Hello!

Today, we are  thrilled to share an updated visual design style on the
Wikimedia Foundation website (wikimediafoundation.org)!

This updated design was developed by the Wikimedia Foundation’s Product
design team. We worked on feedback from Meta-Wiki, emails, Phabricator, and
hundreds of conversations paired with user testing with people in the
target audiences for the website. We are incredibly appreciative of the
great care that team has taken in making strategic, data-led design
decisions and really helping us amplify the website's ability to convey our
story to people generally unfamiliar with Wikimedia.

We have also expanded on the information about the website on its Meta-Wiki
page,[1] and updated the public mirror of the code base to reflect the
technical changes made to the site for this updated design.[2]

Thank you to the now hundreds of people that have been involved in helping
us build a website for the Foundation which we can be proud of!
-greg & the Wikimedia Foundation Communication team

= A bit more about the site =

== How is the site doing? ==

Since the site's soft launch in July 2018, traffic has continued to
increase. There has also been a significant increase in donations collected
via this website. Two key audiences, potential staff and partners, have
shared positive feedback on the site’s content and organization, enabling
them to find jobs and contact key teams respectively. Additionally, user
testing has shown a positive response to the content and overall
architecture of the site.

== What brought us here ==

The Wikimedia Foundation Communications department has been collecting
feedback on the Foundation's website since late 2016 and beginning in
early 2017 has been working on addressing the backlog of issues related to
the website. The original Foundation site, launched in 2004, did not have a
clear audience, and as a result was not effectively serving any of the
hundreds of uses people saw for it. Maintaining the site's content beyond
English had become a growing problem - leaving visitors with different
information, depending on which language they were using, on basic details
like our address and executive staff. Additionally, the site had over
17,000 pages - a vast majority of which were either out of date or no
longer in use.

In 2017-18, the Communications department ran a "Discovery" process to help
inform our decision making. This process included reviews of methods used
by other organizations, assessment of our current communication channels,
collecting feedback at Wikimania, and interviews with dozens of volunteers,
donors, contractors, and staff. The resulting report[3] and recommendations
helped identify the objectives and audiences of the website,[1] and were
utilized throughout the initial design and development of the new website.

Shortly after the soft launch, the department began working with the
Product department's design team to perform user testing, process feedback
collected in the weeks following the soft launch, and collect additional
feedback to help us make informed decisions. They helped us collect and
process feedback from hundreds of individuals within and outside of the
movement.

Based on feedback, they conducted user testing and developed the updated
design we deployed this morning. We will continue to use a data and
feedback informed decision making in managing the site. Given the external
audience nature of the site, it has consistently proven important to take
the time to collect feedback and data from a wide variety of sources -
including volunteers, press, donors, partner organizations, and readers of
the projects.

== What comes next ==

More languages! The Communications department will continue to work on
content development and expanding translations to additional languages. If
you are interested in our plans for translations, please check out the
information shared recently about the Organization communications
translators group.[5]

== Providing feedback ==

The Communications department will continue to monitor the talk page for
the Foundation's website on Meta-Wiki.[6] Additionally, I will be attending
Wikimania in Stockholm and available to chat with folks.[7]

[1] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_website
[2] https://github.com/wikimedia/wikimediafoundation-org
[3]
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/foundation/1/1b/Wikimedia_Foundation_website_-_2017-2018_update_-_Discovery_brief.pdf
[5]
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Communications/Organization_communications_translators_group
[6] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Wikimedia_Foundation_website
[7] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Communications/Wikimania_2019

-- 

Gregory Varnum (pronouns - he/his/him)

Communications Strategist

Wikimedia Foundation <https://wikimediafoundation.org/>
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