The "homepage treatment" really consists of two parts: (1) having access to the homepage from your user space (2) any features that drive newcomers to their homepage or otherwise help them find it.
In the initial version of the homepage, the only feature that will drive newcomers to their homepage is the fact that clicking on their username in their personal tools takes them there. Based on T217624, we learned that we can expect between 15% and 30% of newcomers to encounter their homepage in that way (depending on the wiki). And so in this task, we want to design additional features that help newcomers discover their homepage.
Below is a list of ideas the team has had on how to do this. There are likely many more ideas.
* **Redirect after account creation**: [[ https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Growth/Analytics_updates/EditorJourney_initial_report#Account_creation_context_namespaces | about 80% of users create their accounts ]] from the reading context as opposed to editing. This includes mostly articles, main page, and search results. While we don't want to take people away from their edits if they are in the editing context, perhaps we can redirect people from the reading context to the homepage, the idea being that the homepage is likely more important for them to see than the context to which they would otherwise be returning. Perhaps the right people to start with are the 25% of users who create their accounts from the Main Page.
* **Option on welcome survey confirmation**: after users submit the welcome survey, they see a screen telling them their response has been saved, and giving them one button to go back to their account creation context. It also contains two links (tutorial and help desk). We could redesign this page to encourage users to visit their homepage.
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* **Redirect after account creation**: this idea is only different from the one above in cases where users don't receive a welcome survey. [[ https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Growth/Analytics_updates/EditorJourney_initial_report#Account_creation_context_namespaces | about 80% of users create their accounts ]] from the reading context as opposed to editing. This includes mostly articles, main page, and search results. While we don't want to take people away from their edits if they are in the editing context, perhaps we can redirect people from the reading context to the homepage, the idea being that the homepage is likely more important for them to see than the context to which they would otherwise be returning. Perhaps the right people to start with are the 25% of users who create their accounts from the Main Page.
* **Card on Main Page**: about 45% of newcomers view the Main Page (e.g. https://cs.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hlavn%C3%AD_strana) on their first day (in Czech and Korean Wikipedias). The content of the Main Page is likely not user to a newcomer trying to edit for the first time. We could add a card, link, or message to Main Page saying something like "Click here to view your homepage and get started".
* **CentralNotice**: this is a system for displaying banners to targeted users. We could theoretically send banners to newcomers telling them about their homepage.
* **Adding some kind of affordance in personal tools to encourage users to click their username**: many wikis have an automated welcome message that posts on a newcomer's User Talk page. Getting this message shows them a notification in their personal tools, which we know 18% of Korean users immediately click on. This is evidence that some kind of attraction to personal tools could yield interactions.
* **Posting on User Talk**: automatically posting a message on a user's talk page is an existing way to trigger an affordance in personal tools.
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* **Link in help panel**: 10% - 20% of newcomers open up the help panel, which may be a way to tell them about the homepage, which is another newcomer tool they might be interested in.
* **Link or redirect from when a user clicks to confirm their email address**: when users confirm their email address, they land on a page that gives them no further call to action. This could be a good place to suggest that users visit their homepage.
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* **Notification**: send a notification that welcomes the new users, and encourages to click to go to their homepage. Be mindful of conflicts with wikis' existing welcome notifications. Alternatively, we could give instructions to communities on how to incorporate the homepage into the wiki's existing welcome notifications or templates.
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* **Guided tour**: we could use Guided Tour to show the user their personal tools, and encourage them to click their homepage. This could be triggered by finishing account creation or welcome survey. [[ https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Main_Page&tour=test | Here is a demo tour ]].
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