February 16 update: this test is being retired - see this post for more info!
Hey Community!
One of our current projects is to look into updating the page header area - that is, the area which currently contains the wordmark, local navigation and contribute button.
We want to make sure the page header area is as useful as it can be - both for the newbie who has never visited your wiki before and for the experienced editors. We're also keen on making the mobile and desktop experience feel a bit more connected.
We know that changes can make people nervous, but we want to reach out about our ideas early to foster transparency and allow for lots of feedback early in the process. The possible updates are in flux - the outcome significantly depends a lot on research, tests, and the feedback we receive from you.
Please feel free to ask many questions. We may not have immediate answers since the project is still at an early stage, but the fact that you asked us the question is just as important and useful to us.
Our findings
Our first step was to seek a better understanding of how readers interact with the page header. To do this we analyzed usage data of the current page header (see slides 8-15 of this slideshow for data & light analysis) and we performed in-person interviews with people who have never visited our website before. Here is a very brief summary of those interviews:
- When instructed to move from one page to another (e.g. Luke Skywalker to Chewbacca) nearly everyone's first instinct was to look for a blue link inside the article. If they could not easily find a link they would go to either the browser search bar to search google or the search icon in the global nav.
- Overall, people understood the local nav but their actual usable behavior showed it wasn't the most important feature, relative to search and in-article links.
- None of the six participants fully understood the Fandom // Community // Article information architecture.
We also looked at how logged-in contributors use the page header, and how they have been customized across the site. Data is available in the link above, and in our video conference interviews we learned that admins are open to changes of the page header area, assuming they have an opportunity to provide feedback on designs and have the ability to customize whatever our final design is. Your feedback will be valuable as we understand what does and doesn't work in this design and what needs to be customizable.
The second major phase of this project was to run some A/B experiments to see how readers react to different changes. We ran five experiments — one replaces the local nav with a search bar, one moved or removed the 'On the Wiki' tab, one introduced a new CSS style, one introduced a 'scroll to top' feature, and the fifth experiment hid the nav entirely. You can view screenshots of the tests at this link and the data from the tests on this spreadsheet. Here's a brief summary:
- Moving the 'On the Wiki' tab for anonymous users may result in a minor increase in page header engagement. (We feel there is little harm in making this a permanent change so this change has been made on all communities on December 1.)
- The 'new' CSS nav may result in a minor increase in page header engagement, showing a new design may result in more pageviews.
- Relocating search to the local nav area may result in more searches. This idea will be explored further.
- Hiding the nav entirely decreases reader Pageviews/Session.
- The 'scroll to top' feature did not significantly change Pageviews/Session or Page Header engagement
A test concept
As a result of this research, we've come up with a potential concept for how the page header could look:
Though the layout is somewhat different, it retains much of the existing content - the wordmark, navigation and contribution options.
We think placing the wordmark top and center will help emphasise your wiki's identity, while the reorganised links should make it easier for a newbie to get to know your wiki. In particular, while the main links are hidden initially, you can quickly browse a wide overview of the wiki's content by clicking 'Read'.
As an initial test concept, it is not a final design (indeed, work is still ongoing on this concept right now) and it is subject to significant changes. We could end up going in a very different direction, as other concepts are being explored.
We'll be testing it out on a few communities over the holiday break to get feedback on the concept and to obtain data on how it's used. Check out the test concept on Scrubs Wiki!
Over to you
While we're sure you'll have plenty of feedback on the above concept, there are two other broad questions we'd love to hear your thoughts on:
- Are there specific things that you really like about the current, standard page header?
- What do you feel is missing from the current page header area - especially as a reader of a wiki?
Thanks for reading!
