FONGOGO: A CASE STUDY ON THE USABILITY OF THE LOCAL CROWDFUNDING AND FUNDRAISING WEBSITES IN TURKEY

The contemporary success of the global online crowdfunding platforms; Kickstarter and Indiegogo inspired Turkish entrepreneurs to develop similar websites for the local use. The websites Fongogo, Crowdfon, Fonlabeni and Bi Ayda were founded to get the attention of the Turkish benefactors and angel investors. However, in this funding system where the website itself has crucial importance as the main tool of the crowdfunding experience, these local platforms couldn’t reach the success of their predecessors. The reported issues showed that the failure of the local websites is linked to their usability problems. The aim of this research is to determine these usability problems and evaluate efficiency, effectiveness and satisfaction score of the most widely used Turkish crowdfunding website; Fongogo. In order to examine this, a quantitative usability test was carried out to reach a Single Usability Metric (SUM) with a sample of 14 Turkish users in two age segments between 20-40 and over 40. In addition to the tests, interviews with project owners and previous users were also conducted. The findings support that the usability problems affect the funding campaigns negatively and the website needs to be improved both for benefactors and project owners