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Posted to dev@openoffice.apache.org by Rob Weir <ro...@apache.org> on 2012/06/08 15:54:36 UTC
[Marketing][UX] Who wants to do a Content Experiment?
A "Content Experiment" is when we create several version of the same
web page and test it with users to see which version performs best.
Google Analystics has a feature where it can run such experiments for
us automatically, tracking all the statistics for us, and telling us
which version of a page gives the optimal results.
One particular scenario I think we could really improve on is what I
call the "Windows Unrecognized ODF File" scenario. It goes like this;
1. The user is a Windows user that does not have OpenOffice installed,
or any other application that understands ODF files. So no
LibreOffice, no AbiWord, not even Office 2007 SP2 or Office 2010 (both
of which support ODF).
2. User receives an ODF document, from email, from the web, or some other means.
3. User tries to launch the ODF file.
4. Because the user does not have an ODF application installed,
Windows gives the user a dialog box with the following
---------------------------------------
Windows cannot open this file:
foo.odt
To open this file, Windows needs to know what program created it.
Windows can go online to look it up automatically, or you can manually
select from a list of programs on your computer.
What do you want to do?
-- Use the Web service to find the appropriate program
-- Select the program from a list
---------------------------------------
5. User picks the first option (Use the Web service) and is brought
to the following page:
http://shell.windows.com/fileassoc/0409/xml/redir.asp?Ext=odt
6. User selects OpenOffice and are brought to this page:
http://www.openoffice.org/download/index.html
Note that we have no control up to this point. The above steps are
all user interactions with Microsoft Windows and Microsoft's website.
The only thing we really control is the contents of the destination
website (step 6). Technically, it is easily to make this redirect to
a different page just for users who come from the Microsoft web
service. So we can easily show a customized page that better targets
this scenario.
Note that the user reaching this point probably knows nothing about
ODF or about OpenOffice. They are just plopped into this download
page with almost no context. For example, there is zero mention of
ODF on this page. Maybe this is why only 30% of the users who reach
this page from the web service actually downloaded OpenOffice. This
is much lower than visitors who reach our download page from other
means.
Can we improve on this?
Note: we get more referrals from this Windows web service than we get
referrals from any other website. So helping these users quickly
understand what their options are and why they might want to
download/install OpenOffice is quite important.
So here is the experiment. Let's try to get a handful of alternate
destination pages that speak to this scenario and provide the
information that would be most useful to this kind of user. It could
be a modified version of the download page. It could be a new
intermediate landing page that provides context and then links to the
existing download page. Whatever you think would work best.
We can then run the experiment, say for a month, letting Google
randomly present users with the various alternate pages and measure
what the download %'s are for each version. The winner will gain
eternal fame and glory, maybe even a blog post.
I'm willing to do the technical work on setting up the experiment and
prepping the website to support it. What I need are volunteers to
come up with alternate landing pages for this scenario, ones that we
can include in the experiment.
Questions?
-Rob
Re: [Marketing][UX] Who wants to do a Content Experiment?
Posted by Kevin Grignon <ke...@gmail.com>.
KG01 - See comments inline
On Tue, Jun 12, 2012 at 2:44 AM, Rob Weir <ro...@apache.org> wrote:
> On Mon, Jun 11, 2012 at 2:14 PM, Paolo Pozzan <pa...@z2z.it> wrote:
> > Il 08/06/2012 15:54, Rob Weir ha scritto:
> >
> >> A "Content Experiment" is when we create several version of the same
> >> web page and test it with users to see which version performs best.
> >> Google Analystics has a feature where it can run such experiments for
> >> us automatically, tracking all the statistics for us, and telling us
> >> which version of a page gives the optimal results.
>
KG01 - Iterative development like this is great. Check out a great resource
that performs such A/B testing.
See: https://whichtestwon.com/past-tests
> >>
> >> One particular scenario I think we could really improve on is what I
> >> call the "Windows Unrecognized ODF File" scenario. It goes like this;
> >>
> > [cut]
> >
> >>
> >> So here is the experiment. Let's try to get a handful of alternate
> >> destination pages that speak to this scenario and provide the
> >> information that would be most useful to this kind of user. It could
> >> be a modified version of the download page. It could be a new
> >> intermediate landing page that provides context and then links to the
> >> existing download page. Whatever you think would work best.
> >>
> >> We can then run the experiment, say for a month, letting Google
> >> randomly present users with the various alternate pages and measure
> >> what the download %'s are for each version. The winner will gain
> >> eternal fame and glory, maybe even a blog post.
> >>
> >> I'm willing to do the technical work on setting up the experiment and
> >> prepping the website to support it. What I need are volunteers to
> >> come up with alternate landing pages for this scenario, ones that we
> >> can include in the experiment.
> >
> >
> > Do you also have statistics of where in the world this referrals come
> from?
>
> I can tell you that the top countries for this referral are:
>
> 1. US
> 2. Poland
> 3. Russia
> 4. Brazil
> 5. India
> 6. France
> 7. UK
> 8. Philippines
> 9. Indonesia
> 10. Canada
>
> So this is quite different from what the normal distribution if visitors
> is.
>
> > It will surely help users to have that page in his/her own language and I
> > think it wouldn't be difficult to set this up with what we already have.
> > You talked about IE6 but from what I can see here [1] english speaking
> > countries are not on the top list.
> >
>
> Interesting. I checked the top Windows version for this page and they are:
>
> 1) XP
> 2) 7
> 3) Vista
>
> So that is not what we see with general downloads. In general Windows
> 7 leads, but in this scenario Windows XP is almost twice as popular.
>
> > About other kind of pages to Content Experiment them, do you need an
> HTML, a
> > mock-up, just the basic concepts or what? I can work on creating some
> > alternatives.
> >
>
> I'd need something that we can put on the website. So HTML (or
> Mdtext) is ideal. But even if you can mock something up in an email
> or on the wiki, I can help convert that to a webpage.
>
> > Paolo
> >
> > [1] http://www.ie6countdown.com/
>
Re: [Marketing][UX] Who wants to do a Content Experiment?
Posted by Rob Weir <ro...@apache.org>.
On Mon, Jun 11, 2012 at 2:14 PM, Paolo Pozzan <pa...@z2z.it> wrote:
> Il 08/06/2012 15:54, Rob Weir ha scritto:
>
>> A "Content Experiment" is when we create several version of the same
>> web page and test it with users to see which version performs best.
>> Google Analystics has a feature where it can run such experiments for
>> us automatically, tracking all the statistics for us, and telling us
>> which version of a page gives the optimal results.
>>
>> One particular scenario I think we could really improve on is what I
>> call the "Windows Unrecognized ODF File" scenario. It goes like this;
>>
> [cut]
>
>>
>> So here is the experiment. Let's try to get a handful of alternate
>> destination pages that speak to this scenario and provide the
>> information that would be most useful to this kind of user. It could
>> be a modified version of the download page. It could be a new
>> intermediate landing page that provides context and then links to the
>> existing download page. Whatever you think would work best.
>>
>> We can then run the experiment, say for a month, letting Google
>> randomly present users with the various alternate pages and measure
>> what the download %'s are for each version. The winner will gain
>> eternal fame and glory, maybe even a blog post.
>>
>> I'm willing to do the technical work on setting up the experiment and
>> prepping the website to support it. What I need are volunteers to
>> come up with alternate landing pages for this scenario, ones that we
>> can include in the experiment.
>
>
> Do you also have statistics of where in the world this referrals come from?
I can tell you that the top countries for this referral are:
1. US
2. Poland
3. Russia
4. Brazil
5. India
6. France
7. UK
8. Philippines
9. Indonesia
10. Canada
So this is quite different from what the normal distribution if visitors is.
> It will surely help users to have that page in his/her own language and I
> think it wouldn't be difficult to set this up with what we already have.
> You talked about IE6 but from what I can see here [1] english speaking
> countries are not on the top list.
>
Interesting. I checked the top Windows version for this page and they are:
1) XP
2) 7
3) Vista
So that is not what we see with general downloads. In general Windows
7 leads, but in this scenario Windows XP is almost twice as popular.
> About other kind of pages to Content Experiment them, do you need an HTML, a
> mock-up, just the basic concepts or what? I can work on creating some
> alternatives.
>
I'd need something that we can put on the website. So HTML (or
Mdtext) is ideal. But even if you can mock something up in an email
or on the wiki, I can help convert that to a webpage.
> Paolo
>
> [1] http://www.ie6countdown.com/
Re: [Marketing][UX] Who wants to do a Content Experiment?
Posted by Paolo Pozzan <pa...@z2z.it>.
Il 08/06/2012 15:54, Rob Weir ha scritto:
> A "Content Experiment" is when we create several version of the same
> web page and test it with users to see which version performs best.
> Google Analystics has a feature where it can run such experiments for
> us automatically, tracking all the statistics for us, and telling us
> which version of a page gives the optimal results.
>
> One particular scenario I think we could really improve on is what I
> call the "Windows Unrecognized ODF File" scenario. It goes like this;
>
[cut]
>
> So here is the experiment. Let's try to get a handful of alternate
> destination pages that speak to this scenario and provide the
> information that would be most useful to this kind of user. It could
> be a modified version of the download page. It could be a new
> intermediate landing page that provides context and then links to the
> existing download page. Whatever you think would work best.
>
> We can then run the experiment, say for a month, letting Google
> randomly present users with the various alternate pages and measure
> what the download %'s are for each version. The winner will gain
> eternal fame and glory, maybe even a blog post.
>
> I'm willing to do the technical work on setting up the experiment and
> prepping the website to support it. What I need are volunteers to
> come up with alternate landing pages for this scenario, ones that we
> can include in the experiment.
Do you also have statistics of where in the world this referrals come
from? It will surely help users to have that page in his/her own
language and I think it wouldn't be difficult to set this up with what
we already have.
You talked about IE6 but from what I can see here [1] english speaking
countries are not on the top list.
About other kind of pages to Content Experiment them, do you need an
HTML, a mock-up, just the basic concepts or what? I can work on creating
some alternatives.
Paolo
[1] http://www.ie6countdown.com/
Re: [Marketing][UX] Who wants to do a Content Experiment?
Posted by Donald Whytock <dw...@gmail.com>.
On Sun, Jun 10, 2012 at 8:25 PM, Rob Weir <ro...@apache.org> wrote:
> And if anyone is interested, a clue as to why these particular
> visitors are downloading AOO less might be gleamed by loading our
> download page on an older version of I.E. Remember, to get this
> dialog in Windows, one must be running an older machine that does not
> understand ODF, so pre-Windows 7, and pre-Office 2007 SP2.
Perhaps there's a significant percentage of non-ODF-savvy people who
receive ODF files that don't want to edit it as much as see it. AOO
is a pretty heavyweight download. Does there exist the ODF equivalent
of Adobe Reader, some lightweight utility that can just display
contents?
I know this doesn't necessarily address the content experiment
question, but it could be the nature/tone/format of the content isn't
the issue.
Don
Re: [Marketing][UX] Who wants to do a Content Experiment?
Posted by Rob Weir <ro...@apache.org>.
On Fri, Jun 8, 2012 at 1:02 PM, Andrew Rist <an...@oracle.com> wrote:
> Can we determine a way to stop cross posting to both ooo-marketing and
> ooo-dev?
This particular post was UX and Marketing-related (as well as general
download related). So the topic naturally crosses both lists..
> (it seems that the majority of posts to ooo-mkt are cross posted)
> I think this is blocking ooo-marketing from gaining traction on its own.
>
Possibly.
How about this, if there is interest in the topic please follow up on
ooo-marketing.
And if anyone is interested, a clue as to why these particular
visitors are downloading AOO less might be gleamed by loading our
download page on an older version of I.E. Remember, to get this
dialog in Windows, one must be running an older machine that does not
understand ODF, so pre-Windows 7, and pre-Office 2007 SP2.
> A.
>
>
> On 6/8/2012 6:54 AM, Rob Weir wrote:
>>
>> A "Content Experiment" is when we create several version of the same
>> web page and test it with users to see which version performs best.
>
> <big snip>
Re: [Marketing][UX] Who wants to do a Content Experiment?
Posted by Rob Weir <ro...@apache.org>.
On Fri, Jun 8, 2012 at 1:02 PM, Andrew Rist <an...@oracle.com> wrote:
> Can we determine a way to stop cross posting to both ooo-marketing and
> ooo-dev?
This particular post was UX and Marketing-related (as well as general
download related). So the topic naturally crosses both lists..
> (it seems that the majority of posts to ooo-mkt are cross posted)
> I think this is blocking ooo-marketing from gaining traction on its own.
>
Possibly.
How about this, if there is interest in the topic please follow up on
ooo-marketing.
And if anyone is interested, a clue as to why these particular
visitors are downloading AOO less might be gleamed by loading our
download page on an older version of I.E. Remember, to get this
dialog in Windows, one must be running an older machine that does not
understand ODF, so pre-Windows 7, and pre-Office 2007 SP2.
> A.
>
>
> On 6/8/2012 6:54 AM, Rob Weir wrote:
>>
>> A "Content Experiment" is when we create several version of the same
>> web page and test it with users to see which version performs best.
>
> <big snip>
Re: [Marketing][UX] Who wants to do a Content Experiment?
Posted by Andrew Rist <an...@oracle.com>.
Can we determine a way to stop cross posting to both ooo-marketing and
ooo-dev?
(it seems that the majority of posts to ooo-mkt are cross posted)
I think this is blocking ooo-marketing from gaining traction on its own.
A.
On 6/8/2012 6:54 AM, Rob Weir wrote:
> A "Content Experiment" is when we create several version of the same
> web page and test it with users to see which version performs best.
<big snip>
Re: [Marketing][UX] Who wants to do a Content Experiment?
Posted by Andrew Rist <an...@oracle.com>.
Can we determine a way to stop cross posting to both ooo-marketing and
ooo-dev?
(it seems that the majority of posts to ooo-mkt are cross posted)
I think this is blocking ooo-marketing from gaining traction on its own.
A.
On 6/8/2012 6:54 AM, Rob Weir wrote:
> A "Content Experiment" is when we create several version of the same
> web page and test it with users to see which version performs best.
<big snip>