Our pilot used version three of our prototype web platform, which had been developed following previous rounds of user testing. We recruited parents to participate in the pilot and tracked their engagement with the programme between 28 January and 31 March 2025.
We found that:
1. Parents have an appetite for accessing light-touch, digital parenting support
We garnered over 1,700 sign ups in just over two months, from all areas of the UK (sign ups by nation were roughly proportional to population). Over a quarter of parents (28%) who visited the website went ahead and signed up to receive text messages. We theorise that this easy-to-access text messaging programme overcame barriers that parents often experience, such as:
- time and financial constraints
- difficulty with finding reliable, educational, trustworthy and comprehensive resources
- everyday, unexpected challenges.
conversion rate (site landings to sign up)
sign ups over the course of the pilot
percentage of users who have clicked at least one content link
overall engagement rate (percentage of video links clicked)
Our funnel of users
- Site visits - number of visitors to the site
- Sign-ups - number of visitors who were 'converted' to sign up (cost per acquisition and conversion rate)
- Engagement rate - number/percentage of links clicked on
*This surpassed our moonshot goal of 500
N.B. Data is as of the end of the pilot
2. We got the most referrals and site visits from social media
The vast majority of parents who signed up during the pilot reached our web platform from a paid advertising campaign run via our Nesta social media accounts (Facebook and Instagram) and a post from the BBC’s Tiny Happy People’s Instagram page. Our cost per acquisition on social media, over the course of the campaign (21 February-31 March), was £0.35 per sign up. This indicates the efficient performance of the paid advertising campaign and relevance for our audience.
Bar chart showing that paid Facebook and Instagram ads drove most site visits and sign-ups for the pilot
3. We have more work to do to reach the most disadvantaged parents
We didn’t capture much demographic data when parents signed up to make the sign up process as smooth as possible. We did capture postcodes to see the level of deprivation of the neighborhood parents live in, using the Index of Multiple Deprivation (IMD). The chart below shows the number of sign ups that we had from each IMD decile. Decile one is people living in the 10% most disadvantaged geographical areas, while decile 10 is the least disadvantaged 10% of areas.
While we had parents sign up in every IMD, we found that sign ups were higher in IMD deciles 6-10 compared to 1-5, and sign-ups in IMD decile 1 were particularly low. In the next phase of testing, we are keen to prioritise increasing sign ups by parents who live in lower deciles and be experimental and creative in how we go about reaching these families. We will be able to test a wider range of different recruitment strategies in the next phase of our work.
Bar chart showing higher IMD deciles generally have more participants
4. Once parents are signed up, engagement by parents living in more deprived areas is similar to those in more affluent areas
Parents in IMD deciles 1-5 (our target group) clicked on links to watch Tiny Happy People videos at a similar rate to parents in IMD deciles 6-10. This is promising, and shows an early signal that the offer is engaging to parents in lower IMD deciles once they have signed up. These levels of engagement suggest that the text messages and videos they are receiving are relevant enough to keep them interested.
Line graph showing click-through rates for messages generally decline, with IMD levels 1-5 and 6-10 converging towards later messages
