User story & summary:
- As a Wikipedia reader, I want to deepen my engagement with Wikipedia in a low-risk way, because I'm too intimidated to edit but am interested in a more personalized reading experience.
- As the Growth team Product Manager, I want Readers to engage with Wikipedia more deeply, because then a small portion of them may consider editing as they become more invested and involved in Wikipedia.
WMF Product and Technology Annual Plan WE2.3 OKR:
WE2: Reading and media experience:
- Objective: Produce a modern, relevant and accessible reading and media experience for our projects.
- Key Result 3: Deepen reader engagement with Wikipedia via 0.05% of unique devices engaging in non-editing participation.
This KR focuses on deepening reader engagement, while also exploring ways in which readers can contribute to our projects that are not editing pages. We hypothesize that there are people who are interested in getting involved with the wikis but for whom editing of any kind is too big of a leap. We want those people to have a way to get more deeply involved, perhaps becoming more committed readers, or eventually becoming comfortable enough to edit. "Non-editing participation" refers to any actions users can take on the wikis besides editing (we are also counting edits to discussions as 'editing'). While our websites don't have any of this, our apps do, in the form of reading lists or sharing content to social media. This work could include letting users configure their own personal reading experience, or could also focus on sharing content across the wiki, curating, and suggesting content to others. The KR is inclusive of work on the mobile and desktop websites and the apps. For mobile and desktop it may include the adoption of some non-editing participation functionality that exists on the apps. For the apps, it may include improving on existing functionality or building out new ideas. The number 0.05% is approximately the ratio of editors to unique devices -- so perhaps in the first year of this feature set, we see a similar ratio for non-editing participants, which would eventually increase to greater than the number of editors in the future.
Growth team annual plan:
The Growth team may consider working on a project that relates to WE2.3 as a secondary project, depending on community feedback and initial Non-editing participation research.
If the Growth team focuses on WE2.3, we will build out the customization and modularity of the homepage to evolve the page into a personalized homepage that suits more than just new editors. We will explore adding reader-centered features to the newcomer homepage as a way to provide features for the 19% of users who create accounts to “read Wikipedia”.
Growth has been focusing on the journey from account creation to new editor, but we haven’t spent as much time thinking about the newcomer funnel from the start of the funnel: the millions of readers accounting for over 20 billion monthly page views.
We already know that 19% of new account holders create an account to read, based on Welcome Survey analysis. We hypothesize that by offering clear benefits for readers, we can attract even more readers to create accounts. Furthermore, we know from prior research that Growth Features greatly increase activation in newcomers who respond to the Welcome Survey saying they signed up to read Wikipedia. Growth features lead to a 51.5% relative increase in the likelihood that these readers will try editing, and they will be retained as editors at a similar rate to users in the Control group who were as active as them during the first 24 hours after registration.
Design:
Create low-mid fidelity concept mocks conveying the following feature ideas:
- Highlighting
- Reading lists
- Share-able reading lists
- Shared article snippets (see Share-a-fact on the apps)
- Thank someone for their edit
- Rate article quality
- Vote for an article to be featured
- Subscribe to a topic type
- Submitting a question about article an article
- Creating a user page
Acceptance Criteria:
Provide several low-fidelity designs which can be used for user interviews.