Wikipedia.org Portal A/B testing

Background
We want to ensure that the Wikipedia.org Portal page is easy to use and understand while promoting further discovery into Wikipedia and it's various other projects.

The Portal page has around 10 million daily pageviews. This is awesome, however, there is a majority of our visitors that simply leave the page without doing a search, selecting a language link or clicking into a sister project page. We want to change that by presenting intriguing and interesting content with a more modern look and feel to the page.

The Discovery Department's Portal Team recently updated the search box to be more prominent and to serve up meta data in the dynamic type-ahead search results so that visitors will be able to choose exactly what they were looking for.

Now, it's time to refresh the page to be more dynamic and visually stimulating, so that more people can easily access the content available in the Wikimedia projects. To do this, starting in Q4 2015/2016 (April - June 2016), the Discovery Department's Portal Team will conduct a number of A/B tests and analyze the data from our visitors. Once testing and analysis is done for each test, the Portal Team publish the results, and if the test was successful then we'll look at pushing the experiment to production.

Below is a list of possible A/B tests that the Portal Team may perform. Feedback and input is welcomed! The mockups represent an idea of what we want to do, and may not represent the final product.

Rationale
"Why this test?" The Portal Team is curious as to how many of the visitors to the Portal page do not have English set as their preferred browser language.

Description
"What is this test?" In this test, the portal code will detect what the visitor's browser's preferred language(s) are and then re-sort the Top Ten language links around the globe to match those language preferences.

Also included in this test, will be a localized language phrase positioned below the Wikipedia work mark: The Free Encyclopedia. The phrase will be based on the visitor's first preferred browser language. If there isn't a translation for the preferred language, the English phrase will be displayed. The same phrase that is currently underneath all the top 10 language links will be removed to provide more white space and a more cleaner look and feel to the page.

To view the visual treatment of this test that the B Group will see, visit this page. The A Control group will see this page, which is the current implementation of the Portal page.

Rationale
"Why this test?" The Portal team wants to find out if the listing of languages by article count could be displayed in a more streamlined way.

Description
"What is this test?" In this test, there will be a selection dropdown added directly below the search box on the Wikipedia.org portal page. When a visitor clicks on the dropdown, they will see the familiar look and feel of the existing languages by article count treatment, with the top most languages by article listed first.

By inserting the article counts into a dropdown, the page will be much simpler and streamlined with additional easy-on-the-eyes white space. Included in the dropdown, will be all the languages that Wikipedia supports. All the language links will be clickable, enabling the visitor to quickly go to that language specific wiki site.

This test is not meant to affect the click-through rate of the language by article count links, but to put the sometimes confusing information into a cleaner interface.

Rationale


"Why this test?" The Portal team wants to see if collapsing the top 10 language links increases the click-through rate to those specific wiki sites.

Description
"What is this test?" The top 10 language links will be collapsed into a single (or possibly two) lines of links above or below the search box. There will be an additional link added to include a dropdown selection of all language wiki links.

In this test, we want to see if the different treatment will affect the average click-through rate on those primary language links. The 1op ten language links will in the order of the visitor's browser's language preference (if they have one) from left to right.

Rationale


"Why this test?" Tenderloin landjaeger sirloin, t-bone andouille ham hock filet mignon pork belly spare ribs alcatra bresaola swine tongue biltong short ribs. Biltong pig tail pancetta. Rump shank bacon strip steak bresaola ribeye. Brisket jerky meatloaf bacon bresaola. Alcatra pig porchetta meatball fatback leberkas cow, spare ribs chuck strip steak drumstick.

Description
"What is this test?" Pancetta brisket porchetta, kielbasa jowl sausage swine fatback. Swine andouille brisket pork fatback corned beef ham hock turkey beef pork chop pig tri-tip frankfurter porchetta. Pork chop corned beef turkey pork filet mignon kevin tail. Ground round bresaola meatloaf, cow biltong leberkas porchetta kielbasa sausage ham hock.