Readers/2024 Reader and Donor Experiences

This page will cover some of our plans around reading, readers, and donors during 2024 and 2025. The overarching objective for these projects and ideas is: "A new generation of consumers arrives at Wikipedia to discover a preferred destination for discovering, engaging, and building a lasting connection with encyclopedic content". It is documented in the Wikimedia Foundation 2024 –2025 annual plan as the objective WE3.

Background

We want to give good, convenient access to free knowledge for existing readers as well as for future generations of readers in perpetuity. This requires work on our interfaces  – providing tools and features that are adapted to the needs of readers so that they can learn freely with little difficulty. It also requires work to ensure that our readers have the information and entry points they need to aid us in our mission by donating.

The fabric of the internet changes and our communities and readers adapt to new technologies and ways of working. In consequence, a lot of this work will be about adaptation. This means ensuring that knowledge is not only available, but also easily discoverable and accessible to all on our platforms. After all, in addition to amassing knowledge, what we really want is for people to be able to discover and truly learn while on our projects.

This approach is part of a broader strategy which explores learning and access to our information from outside our sites as well. However, to limit the scope of work just to the platforms we own, we assume that users will land on one of our sites, and our goal is to engage them, encourage content discovery, and potentially inspire donations.

We anticipate that people will increasingly get Wikipedia content on other sites and apps (like search engines and chatbots), instead of going to Wikipedia directly. If that happens, Wikipedia content will still be important to the world, but it will be harder to raise money from banners on our site. Our financial projections indicated that, for a range of reasons, fundraising online and through banners are unlikely to grow at the same rate as in past years. This means that in order to sustainably support the billions of people across the world who use the Wikimedia projects, we need to experiment with new ways to raise funds. You can learn more about why finding new fundraising pathways matters, on our annual plan page.

Goals

The goals for this work are:

1. Retain existing and new generations of readers and donors.
2. Increase usefulness to existing and new generations of readers by making content easier to discover and interact with.
3. Work across platforms to adapt our experiences and existing content, so that encyclopedic content can be explored more easily
4. Spread donation opportunities more evenly throughout the year, decreasing reliance on single campaigns

Browsing and Learning Experiences (Key Result WE 3.1 and the related hypotheses)

Key Result

Release two curated, accessible, and community-driven browsing and learning experiences to representative wikis, with the goal of increasing the logged-out reader retention of experience users by 5%

We want to increase the retention of a new generation of readers on our website. We want to allow them to build a lasting connection with Wikipedia, by exploring opportunities for them to more easily discover and learn from content they are interested in. This will include explorations and the development of new curated, personalized, and community-driven browsing and learning experiences. (For example, feeds of relevant content, topical content recommendations and suggestions, community-curated content exploration opportunities, etc.)

We have begun by experimenting with a series of experiments of browsing experiences to determine which we would like to scale for regular wiki experience, and on which platform (web, apps, or both). We will then focus on scaling these experiments and testing their efficacy. Our goal by the end of the year is to launch at least two experiences on representative wikis and to accurately measure a 5% increase in reader retention.

We will require the ability to A/B test with logged-out users, as well as to measure reader retention. We might also need new APIs or services necessary to present recommendations and other curation mechanisms.

Hypotheses

Hypotheses are the specific things we are doing this quarter to address the associated key result. Each hypothesis is an experiment or stage in an experiment we believe will help achieve the key result. Teams make a hypothesis, test it, then iterate on their findings or develop an entirely different new hypothesis. You can think of the hypotheses as bets of the teams’ time–teams make a small bet of a few weeks or a big bet of several months, but the risk-adjusted reward should be commensurate with the time the team puts in. Our hypotheses are meant to be agile and adapt quickly. We may retire, adjust, or start a hypothesis at any point in the quarter. To see the most up-to-date status of a hypothesis and/or to discuss a hypothesis with the team please click the link to its project page.

Hypotheses	Project details	Current Status
Designing and qualitatively evaluating three proofs of concept focused on building curated, personalized, and community-driven browsing and learning experiences will allow us to estimate the potential for increased reader retention (experiment 1: providing recommended content in search and article contexts, experiment 2: summarizing and simplifying article content, experiment 3: making multitasking easier on wikis	Content Discovery Experiments	In progress
If we develop models for remixing content such as a content simplification or summarization that can be hosted and served via our infrastructure (e.g. LiftWing), we will establish the technical direction for work focused on increasing reader retention through new content discovery features.	Making content easier to read	In progress
If we analyze the projected performance impact of hypothesis WE3.1.1 and WE3.1.2 on the Search API, we can scope and address performance and scalability issues before they negatively affect our users.	Ensuring our we can provide recommendations for everyone	Completed Sept 2024
If we enhance the search field in the Android app to recommend personalized content based on a user's interest and display better results, we will learn if this improves user engagement by observing whether it increases the impression and click-through rate (CTR) of search results by 5% in the experimental group compared to the control group over a 30-day A/B test. This improvement could potentially lead to a 1% increase in the retention of logged out users.	Recommended Content in Search	Conducting analysis
If we introduce a personalized rabbit hole feature in the Android app and recommend articles based on the types of topics and sections a user is interested in, we will learn if the feature is sticky enough to result in multi-day usage by 10% of users exposed to the experiment over a 30-day period, and a higher pageview rate than users do not engage with the feature.	Rabbit Holes	In progress

Donor Experiences (Key Result WE 3.2 and the related hypotheses)

Key Result

50% increase in the number of donations via touchpoints outside the annual banner and email appeals per platform.

We want to diversify our revenue sources while recognizing our existing donors. Our focus is on increasing the number of donations beyond the annual banner appeals the Foundation has relied upon in the past. We want to show that with more integrated donor experiences, we can sustain our work and expand our impact.

50% is an initial estimate based on the decreased visibility of the donate button on web as a result of Vector 2022, and the increase in the number of donations from FY 2023-2024's pilot project on the Wikipedia apps to enhance donor experiences (50.1% increase in donations). Evaluating this metric by platform will help us understand trends in platforms and if different tactics should be deployed based on a difference in behavior based on platform audience.

Hypotheses

Hypotheses	Project details	Current Status
If we create a wireframes that demonstrates the concept of a badge representing donors championing article(s) of interest, we can learn if there would be community acceptance for a production version of this method for fundraising in the Apps.	Fundraising Experiment in the iOS App	Completed Sept 2024
Increasing the prominence of entry points to donations on the logged-out experiences of the Vector web mobile and desktop experience will increase the clickthrough rate of the donate link by 30% YoY	Reading/Web/Improving Donation Touchpoints	Conducting analysis
If we make the “Donate” button in the iOS App more prominent by making it one click or less away from the main navigation screen, we will learn if discoverability was a barrier to non banner donations.	iOS/Navigation Refresh	Conducting analysis
If we create a Wikipedia in Review experiment in the Wikipedia app, to allow users to see and share personalized data about their reading, editing, and donation habits, we will see 2% of viewers donate on iOS as a result of this feature, 5% click share and, 65% of users rating the feature neutral or satisfactory.	iOS/Personalized Wikipedia Year in Review	In progress
If we update the contributions page in the Android app to include an active badge for someone that is an app donor and display an inactive state with a prompt to donate for someone that has not donated in app, we will learn if this recognition is of value to current donors and encourages behavior of donating for prospective donors, informing if it is worth expanding on the concept of private donor badges or abandoning it.	Wikimedia Apps/Team/Android/Private Donor Recognition Experiment	In progress
Increasing the prominence of entry points to donations on the logged-out experiences of the Minerva web mobile and desktop experience will increase the clickthrough rate of the donate link by 30% YoY	T375175	In progress