Wikimedia Apps/App Awareness Project

The Communications department of the Wikimedia Foundation is working on an App Awareness Project in 2019, with the goal of introducing the Foundation's Wikipedia apps to audiences that would like them, but don't currently know that they exist.

The WMF will conduct two short tests visible on the mobile browser for some readers in the United States who visit English Wikipedia. The tests will run on two nights -- Thursday, Aug 29th and Friday, Aug 30th -- for one hour each night, 10:00-11:00pm ET/4:00-5:00am UTC. The goal of these tests is to determine if mobile users want the app as an extension of their Wikipedia experience, and to evaluate several options for reaching the audience we think would be most interested in the apps.

The ultimate goal is to bring Wikipedia to new people who aren't familiar with it at all -- in languages and areas of the world where there's low awareness of Wikipedia overall, where the primary way to access the internet is a mobile device, and where people's experience of the internet has mostly been through apps rather than a mobile browser. We want to test some of the techniques that we may use in one of the largest and highest-awareness markets -- ie, English Wikipedia in the United States. What we learn in these tests will give us some baselines that we can use when we approach the more difficult areas.

We'll describe the tests below, as well as the rationale for why we think the apps are useful to our readers and editors. Please feel free to ask questions and make suggestions on the talk page.

Tests
The upcoming tests will display a banner at the top of the Wikipedia article, showing the icon for the app and indicating that it's available on the iOS app store/Google Play store. This is very common for major websites that have apps. The banner will have an X for readers who want to dismiss it.

The first test on Thursday will evaluate two designs -- the simple banner, vs a larger banner that also adds this copy: "Have you tried the official Wikipedia app for (iOS/Android) already? It's the best Wikipedia experience on your Mobile device." The simple banner will occupy about 1/4 of the mobile screen; the larger banner occupies about 1/2 of the screen. We'll be looking at the performance of the two designs, to see whether there's a meaningful difference that would justify taking more of the screen space.

The second test, on Friday, will compare the timing of when to show the banner. One group will see the banner on their first pageview, and the second group will see it on their third pageview in a single session. The hypothesis that we want to test is that the people who read three pages in the same session are more likely to be Wikipedia enthusiasts, and that the app will be most appealing to those people. If that's the case, we'll see more clicks for that second group, more installs, and more use of the app.

We'll be measuring the following things:


 * Banner: Impressions, Clicks, Dismissals, Banner designs
 * Download Pages: Device type iOS/Android, Install button clicks & abandons
 * App Activity: # Downloads by campaign code
 * App Engagement: 7-day engagement for those with App Install IDs and attached event campaign IDs

Why apps?
Mobile web browsers have constraints and limitations that make it difficult to build some features, which are much easier to build in apps. The apps have a number of helpful features that aren't available on mobile web, which can enhance the experience for both readers and editors:


 * Saved pages for offline reading -- this is very helpful for people who have limited wifi access, bad connections, or expensive data plans, as well as people who want to read on the subway or on an airplane flight.


 * Reading lists -- you can put saved pages in personal folders, which is helpful if you're researching a particular topic, planning a trip, or just bookmarking pages that you want to read (or edit!) later.


 * Editing with syntax highlighting -- when you're editing a page, the apps highlight the wiki code in separate colors, to make it easier to tell the difference between article text, links and templates or other code. The mobile website doesn't have this.


 * Easier navigation -- the app loads pages very quickly, and gives you breadcrumbs to move backwards through the pages you've read in this session. There's also a "History" tab that lists all of the pages you've read on the app, so you can easily go back and find that page that you were looking at last week.


 * Micro-contributions -- the app offers helpful tasks that improve the encyclopedia, which are small enough to do easily on a mobile device. Both apps have "short description" editing, which allows you to change the descriptive text that appears under the title on pages and in search results. Android is experimenting with other micro-contributions tasks.


 * Explore feed -- when you open the app, you see a feed that has the featured article of the day, featured picture of the day, the top read articles of the day and a random article for serendipitous browsing.


 * Dark mode -- reading white text on a black background, for night reading or just because you like white-on-black.