Readers/Reader Experience/WE 3.5.5 Donor badge experiment
The Donor Badge Experiment is one of the experiments of the Reader Experience team.
As part of the work on donor ID and recognition, in WE 3.5.5 hypothesis we want to run an experiment for logged-out users on mobile-only that will present donors with an on-wiki token of appreciation. We have no post-donation retention signal for logged-out donors on mobile web. Once a donor finishes their gift, nothing in subsequent sessions acknowledges that they gave. This experiment runs a three-variant test to find out whether a persistent Donor Thank You badge – and what it does when you tap it – has any effect on limited days (30 at project start) return rates and re-engagement. Tech owner is Volker. Owner is Hsuanwei.
This experiment will launch in Q2 FY2025-26.
What is this feature?
[edit]This experiment will in treatment variants feature a wikiheart button with a simple thank you message in variant B and a delightful animatino in variant C.
Experimentation
[edit]Phase 1: User testing
[edit]Date: FY25-26 Sprint 23 (Q2)
Status: Experiment live from 18 June to 18 July 2026
The experiment targets only anonymous users on Minerva skin for mobile web users. In this test, two randomly selected third of anonymous user sessions will be assigned to the “treatment” groups, where they both will see a donor badge, one of them with a delightful animation. The other randomly selected third will be assigned to the “control” group, where they will see no change at all.
- The test will go live on Test Wiki 11 June and the selected Wikipedias 18 July. The experiment will run for a total of four weeks, from 18 June 2026 to 18 July 2026, to assure sufficient data is collected.