Ecosia's Tree Counter
Task description
Recreate Ecosia’s personal tree counter. New solution will have to increase user engagement and lead to more searches per user and increase user retention rates.
Research
I started my research from the very basics, from understanding how the counter works to how much oxygen do trees produce. Later I moved on to analyzing some famous tricks that other platforms used in order to increase user engagement.
Prepare questionnaire questions
In order to find out the problem a questionnaire needed to be conducted. I created a small Google Forms questionnaire and send out to 20 people. In case of Ecosia a good approach would be to offer its most loyal users to answer few questions in order to make the service even better and reward them with a new tree.
Analyze results
After I got the results from 20 people I sent the questionnaire to, I started analyzing them and realized what the problem is. The biggest problem was that the users don’t actually trust the counter, they think the numbers are fake.
Undestanding the problem
The problem was in the speed of counter. It moved so fast that users thought the numbers are fake. I also made my own testing of the counter after what I realized that almost every 1.5 searches equals 1 tree. Testers who made 5 to 7 searches already had 4 trees plant.
So the problems are:
1. It is too easy to get a new tree planted, users aren’t engaged in the process.
2. Counter is planting trees too fast what makes users think it is fraud.
Create new concept based on the problem
Let’s attack the first problem.
When users aren’t engaged enough then gamifying the process is always a good way to increase user retention. So, I decided to add a little bit gamification to Ecosia by creating a loading icon for the tree. This icon fills with a tree after every search and when it is finally full one tree is gained.
Another step to increase engagement is to add more significant numbers to the case. Let’s say a user helped Ecosia to plant 400 trees, but what is the actual impact of these trees to the environment? With this in mind I added some more important numbers to make it even more interesting for the user.
As an example, I added two more categories:
Square meters of deserts greened (This is counted from an estimate that one tree greens 28m2 of desert)
Months of employment created. (This number comes from estimate that one employee can plant 100 trees per month, so if user helps Ecosia to plant 231 trees then he creates 2.3months of employment)
These categories are as an example to explain the concept. Many more categories could be added since trees are beneficial to the environment in many different ways.
Now let’s tackle the second problem which is the speed of the counter that makes users lose trust in Ecosia. As I understood right now 56 searches are needed to fund 1 new tree. Not all users understand that the numbers on the counter are combined efforts of all Ecosia users. They just see that the counter goes too fast and think it is fraud. So, the solution would be to slow down the counter for each individual user while keeping the speed of planting trees the same.
How it works now: 1.5 searches to plant one tree (too easy to plant a tree, users lose interest and think the numbers may be fraud.)
What I suggest: 7 searches to plant one tree (Will increase user engagement and get more trust from users)
A/B Testing
After the concept is confirmed by the team A/B testing needs to be done. By doing A/B testing we will be able to compare old and new concepts and tell if user engagement increased.
What is Next? (Boost the tree game)
If the results of gamification are positive, then this direction should be developed forward and new ideas for this concept should be tested. Some other ideas would be to: Boost the tree growth.
Boost the tree is a search quest created to push users help Ecosia plant more trees. Search quest is a game that consist of many different questions, to find answers to that questions users need to use Ecosia’s search engine and search for answers. People could challenge their friends to play the search quest to grow more trees which would definitely boost user engagement.