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2017 Campaigns Overview

This page contains key findings and results from the first five campaigns from 2017 to early 2018 in English. For the overview of the campaign pages in German, please click here.

2017 Motivation and Scope

Our motivation was to stop the downward trend in the numbers of new editors (>10 edits). Therefore, we planned four campaigns throughout 2017, including the January campaign in 2018. With these campaigns, we tested the underlying assumption that online campaigning on Wikipedia can attract Wikipedia readers to get involved and become active editors (>10 edits) themselves.

As this was our first attempt to attract users with online campaigning in Wikipedia, we decided to use an iterative approach: We ran the first two campaigns on a low banner display rate (5-20%) to learn more about the effects of online campaigning.

Questions we were interested in:

What effect does online campaigning have on readers and editors of Wikipedia?
What works and what does not work to attract new users and motivate them to edit Wikipedia (banner designs, calls-to-action, user journeys, videos, approaches to “learn Wikipedia”, etc.)?
What means are there to measure campaigns?

After running the first campaign on a low banner display rate, we used the findings to create a big campaign with an 80% banner display rate. With that approach we made sure to gain crucial insights in the beginning and to use only the best practices on a big scale and therefore guarantee the most positive impact of campaigning.
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Key Findings and Results 2017-2018

Use simple and actionable calls-to-action (CTA) for banners, for example 'You can improve the accuracy of Wikipedia!' → CTA: "Learn how to improve articles!".

Use a factual and clean design for banners to attract new users. This is perceived as more accurate and professional than colorful and creative banner designs (and is more accepted by Wikipedia readers).

Explain very briefly and clearly the next steps to edit Wikipedia on a landing page. Videos make it easier for people to understand and learn about Wikipedia.

Guided tours help people to get an overview of Wikipedia’s 'buttons' before starting with the first edit.

Do not run campaigns on the weekend. People use Wikipedia mostly on Mondays and least on weekends (at least in Germany).

Get as much feedback as possible from the community and if possible from external organisations to test messages and designs before running a campaign.

Implement daily monitoring of the key indicators to adjust at any given moment.

User journeys with just one option work best: banner → landing page → registration

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Campaign results in detail

Initially, we planned four campaigns with an ascending banner display rate:

'Thank You!' Campaign in January 2017 (100% → Please note: The main part of the banner is from the fundraising team aimed to attract new members of our NGO. Only one small button directs the users to our landing page for new editors)
Spring Campaign in April 2017 (5-10%)
Autumn Campaign in October 2017 (80%)
'Thank You Campaign' in January 2018 (100% → Please note: The user first sees a banner from the fundraising team. After four impressions the 'new editors banner' gets displayed.)

While conducting the first two campaigns, we found that we need more testing and information to execute a large-scale campaign in autumn with a banner display rate of 80% or more. Therefore we developed an additional fifth campaign:

Summer Campaign in July 2017 (20-30%)

Below you can find the results of all campaigns in detail:

'Thank You' Campaign 2017

Banner

Brief Explanation:

Our first campaign to attract new editors was supplementary to the Fundraising team's 'Thank You' campaign. The original 'Thank You' banner said thank you to the donors of the fundraising campaign. The redesigned banner contained three Buttons:

'Thank You' text
Become a member of Wikimedia Deutschland e. V.
Get involved as an editor

With every campaign we wanted to answer a set of questions.

Questions:

Do the illustrations support the message / call-to-action?
Are introductory videos videos helpful for new editors?
Which of the videos is more attractive to users?

Campaign Parameters:

Length: 6 days (January 1 - January 7, 2017)
banner display rate: 100%
User journey: banner → landing page → registrations

Learnings:

The illustrations do indeed attract people to get involved.
Wikimedia Commons is not suitable as a media source for campaigning. The number of clicks could only be measured with a complicated workaround. In the meantime, we solved that problem with a video tool. An additional problem was that the videos needed to be rendered at different screen resolutions. That took considerable time. Hence, the videos needed to be produced at least one week before using them.
The tracking of registrations was not possible – only clicks on the button on the landing page could be measured.
There were too many options in the 'Thank You' banner. It was impossible to direct as many people to the registration page as we assumed.
In addition, the landing page had too many options to get involved. The potential new users were confused about what to do next.

Landing page (in German): https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikimedia_Deutschland/Mach_mit

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Spring Campaign 2017

Banner - correct mistakes

Brief Explanation:

With the second banner campaign in spring we wanted to attract users with one simple call-to-action: correcting errors in Wikipedia. In contrast to the first campaign, we used a very simple and plain design.

Questions:

How appealing is the design of the banner and the landing page for new editors?
How does a simple call-to-action appeal to new editors?
Does a guided tour help to get started in Wikipedia?

Campaign Parameters:

length: 10 days (April 12 - April 22, 2017)
banner display rate: 5 - 10% (of guest users)
user journey: banner → landing page → registration → guided tour

Learnings:

A simple call-to-action works very well (significantly higher conversion rate).
How to successfully implement tracking: To find a solution to that problem, we needed know-how about SQL from our software team and it took copious amounts of trial and error with the Campaigns Extension)
The planned impression and registration figures were not reached. Our idea for future campaigns: implementing live monitoring of impressions and registrations (creating the possibility of raising the banner display rate while running the campaign).
On a short term scale, the guided tour did not influence the number of new editors' edits. But numbers are not high enough to prove this finding.

Landing page (German): https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikimedia_Deutschland/Fehler_korrigieren

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Summer Campaign (additional) 2017

Banner 1 - factual approach

Banner 2 - emotional approach

Brief Explanation:

As described in the Motivation and Scope, we decided to use an iterative approach in order to learn about the aspects of a successful banner campaign with every campaign. Having conducted two campaigns did not equip us with all the information we needed to run an autumn campaign on maximum scale. We decided to add a summer campaign to obtain additional information (see Questions).

Questions:

Which approach is more appealing to potential editors: emotional illustration and text or a factual look and feel?
Does live monitoring in Wikipedia work?
Which of our video tutorials works best?
Does a guided tour really does not make a difference to the new editors edits?

Campaign Parameters:

length: 8 days (July 11 - July 18, 2017)
banner display rate: 20 - 30%
user journeys:
- banner (emotional) → landing page (emotional & not wiki) → registration → guided tour
- banner (factual) → landing page (factual & on-wiki) → registration → guided tour

Learnings:

The emotional design does not cause significantly higher conversion rates compared to the factual design.
Daily monitoring works.
The message of the banner was not intelligible to users. Furthermore, the German Wikipedia community criticized the emotional message.
The video at the top of the page was clicked the most.
The click rates for videos were higher on the external (not on-Wiki) landing page.
The tracking of external pages is difficult and not comparable to Wiki page views.
Guided tours have a slightly positive effect on new editors' edit numbers.

Landing page (German):

1 (factual) https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikimedia_Deutschland/Entdeckungen-sortieren

2 (emotional) https://entdecke.wikipedia.de

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Autumn Campaign 2017

Banner 1: More Precise Articles

Banner 2: Add Pictures

Banner 3: Add Sources

Banner 4: Get Involved

Brief explanation:

The previous three campaigns aimed to include all important learnings for the autumn campaign, as this was the campaign with the highest banner display rate. In this campaign, we used our findings and decided to test further with four different banners. We used a quite formal and factual design with three simple call-to-actions for each banner to get started:

You can make Wikipedia more vivid! CTA: "Learn how to add pictures to articles" (German: Du kannst Wikipedia anschaulicher machen! CTA: "So bebilderst du Artikel")
You can improve the accuracy of Wikipedia! CTA: "Learn how to improve articles" (German: Du kannst Wikipedia genauer machen! CTA: "So überarbeitest du Artikel")
You can improve the reliability of Wikipedia! CTA: "Learn how to add citations" (German: Du kannst Wikipedia noch verlässlicher machen! CTA: "So ergänzt du Belege")

Additionally to the three simple entry points we decided to just call for registration in the fourth banner.

Questions:

Do users need further information on a landing page to start editing Wikipedia?
How does only a call for registration perform compared to the three different calls-to-action that have an additional landing page explaining the next steps?
Which of the three simple entry points works best to get people to start editing?

Learnings:

Currently a proper A/B testing is not possible with central notice options. Hence, four (more than two) banners are shown randomly to probably the same users instead of showing only one banner repeatedly to only one reader.
Users provided with more detailed information and a concrete call-to-action are more likely to register and also to edit after registering
The following call-to-action worked best to get people started: You can improve the accuracy of Wikipedia! CTA: "Learn how to improve articles" (German: Du kannst Wikipedia genauer machen! CTA: "So überarbeitest du Artikel")
Feedback from the community (online and offline) and a pretest with an external company on the different messages and the design led to the best product possible

Link zur Landingpage: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikimedia_Deutschland/JetztMitmachen

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'Thank You' Campaign 2018

Banner

Brief explaination:

Like our first campaign to attract new editors,this campaign was also supplementary to the Fundraising team's 'Thank You!' Campaign. The 'Thank You!' banner originally said thank you to the donors of the fundraising campaign. This time our banners were shown separately after the fundraising banner was shown to the readers. Thus, there were very few users that actually saw a banner aimed at attracting new editors.

Under these limited conditions, we focused our aims on finding out more about the training modules that we adapted from the English language modules.

Questions:

How much does a 'Thank You!' banner contribute to attracting users to become a new editor?
Do users complete the training modules once they begin them?
How does the completion of training modules affect editing behavior?

Learnings:

The very low banner display rate and also the different messages – saying thank you for donating und also asking for contributions as an editor – resulted in half of the average conversion rate in page clicks.
As the number of users completing a training module was very low (29 people), general conclusions about the editing behavior that follows could not be drawn. Even when taken on its own, our figures did not show any differences between people who took a training module and those who did not.

Link to the landing page (in German): https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikimedia_Deutschland/LerneWikipedia

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