Author guide "modal" instead of tabbed navigation?

[chris-huggins]

Problem/Hypothesis: Is it worth making an update to the author guide navigation?

• If users go to the author guide during a submission they can only get back to the dashboard - no clear "back" option to their submission

• Not clear to get back to the submission via the "dashboard"

• Also we seem to have a lot of users interacting with the profile dropdown and logging out mid-submission. It's not clear if this is deliberate but might reduce abandonment by "removing" it from the wizard (still available on the dashboard)

This is based on observations from HotJar recordings, not direct feedback or a serious problem preventing submissions. However it appears a lot of users click around, end up on the author guide and then don't return to the submission.

Proposed solution:

In the wizard, make a more prominent link to the author guide, which opens in a modal, or at least can only then return to the submission. The current "tabs" type menu only allows users to get back to the dashboard from the author guide. "Close" would cancel the submission with modal informing of the auto-save and that it can be continued via the dashboard.

I suggest we do the same for the author guide when opening via the welcome/login screens. The navigation when not yet logged in but accessing the author guide is weird - it shows links to dashboard and the profile dropdown when the user should not be logged in.

Also we're still getting this selected state bug which this would solve.

[chris-huggins]

Can be tested in https://invis.io/Z2SNJMFE4SX#/368589262_author-Dashboard-Your-Submissions

[chris-huggins]

Based on HotJar recordings I've seen users appear to look at the user guide, and then not complete their submission. This may be due to hotjar but by hypothesis is that the tabbed navigation increases likelihood that once an author opens the author guide during a submission it isn't clear enough how to get back (via dashboard link) and they are more likely to give up.

Looking at GA analytics of "users" I have created 4 segments:

• "visitors of any author wizard page" to define number of attempts at submission
• "visitors of thank you page" to define number of completed submissions
• "visitors of any author wizard page and the author guide" to define number of submissions started where the user looked at the author guide
• "visitors or thank you page and author guide" for those that looked at the author guide and completed their submission

The below pie charts show a) "percentage of users starting and completing a submission" and the b) same for those that also looked at the author guide at some point - both since April 1st.

These show a 17.1% drop in "conversions" if the user looks at the author guide. This may not be down to the author guide navigation, but if we change this, the metric for success is that this gap is reduced or closed.

Note: GAs definition of a user is based on individual ID for each person so this doesn't cover multiple submissions by different users