For the past five years, Choose Love’s people-powered initiatives have countered Black Friday consumerism, raising millions for refugees and displaced communities facing harsh winter conditions. Amidst Covid-19, Choose Love’s in-person holiday shopping and fundraising events were disrupted, placing refugees at risk of spending winter without the survival essentials typically delivered by the grassroots organisation. We wanted to transcend pandemic restrictions with an enhanced mobile first e-commerce store open 24/7, allowing donors to help refugees no matter when or where they are in the world.

In need of a virtual solution, the e-commerce website was reimagined with a new visual language, toolkit, imagery, and improved functionality. A vibrant yet soft calming colour palette blended to create a sense of empathy and a modern aesthetic and a simplistic and clean user interface with the primary focus on the products. Art Direction of bundle shots was approached with a new premium, desirable and stylistic composition. 

Creating an E-gifting service that was a truly digital first, personalised and unique meant  for the first time, personalised e-cards were made available, allowing donors to send loved ones a custom note when a donation is made on their behalf resulting in 46% of all orders including an e-card.

Over £2.5m was raised through the purchase of more than 107,000 essential items online from Black Friday to the end of 2020. The public response was overwhelmingly positive, leading to a rise in social media interactions, including 36.3k new followers on Instagram and 213k engaged users on Facebook.

The optimized mobile online store meant that 81% of US and 79% of UK and ROW purchases were made on mobile. 

Moving forward, Choose Love is less dependent on in-person events, placing confidence in the ability of e-commerce to not only supplement, but sustain, future fundraising initiatives.