[Wikimedia-l] 15% off merchandise today at the Wikimedia Shop

[James Alexander]

On Mon, Jan 14, 2013 at 1:01 PM, Tobias
<church.of.emacs.ml at googlemail.com>wrote:

> First of all, I'm glad there's a Wikimedia Shop. I don't think it'll make
> big money, but even if it's only self-sustaining it's totally worth it.
>
> I also think that generally we should be happy to try stuff out and use
> banners to advertise new services.
>
> However, I share with Mono the worry that large, colorful and distracting
> banners are becoming the standard, rather than the exception. I think part
> of the reason why "big" banners are used is because they are easier to
> create: most banners are created by copying existing banners and most
> existing banners are those huge fundraising banners.
>
> We should remember that we have banners in all flavours:
> * very low key --- https://meta.wikimedia.org/w/**index.php?title=Special:
> **NoticeTemplate/view&template=**stew2011_noms<https://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:NoticeTemplate/view&template=stew2011_noms>
> * short & small --- https://meta.wikimedia.org/w/**
> index.php?title=Special:**NoticeTemplate/view&template=**
> WMDE_community_budget<https://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:NoticeTemplate/view&template=WMDE_community_budget>
> * a bit larger --- https://meta.wikimedia.org/w/**index.php?title=Special:
> **NoticeTemplate/view&template=**BrazilMeetups<https://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:NoticeTemplate/view&template=BrazilMeetups>
> * do not use! --- https://meta.wikimedia.org/w/**index.php?title=Special:*
> *NoticeTemplate/view&template=**money_or_die<https://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:NoticeTemplate/view&template=money_or_die>
>
> James, was the banner type/size a conscious decision you made? Or did you
> just choose to go with a standard ("big") banner?
>
> Regards,
> Tobias
>


Thanks Tobias,

I generally agree that banners have been overused, they have a big effect
but a big presence and we don't want to abuse that. I'm really happy to see
things like Echo being worked on in Engineering which will add a much
better 'intermediate' choice for messaging which we currently really don't
have.

The size of the banner was a conscious choice but one I thought about for a
fair bit. It's what I would generally consider a 'medium' banner but has
clearly migrated itself to being one of the larger types that we use,
compared to the past couple years where they tended to be significantly
bigger (generally mirroring the size of the fundraising banners at the time
which were significantly larger then this). These ones are around 100px
which is the size or smaller (depending on the banner) then the fundraising
banners this year (before they expanded).

For those interested the general idea I was trying to do was to pick a size
that was the smallest it could be while still getting the information
across that I thought was important. In general that meant I wanted:

   - Everyone to know that it was a shop banner, I didn't want anyone
   clicking on it without knowing that's what it was ( or at least as few
   people as we can).
   - To know that it was targeted at Editors/Volunteers and that some of
   the merch was specifically targeted at that.
   - To know that it was run by the foundation so that people, hopefully,
   don't think that we've been hacked or that some random shop was doing this.
   - Be generally readable without effort

I wanted to  more specifically call out on the banner that the profits went
to the Merchandise Giveaway Program that has been a runaway success but, to
be honest, I both ran out of space and it's more of a reality for the
public push because we've cut out almost all of the margin for the logged
in sale.

I try to support a bunch of different window sizes and resolutions and in
the end it just didn't seem to work well any smaller then this (but didn't
have to be any bigger). We still have some issues with the smaller side of
windows/resolutions and am still looking at good ways to adapt for that but
are getting there.

James

James Alexander
Manager, Merchandise
Wikimedia Foundation
(415) 839-6885 x6716 @jamesofur