Campaign data usually tells you about the campaign. Occasionally it tells you something about people.
Across 11,246 donation transactions in 60 days, three numbers stood out — and each one changes how you should build a checkout.
One ₹40 refund on a single transaction, against typical 2–5% refund rates in performance campaigns. Zero disputes means the journey was clear enough that nobody felt deceived.
96.99% paid via UPI
Not 60%. Not 80%. Essentially everyone.
This is not a payments trivia fact. It is a behavioural description: the audience was on a phone, deciding in the moment, and unwilling to go find a card.
The design consequences are immediate and non-negotiable:
- The page must load fast on mobile data. Not on office wifi. On 4G, on a mid-range Android.
- UPI must be the first option, not one of five payment tabs.
- The form must survive a thumb. Small tap targets and multi-column layouts fail here.
- Nothing can require switching apps and returning more than once.
If you are building a checkout in India and treating cards as primary, you are optimising for 3% of your buyers.
Zero disputes
₹0.00 ≈ $0in chargebacks across 11,246 transactions, with a single ₹40 ≈ $0.42refund processed.
Typical performance campaigns see refund rates in the 2–5% range. Near-zero means something specific: nobody felt misled at any point in the journey.
Disputes happen when expectation and experience diverge — the ad promised one thing, the page implied another, the charge said something else. Every gap between those three is a future refund.
The practical test: read your ad, then your landing page, then your payment confirmation, in sequence. If a stranger would be surprised at any step, you have a dispute waiting.
2.8% CTR against a 0.8–1.5% benchmark
Roughly double the category norm for social cause campaigns.
The creative principle behind it was simple and applies well beyond fundraising: specificity beats sentiment.
"Children are suffering. Please help." creates sympathy but no urgency — it describes a permanent condition, and permanent conditions can be addressed tomorrow. A specific story, a specific number, a specific outcome creates the sense that this action, right now, does something identifiable.
Frequency at 2.2 — and why that matters
Below 1.5, you are relying on one impression to carry a decision that needs more.
Above 3.5, fatigue sets in — the same people, the same ad, rising costs, falling results.
At 2.2, most donors saw the message about twice before acting. For anything requiring trust, that repetition is doing real work. It is not waste; it is how unfamiliar becomes familiar.
What transfers to commercial businesses
Donors are not a different species from customers. The wiring is the same: trust before transacting, specificity before committing, minimum friction between intent and action.
What differs is the emotional register. Commercial buying runs on desire, convenience, or status. Donating runs on empathy, urgency, and moral identity — the sense of being the kind of person who does this.
But the mechanics are identical. If your e-commerce checkout has a 4% abandonment problem, the fixes are the same fixes: faster page, fewer fields, payment method the buyer already uses, and no surprises between the ad and the receipt.
The one number to check on your own account
Not conversion rate. Payment method split.
Pull it up. If UPI dominates and your checkout treats it as a secondary option, you have found the cheapest conversion improvement available to you.
More of this analysis is in the Helping Hands Foundation case study.