I want to thank everyone for this robust discussion! We appreciate the feedback very much. I want to recognize the role that Joseph Seddon has played in encouraging us to share more results with this email list; he's the #1 reason that I started this thread.
I also want to thank Peter Coombe, my teammate on the banner crew, for suggesting so many of the notes that I am about to provide. His insight into mediawiki and the more mysterious parts of centralnotice are a constant value.
Lots of responses:
- I received a note off-thread re: bad wrapping of the Read/edit/more links between 920 - 1060px. We'll take another pass at that.
- Agreed about the Close X. We'll make that clearer and easier to click.
- This is a good opportunity to reiterate that the norm for us is to only show a single 'large' banner, per device, in a given fundraising campaign. It usually serves as a reader's first banner impression, converts extremely well, and then we move to 'small' banners. Sometimes we test alternate sequences, but this is normal for the vast majority of readers.
- This banner is a desktop banner; it will not be shown to anyone on the mobile site. However, it is possible for you to follow the preview link I provided on any device. If you were viewing on a large phone or tablet, it might have seemed particularly strange.
- Gergo Tisza, issues with the Timeless skin will not be a problem, because this banner will only be targeted to logged out users who can not pick a custom skin.
- Petr Kadlec, this work-in-progress banner is using some copy written in English, as well as a couple translation templates; the final version will all be hardcoded English. However, your bug sounds strange - could you try opening the link in an incognito browser and, if you're still getting a problem, send me a screenshot?
- Samuel Klein, that red underline is a pretty consistent element in our designs. For what it's worth, we actually tried a version where the underline did function as a hyperlink, but it had no effect on giving rate. Thanks for your other testing notes!
- Additionally: we run surveys to try to understand reader and donor views on how obtrusive and frequent our on-Wikipedia fundraising campaigns are perceived to be. We consistently see feedback that the quantity of banners is "about right," and that the banners are, to most people, not overly aggressive.
We'll all be monitoring this thread; thank you, again, to everyone who took the time to respond. In all honesty, I am mostly un-circumspect. I believe that we have to take risks and try many new ideas; wins, and losses, in our work are both frequent and often surprising. I'd point to a blog post we published recently https://blog.wikimedia.org/2017/10/03/fundraising-banner-limit/ that shows the diminishing returns of banner impressions over the course of one of our campaigns. It is not true that we could simply run more banners, for longer periods of time, and expect the same returns.
It's a constant process of experimentation and I appreciate having such an engaged community to review, improve, and motivate our work.
regards, sam
On Wed, Nov 15, 2017 at 8:23 AM, John Erling Blad jeblad@gmail.com wrote:
What kind of reasonably new device has that kind of resolution?
On Wed, Nov 15, 2017 at 12:41 PM, jayvdb@gmail.com wrote:
Patrik, try it on a 640x480 screen. :P
On Wed, 15 Nov 2017 16:06 pajz pajzmail@gmail.com wrote:
This test would run for 1 to 2 hours, and then we'd evaluate results
to
see
if it's worth spending any more time on the concept. For now, we're
simply
hiding the banner all together below 920px, as at smaller viewports
it
begins to interfere with site navigation elements.
It is truly an amazing banner, as it might be the first donation banner
in
the history of donation banners that actually improve the readability
of
our content. Indeed, we have never been closer to line length recommendations for optimal readability than with this banner.
Patrik
On 15 November 2017 at 01:25, Liam Wyatt liamwyatt@gmail.com wrote:
TL;DR: A short test of a new banner concept will help us decide if
it's
worth iteration and improvement.
Here's a link to the banner: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple?banner=dsk_p1_lg_ right10&country=US&force=1
I appreciate that you're trying to innovate, and this requires
pushing
boundaries. I also appreciate that the WMF fundraising principle
"minimal
disruption"[1] is subjective thing - and that the WMF has
traditionally
taken this to mean "be disruptive for the shortest period" rather
than
"be
less disruptive overall, even if it takes longer". However, I do feel that *resizing all the article content to the
left,
and
occupying the entire right side third of the screen with a donation
request
that follows me as I scroll *is significantly more than minimally disruptive. Personally, I would request that this design approach not
be
pursued on that basis.
-Liam / Wittylama
p.s. Also, on my screen at least, the "x" dismiss button in the
top-right
is so small that it hides under Chrome's translucent scrollbar
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