[Wikimedia-l] An updated design for the Wikimedia Foundation website

Hello! Today, we are thrilled to share an updated visual design style on the Wikimedia Foundation website (wikimediafoundation.org)! This updated design was developed by the Wikimedia Foundation’s Product design team. We worked on feedback from Meta-Wiki, emails, Phabricator, and hundreds of conversations paired with user testing with people in the target audiences for the website. We are incredibly appreciative of the great care that team has taken in making strategic, data-led design decisions and really helping us amplify the website's ability to convey our story to people generally unfamiliar with Wikimedia. We have also expanded on the information about the website on its Meta-Wiki page,[1] and updated the public mirror of the code base to reflect the technical changes made to the site for this updated design.[2] Thank you to the now hundreds of people that have been involved in helping us build a website for the Foundation which we can be proud of! -greg & the Wikimedia Foundation Communication team = A bit more about the site = == How is the site doing? == Since the site's soft launch in July 2018, traffic has continued to increase. There has also been a significant increase in donations collected via this website. Two key audiences, potential staff and partners, have shared positive feedback on the site’s content and organization, enabling them to find jobs and contact key teams respectively. Additionally, user testing has shown a positive response to the content and overall architecture of the site. == What brought us here == The Wikimedia Foundation Communications department has been collecting feedback on the Foundation's website since late 2016 and beginning in early 2017 has been working on addressing the backlog of issues related to the website. The original Foundation site, launched in 2004, did not have a clear audience, and as a result was not effectively serving any of the hundreds of uses people saw for it. Maintaining the site's content beyond English had become a growing problem - leaving visitors with different information, depending on which language they were using, on basic details like our address and executive staff. Additionally, the site had over 17,000 pages - a vast majority of which were either out of date or no longer in use. In 2017-18, the Communications department ran a "Discovery" process to help inform our decision making. This process included reviews of methods used by other organizations, assessment of our current communication channels, collecting feedback at Wikimania, and interviews with dozens of volunteers, donors, contractors, and staff. The resulting report[3] and recommendations helped identify the objectives and audiences of the website,[1] and were utilized throughout the initial design and development of the new website. Shortly after the soft launch, the department began working with the Product department's design team to perform user testing, process feedback collected in the weeks following the soft launch, and collect additional feedback to help us make informed decisions. They helped us collect and process feedback from hundreds of individuals within and outside of the movement. Based on feedback, they conducted user testing and developed the updated design we deployed this morning. We will continue to use a data and feedback informed decision making in managing the site. Given the external audience nature of the site, it has consistently proven important to take the time to collect feedback and data from a wide variety of sources - including volunteers, press, donors, partner organizations, and readers of the projects. == What comes next == More languages! The Communications department will continue to work on content development and expanding translations to additional languages. If you are interested in our plans for translations, please check out the information shared recently about the Organization communications translators group.[5] == Providing feedback == The Communications department will continue to monitor the talk page for the Foundation's website on Meta-Wiki.[6] Additionally, I will be attending Wikimania in Stockholm and available to chat with folks.[7] [1] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_website [2] https://github.com/wikimedia/wikimediafoundation-org [3] https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/foundation/1/1b/Wikimedia_Foundation… [5] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Communications/Organization_communications_… [6] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Wikimedia_Foundation_website [7] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Communications/Wikimania_2019 -- Gregory Varnum (pronouns - he/his/him) Communications Strategist Wikimedia Foundation <https://wikimediafoundation.org/>