This epic contains all tasks related to the "newcomer homepage" project as part of the "Personalized first day" initiative pursued by the Growth team. For detailed information about the thinking and the feature, see its project page.
In the "Welcome Survey" epic, we added a survey to the account creation process so that we could learn a little about what each user is trying to accomplish by creating their account. This is one of two epics that are about getting to the "Part 2" that was mentioned in that previous epic: a project to use that data to actually start personalizing a newcomer's initial experience, specifically through a dedicated place in the wiki that contains personalized materials that help a newcomer get started.
The other epic for personalization is about engagement emails.
We know from research that newcomers arrive at the wiki with something that they are trying to accomplish. If they can’t accomplish it, they frequently leave and don’t come back. It’s even hard for a newcomer to get started on their goal, partly because there is no clear starting place. Newcomers feel disoriented in the Wikipedia editing world. While experienced editors know how to stitch together disjointed pieces of the wiki into a cohesive experience (talk pages, user pages, WikiProjects, watchlist, categories, page history, etc.), newcomers do not know how to use them together. They wonder, “where do I start?” '''We can build an entryway''' to surface the things newcomers need to know and do first — a centralized location to orient them, help them toward the goal they describe in the welcome survey, and for them to return to for future work. Such a page could contain the same kinds of content that we want to send via engagement emails, but in more actionable depth.
We want to:
- Present useful and actionable (personalized) content, with the ''most'' relevant content prioritized.
- Connect the content in the [[Growth/Personalized first day/Engagement emails|engagement emails]] to content on wiki via the newcomer homepage.
- Make it clear how to visit and revisit your homepage (habitual place for an editor).
- Increase activation and retention.
- Learn more about what types of content is effective in driving activation and retention rates.
We do not want to:
- Interfere with newcomers who want to return to editing context after account creation.
- Make the homepage static and uninteresting after the first visit.
- Personalize so much that the homepage is invasive.
- Overwhelm users with too many options.
We're going to pursue this project as incrementally and iteratively as possible. We plan to have an initial homepage being shown to newcomers by the end of March 2019. Early versions may only contain a small number of modules, and may not be personalized to the users.