Topic on Talk:Wikipedia.org Portal A/B testing

Why test putting the languages in a dropdown?

5
KSmith (WMF) (talkcontribs)

For the second test (collapsing the long list of languages inside a dropdown), the current "why" is "The Portal team wants to find out if the listing of languages by article count could be displayed in a more streamlined way." I think the "why" should end with something like "...without significantly increasing the bounce rate."

My thinking is: Of course things can be streamlined. But can they be streamlined without negative consequences.

Smalyshev (WMF) (talkcontribs)

For this one, it is also unclear to me what we are going to measure. It is specifically not clickthrough as it says "this test is not meant to affect the click-through rate" so what do we intend to affect?

KSmith (WMF) (talkcontribs)

The test might be to ensure that it does not affect the click-through rate. I'm not sure it's reasonable to expect absolutely no drop-off, but if we saw 10% higher bounce rate, I would personally consider the test a failure.

Smalyshev (WMF) (talkcontribs)

Sounds good, but it would be nice to state so upfront. In general, it is a good practice to write down test criteria and what we'd do if we find it one way or another before the test.

DTankersley (WMF) (talkcontribs)

Thanks for the comments - this test was to de-clutter the page a bit, without affecting the clickthrough rate in a negative manner. I'll update the information for this test.

Reply to "Why test putting the languages in a dropdown?"