Using content to improve the user experience
The Problem/Hypothesis
When a Messenger user attempted to call someone outside of their friend contacts they received a dead-end message.
My team tested a hypothesis that if we grant callers the ability to send friend requests when this was the cause of their call failure, people would connect on Facebook to complete the call.
Target Audience
All Messenger users who received an error message when trying to call people outside of their contacts.
My Role
I provided all the content and content strategy for this project.
My Impact
Analysis of the problems in the user experience flow.
Prioritize the information needed to be communicated.
Explain well to the user what has happened and what steps need to be taken next to successfully complete this call.
BEFORE & AFTER
This shipped in November 2022 and by mid-December the project was put on pause.
My biggest take away was adding a friend connect request had a much higher bar than calling. A 20% CTR (click through rate) for the profile button vs 5% CTR for friend request indicates that users are interested in resolving the failed connection problem but not willing to go as far as sending a friend request.
From this project, my team learned that:
1. The experiment disproved the hypothesis that if we grant callers the ability to send friend requests, more people who want this ability will be willing to connect.
2. Users are less willing to add friends to get connected than we initially assumed.
The next steps were to unship the feature, but that does not mean the content changes were not successful. These are valuable lessons that can be used in future projects.
NEXT STEPS