Increase the number
of new created content
of new created content
PART 1 | PART 2
Fandom's core product is a content creation platform, enabling fans all over the world to create and maintain online encyclopaedias on any given topic.
In 2016 the platform hosted around 1,3K active communities generating 190M unique views per month.
In 2016 the platform hosted around 1,3K active communities generating 190M unique views per month.
However, the number of new content on the wikis had been flat even on long-established and active communities.
I was a part of the team whose goal was to increase the total number of new articles created per month.
note: because of my non-disclosure agreement, I have omitted confidential information in this case study, including exact data and some elements of the design.
My role
I led the user research and UX work, including user interviews, sketching workshops and crafting deliverables for the development team.
I partnered with a product manager to gather user insights and transform them into experiments that would inform the way forward for the development team.
Challenge
Wikis have unique user base. Only 5% of the visitors contribute to the content creation on a regular basis. Fresh users rarely create new content and experienced users (power users) do not use the tools provided by Fandom.
In the past, the efforts to transform readers into contributors proved ineffective, however they were focused on editing existing content rather than creating a new one.
Our challenge was to find a way to encourage readers to start creating content on their favourite wikis.
Initial assumptions:
We have a limited number of wiki contributors and that number is not growing.
Users who would like to contribute to a wiki don't know if/how they can do it.
Users who would like to contribute to a wiki don't know if/how they can do it.
Location of the 'Contribute' button on a typical wiki page prior to the project.
Exploration
I set out to conduct preliminary research to validate the assumptions.
Data from Google Analytics proved that the entry point leading to new page creation process was rarely clicked.
I interviewed 10 wiki users, 8 readers/beginners and 2 power users to further validate the assumptions. The placement of 'Add New Page' functionality proved counterintuitive for the readers.
Inexperienced users were frustrated when they couldn't find a way to add a new page to a wiki they were on. They expected it to be available in the main menu and were surprised to learn it's included in the 'Contribute' dropdown. They were expecting 'Contribute' to be a 'donate' button and were not willing to click on it unprompted.
Experienced users, on the other hand, were not using the UI but keyboards shortcuts to create a new page.
Persona
Zdzisław
A fan of Game of Thrones, who has never contributed to a wiki before, but would like to share her knowledge with the community.
Zdzisław has been an avid reader of The Song of Ice and Fire Wiki but always thought one needs to be a certified editor to add articles.
Problem statement
As a fan who never before contributed to a wiki, I need to be able to start creating new content in a confident and quick manner, in order to share my knowledge and experience with a wider community.
Experiments
It became evident that even if a reader want to contribute to an existing wiki, they are blocked by the apparent lack of entry point. The team decided to focus on surfacing the 'Add new page' button to all the users.
Placement
I partnered with our Product Manager, Jakub, and together we created 4 placement variants and split tested them on wiki pages. We based our choices on insights from user interviews and decided to test the variants on wikis with largest daily traffic.
Variant A
'Contribute' button was changed from secondary
to primary.
to primary.
Variant B
Primary 'Add new page' button was added by the 'Contribute' button.
Variant C
'Add new page' button was placed below the title of the article.
Variant D
'Add new page' button was placed at the number of pages on the wiki.
Results
Both C and D variants performed almost equally better than the control group with new and experienced users.
Variant D performed 2500% better with the new users than the control group and 40% better with experienced users.
Variants A and B received low number of clicks, comparable to their control groups. The users didn't pay attention to the top part of the article.
Implementation
I opted for variant D as the final one because of alignment with information architecture of the page.
We've decided to implement variant D on production,
on all wikis for 100% of the traffic.
on all wikis for 100% of the traffic.
Impact
The total number of new pages created per week increased by 8% in the first week after the release.
Among new users, the number of clicks per month increased by 499%. For experienced users, the number increased by 164% per month
By simply moving one button to a more prominent place, we've managed to encourage fresh users to start contributing to wikis.
When in 2017 wiki page navigation went through a redesign, the placement of 'Add new page' button remained connected with the number of existing pages for better findability.
2017 redesign of the wiki page header, keeping the 'add new page' button placement