We Hate Half Full Progress Bars, Here is Another Proof!
It’s no secret that we hate seeing a progress bar that’s half full (or half empty, depending on how you look at it!), and you probably know that LinkedIn used gamification to urge users to complete their profile information on their platform.
So, we thought to give it a shot at Edraak!
But for real, we didn’t just create that bar to “give it a shot”. We wanted our learners to feel a bit curious to find out what this half full bar is about.
The Problem
If you’ve read my other post on why & how we changed our signup form, you probably know why we left some demographics information optional for new signups on the platform, which - in the end - resulted in less data/information about those users who leave their demographic details unfilled.
So, we decided to use gamification to fix this!
The Solution?
We released a new learner dashboard back in December, and due to the importance of the information we want to gather, we decided to allocate the top section of the header for a progress bar.
Being a new feature, the progress bar took a couple of rounds of user testing, we usually conduct these sessions with any new feature on the platform, in an effort to make sure the users understand its purpose and not to confuse it with learning progress for example. Another use of user testing was to identify “what & how” of a CTA button placement should be on the bar.
User testing can tell you wonders! Even for small features like this, we noticed that users had different perceptions of the progress bar based on how it’s being filled (color density, dividing it into portions, etc.).
How it Looked at the End?
We grouped all the feedback from users and came up with a design that answers all questions we received from tested users.
Eventually, it looked like this:
The bar is clearly encouraging users to visit their profile page and fill their remaining information. Thus, not leaving the unfilled progress bar in front of their eyes which is annoying to their experience.
Show Me the Numbers!
Okay, enough information on the background of what we did, let’s see if it worked or not!
The new dashboard went live earlier this December, and by the time of writing this, 60 days have passed already with more than 140 thousand learners who experienced the new dashboard (since it is the default for 50% of new users only).
Numbers don’t lie! The progress bar decreased percentage of learners who leave demographics info unfilled by 70%!
In a bit more details, the case before was like this:
We had 78% of learners who fill their complete information and around 22% that leave some info blank on the signup form.
Those 78% are either filled during the signup of a learner on the platform or after the learners login to the platform and (by their own choice) visit their account settings page to fill these information.
Now with the progress bar, only less than 7% resist seeing a half full progress bar, resulting in 93% of learners with full details.
Why is this Important to us?
We don’t want learners to fill their info for the sake of having more details about our learners! In addition, we didn’t create the progress bar just to prove its effect on user interface. The info we need goes to reasons beyond that.
Whenever we analyze data to create better products, customize experiences for learners or to understand demographics behavioral differences those 20% of missing information always comes right in our face!
In some cases (when we do analysis based on countries breakdown), these 20% can bias the results in a way that the number one “Country” in Edraak’s platform isn’t actually the top country but a mere results of the missing information! But now? Not anymore!
Now with less than 7% of missing information, our data is more accurate, tackles demographics differences in a more targeted manners and eventually a returned value to our learners!
