. Thursday is ‘later in the week’. As of this morning the system still seems to have problems accepting credit cards.
Question 3. Why was this done in the middle of the summer when, I suspect, charity events are at their peak?
Question 4. When it all went wrong why did you not just roll back and sort out your problems.
I have set up a website for a group of us are doing a sponsored ride. However, I can’t change ‘My Story’ to read ‘Our Story’. It seems that it is all about me not about our team. Surely this is a simple thing to change.
People have talked about the site being focused on money. This is a great example of where the developers must have forgotton that many people raise money as a team and being a group is really important.
Keith said...
June 25th, 2009 at 11:14 am
I will ask again - when will Just Giving offer some sort of REAL compensation to the many charities that have been affected by this debacle. You need to do this to restore the goodwill that this debacle has costed you. People are still getting bombed out and my charity is still losing money. It is time to show how sorry you are for this loss of service, workds are just not good enough. Drop the service fee on all transactions for the past week - you have not offered a good enough service !
SH said...
June 25th, 2009 at 11:17 am
Why is there no indication on your home page that you are having problems? That way potential donors can log on at another time to make their contributions, rather than thinking that the problems may be down to the appeal’s incompetence.
Are you going to be waiving your fee to existing accounts to partially compensate for sponsorship they will have missed out on?
Can’t you go back to your old system whilst you sort this out? Needy causes are losing out at a time when they can least afford to.
Alan N said...
June 25th, 2009 at 12:04 pm
Still having problems giving despite your update - try and get something right! How much how you cost charity today?
Simon said...
June 25th, 2009 at 12:18 pm
It’s Thursday 25th and my site is now not appearing - http://www.justgiving.com/simonmcgee
It’s now nearly a week since anyone has been able to make donations to my cause, and only a week till my event.
Natasha said...
June 25th, 2009 at 12:19 pm
You really are losing money for charity as I have had loads of emails advising that they can not sponsor us.
I actually hate the new site and much preferred the old one.
Hope you refund the charge you take
Susan C said...
June 25th, 2009 at 12:26 pm
I don’t know where you get the idea that people can now log onto their accounts. After three days I still can’t.
Still, seems like a good job because I can’t update the offline total when I get there.
Did anyone actually test this release, or agree the changes with anyone who might use the site? Do you have professional software designers and developers? I’ve been in the industry for thirty years and have rarely seen such a shambles in terms of design, testing or deployment.
Like a previous poster, I was really impressed with how easy this site WAS to use, and now I’m just really frustrated and annoyed at how rubbish it’s become, and how unprofessionally the change has been implemented.
Nick Keir said...
June 25th, 2009 at 12:36 pm
The new site looks awful and doesn’t work - that’s the bottom line.
So do the professional thing - put the old site back up NOW and allow us to get on with our fundraising. My event is on Sunday and I’m losing people’s interest while they wit for your site to work.
Su said...
June 25th, 2009 at 12:38 pm
“My story” is still blank and I still have a donation missing despite being told my page is loading fine from thier end!!!!!
When is Virgin up and running?!!!!!!!!
Dave smith said...
June 25th, 2009 at 12:40 pm
still not working, it’s a bloody embarrassment - I’m have worked hard to try and get corporate backing and all that appears is an error message.
Dawn James said...
June 25th, 2009 at 12:40 pm
Today is the last day I have before I have to provide over £2000 to my charity for the Trek that I am doing in September. I have worked my socks off over the last couple of weeks writing, emailing and phoning people asking them to sponsor me.
The feedback I am getting is that they cannot use the site. Very close friends and family will still give - not so close people will not. Just Giving has cost me a lot of money.
I hate the changes to the pages as someone else said it seems more about money and less about the story.
Are we going to get compensated?
Craig said...
June 25th, 2009 at 12:49 pm
…and breathe! Blimey, Justgiving, this must have been the worst four days of your working lives. However, whilst I know that there are many exasperated and frustrated by the problems which have occurred, sometimes in spite of endless research and testing, these things just happen. And when they do, it’s how you deal with them and what you learn that matters…and I think you’re doing blooming well considering. For a small team, providing updates, individual responses and doing it all in a polite manner as well as dealing with the all-important site issues must be challenging. Hang in there, in a week it will all be forgotten and everyone will be saying how great the new site is…probably?!
Helen said...
June 25th, 2009 at 12:53 pm
Once again I can’t log in. Have spoken to several people who either tried and couldn’t donate yesterday or thought they had donated and hadn’t. I dread to think how much money my charity has lost out on.
stu said...
June 25th, 2009 at 1:03 pm
24th June….
…still having problems…time is running out for me too guys.
No pressure or anything but hurry up eh?!
Mandy said...
June 25th, 2009 at 1:13 pm
My website has not been working for a few days now and my charity target is due tommorrow (26th June). Several people have told me that they tried to donate and have not been able to. This is unacceptable and is also causing problems with my trip confirmation as my charity trek agency is unable to determine how much money I have raised in total. This is not fair as I have worked hard to raise over £2,300. Also, I can’t add any photos any more and my profile picture has changed, which may confuse people when they come onto my site. Please get it sorted!!
Meg said...
June 25th, 2009 at 1:16 pm
Hi
So many people have tried on a daily basis to sponsor me since Sunday and hardly anyone has been able to. They will give up and our charity will be the loser. It is a serious muck up.
Simon Richardson said...
June 25th, 2009 at 1:44 pm
This is shocking now, not able to resolve the issues for DAYS is beyond belief.
ALL EFFORTS should be on getting donations through - every resource should be on the case! I cannot believe a roleback hasnt been performed!
Bring back the old site, atleast it worked!!!
Phil said...
June 25th, 2009 at 1:59 pm
I seem to be on the lucky ones, in that I can now log on and my pages seem to work again, but I still loath the look of the site. It’s ugly and clumsy. The worst bit is the inability to see all donations on one page. That was one of the nicest bits of the old site — to see who had given what, and to read their comments. Instead of being able to scan the list to see people you recognise, you now have to click, and click, and click… I really hate it.
The ludicrously large % star is also a right pain.
Steve said...
June 25th, 2009 at 2:04 pm
After days of being locked out it began working last night and I got 3 donations. I trusted the “managements” pledges on what was fixed and so I uploaded a video on Facebook and You tube. My page is unavailable and is now down again. So despite all that work not one new donation since… so more money down the pan and now I know why!! Get it sorted! It seems the updates from JG are being very economical with the truth when they eventually arrive. By the way when the next round of fiction due?
Racing Welfare said...
June 25th, 2009 at 2:13 pm
This is madness, I have just emailed 80 of our usual larger donors, with a request to donate and pass it on to one friend that means I have not onlu p1ssed off the original 80 but 80 of their friends too. How about a sizeable discount from our bill please to make up for it, I expect that your accounts department still works if your IT one patently doesn’t. I am looking forward to the new Virgin charity giving site starting up, because we are off there.
Bad show Just Giving.
Lena said...
June 25th, 2009 at 2:14 pm
I still cannot log into my account and I sponsered a friend who is raising funds in memory of my son who lost his battle to Neuroblastoma. I donated Yesterday and my donation is still not showing on her page, however my collegues is…
I have had an email thanking me for the donation and giving me the donation ID number and the link to view it and the link to amend my message. I cannot view it because it’s not there!!!!! However you do let me amend my message!!!!!!
JustGiving - Raise money for charity online said...
June 25th, 2009 at 2:28 pm
[...] Click here for Wednesday’s update. [...]
Nick Gage said...
June 25th, 2009 at 2:38 pm
We’ve been stopped at the first hurdle I’m afraid.
We are unable to set up an account.
I’ve tried in IE 8 and in Opera 9.63, but get the same error message pointing me at this page for news.
Bianca said...
June 25th, 2009 at 3:05 pm
I want to change the text to my site but it keeps coming up with this error.
Bianca said...
June 25th, 2009 at 3:06 pm
“ “
Monica said...
June 25th, 2009 at 3:41 pm
Until you had fully tested the site you should NOT have released it to Production.
Bring back the old site - it looked far better, it wasn’t so money orientated, you could read your story without all this scrolling and most importantly it worked!!!
Tim said...
June 25th, 2009 at 5:00 pm
This is probably a long way down your list: the the new widget throws an error in IE7. Line 1 Char 118 ‘Null’ is null or not an object.
Nic said...
June 25th, 2009 at 6:06 pm
I’ve had countless problems since Monday. I phoned the helpdesk and sent an e-mail to the helpdesk - both polite replies, informing me everything would be OK very soon!!
Still it’s hit or miss whether I can log in to edit details. Over 20 of my friends cannot donate as it either crashes or just sits there for ages!
What’s meant to be better? Yes, I can change the colour more - woooo!! and I can add more than 1 photo - woooo!!! etc etc!!
Still liked the feel of the other screen more - maybe the new one will grow on me, but at the moment, it seems far lacking to the older version, which was such an ease to set up and use, even my mother could do it (no offence mum!).
I’m a software tester, and if my programmes had this many bugs in them when they went live, I’d be sacked. There’s been no-way enough testing going on - whether you did a volume test is another thing too!!
We are nearly a week into the launch, and still problems - dreadful!
David said...
June 25th, 2009 at 6:59 pm
I am really dissapointed that I can’t set up a fundraising page and fell that my charity will lose out.
Lisa A said...
June 25th, 2009 at 7:23 pm
Trying to save text changes to my web page - no joy. Can’t change photos either.
Would love to get the page out to the team so we can maximise sponsorship time.
didn’t realise you were making changes else would have completed it last week!
Can you please notify me when it’s sorted as I don’t want to keep going in each day and finding that it is still not working.
RM said...
June 25th, 2009 at 9:43 pm
Have just checked out the details for the upcoming http://www.virginmoneygiving.com site. They’re probably watching this as an first class lesson in how not to launch a charity website.
Looks like their site is going to have the sort of features that the old site here had before the “improvements” like all of the donations on one page and ability to personalise the text (not just change the colour of the page) and they are non-profit making so more money goes to the charities as the costs are much lower.
I’d never faulted justgiving before, they’ve done a fantastic job but they have dropped the ball on this and I can definitely see myself considering the virginmoney giving site next time I am fund raising, especially if justgiving do not change back some of the key features we’ve all complained about on this blog.
Something for the guys at justgiving to consider. Everyone makes mistakes, no one is perfect. It’s what you do about them that sets you apart. The reaction from justgiving has been poor. Constantly referring to the issues as “teething problems” has been patronising. Not putting up a notice or an apology on the front page is inexcusable. Waiting until the sixth day of problems before the CEO comes and makes an honest apology and offer of goodwill to the charities is simply not good enough.
It must be due for launch soon, the website says it will start in Summer 2009. I’m sure they will be very pleased that the market leader and their main competitor has just scored an massive own goal.
D. Haynes said...
June 25th, 2009 at 10:06 pm
Well I STILL can’t access the donate page..!!
Charlotte Proud said...
June 25th, 2009 at 11:42 pm
Can’t believe it. If you are going to update a website, either do it and it works perfectly or just don’t. My bike ride takes place on monday. Now that the website has been updated, no one can donate any money which is really really pants!!!
Please do something about it, or change it back to the way it was. I and all the people above are doing something good by raising money for charity but at the moment, this isn’t possible.
I feel sorry for people who have been given targets by charities to reach in order to take part. Luckily we have been able to set our target, and we only have 19% of our donations, with 4 days to go!! Please, please sort it out soon! The justgiving website is popular because it was a really good effective way of giving to charity. Either hurry up and sort it out, or sack who ever is meant to be sorting it!!
William said...
June 26th, 2009 at 9:53 am
I still don’t understand why the website hasn’t been rolled back. As an IT manager I would have rolled it back on Sunday, when it became clear that the number of critical bugs made the site non functional. I just tried to add photos to my page and it’s still not working. The formatting of the blog is rubbish, the basic functionality isn’t trustworthy enough to ask people to donate. I finished the london to brighton bike ride last sunday and I still haven’t managed to update my page to say i’ve finished.
It is still worth rolling back. As the development team is undoubtedly getting very tired at this point having been working 24 hours a day for 7 days, with the prospect of another few weeks at least of stressful error prone programming fixing the dozens of issues i’ve seen mentioned so far.
Be brave enough to admit defeat.
Craig said...
June 26th, 2009 at 11:47 am
Very disappointed, having emailed all my friends and putting the link on my facebook page,
My page has been down for over ten days and im losing out on valuable sponsorship as people cant access my page!
Thanks for the emails telling me where to send people and what to do in order to maximize my sponsorship in the countdown to my event - which are pointless seeing as i cant do anything about it.
Making it very difficult to reach my target.
AC said...
June 26th, 2009 at 2:09 pm
I tried to edit my page yesterday to update my Raised Off-line total, saved the change and My Story had completely disappeared!
Still a few ‘glitches’ I think… one friend has managed to get her donation through today but I am not filled with confidence that all is fixed.
John and David said...
June 26th, 2009 at 2:44 pm
Having completed our LEJOG drive we are anxious to update and include photographs of the trip. Unable to tell if we have lost out on sponsorship. I’m afraid I suscribe to the “If it aint broken, don’t fix it” brigade. Need I say more.
Eiona Roberts said...
June 26th, 2009 at 4:46 pm
I’m concerned that I still cannot get into my account to a do a bit of editing. I’m doing a charitry abseil in just over a week and considering that I volunteer for that charity on their website, then I must say that it’s highly embarrassing for me.
Farihah said...
June 26th, 2009 at 5:07 pm
Hi there,
my page just doesnt load what so ever and 3 differnt people have tried donating and have been unsuccessful. I only have a couple of weeks left so this needs to be resolved ASAP.
many Thanks.
Steve said...
June 28th, 2009 at 8:12 am
Been trying for 2 days to set up page, even though I get the message stating “your page is ready to take donations”, I keep getting page not found…
Susan C said...
June 29th, 2009 at 10:30 am
It’s finally working for me, but it’s horrible. Whatever site design standards did you follow? All that white space is dreadful! The important stuff - people’s donations and messages, are lost in all the whiteness. And that ridiculous big star at the top with the percentage. How is that supposed to be helpful? Won’t donors just think - oh, they’ve exceeded their target, I won’t bother then.
0/10.
Which is a shame when the original site was at least a 9/10.
I won’t be using justgiving.com again if it stays like this.
Richard said...
June 29th, 2009 at 9:30 pm
i agree with the comments by stevek
The old simpler layout with all the donations on one page was nicer & better
clicking and waiting for page to load is tedious and counter productive
People want to see who has given and dare I say it - be competitive.
BigDaveSB said...
July 3rd, 2009 at 9:43 am
@Susan C Are you aware that you can up your original target? I set my challenge target at £1,000. However, I came so close to reaching this, I upped it to £2,000. In addition, previously, the pages had the thermometer, which again would show if targets had been exceeded. If you feel that having exceeded your target would be off putting, increase your target!
As an example of people reaslly not giving two hoots about targets, and wanting to give as much as possible, look no further than the Atheist Bus Campaign, http://www.justgiving.com/atheistbus
The trouble with any new design is some people won’t like it. I personally do, and also find it displays better on my mobile than the previous version.
As justgiving have said, they redesigned the site by talking to the users and charities, and basing it on that.
Susan C said...
July 3rd, 2009 at 10:12 am
Thanks for the tip about changing targets, Big Dave.
What I was really observing was that the stupid star is far too dominant on the page, and the design of the page is atrocious.
Given that justgiving also said they tested the site before releasing it, they can claim all they like that they talked to users and charities, but it still looks horrible, isn’t as good or as user friendly as the old one, was a disaster in implementation, and I will not be using it again.
That’s based on 30 years in the IT industry, current best practice in Banking and Telecomms websites, and a very low-level qualification in web design, which I’d have failed if I’d produced such a horrible looking and unusable product.
Kash said...
July 7th, 2009 at 1:25 pm
I’d imagine the system has been over engineered and insufficient QA done to take into consideration the increase in complexity.
Peter Brand said...
July 12th, 2009 at 7:53 am
The ’search the blog’ facility doesn’t seem to work. I can’t find any of my posts using it, anyway. Try searching for ‘peter brand’, ‘charitygiving’…
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