When we released the beta test of the new mobile version, there was one clear consensus: having a recommend button only way up at the top of the story was not functional. The normal user path is to read the whole story first; no one wants to then have to scroll all the way back up to the top to recommend before continuing to comments.
Our site statistics bear this out — even among logged in users, mobile users recommend far less often than desktop users.
My story a few months ago asked about user thoughts on recommending— I wondered why in particular more distinct users write comments than recommend even a single story. I got some terrific answers that were very helpful. One thing I learned is that many people didn’t even realize the star at the top of the old mobile was a recommend button; the new mobile already addresses this. But the button on bottom also makes it much more accessible.
People reasonably asked why there should be a button on top at all. My reason for that is that it’s a place to see how many people have recommended, which may be useful when reading the story, as well as it being accessible to people who have decided perhaps to unrecommend. Having it in both places seems to cover the use cases best.
One of my personal goals is to increase the number of distinct people who recommend stories. Why do I want this? Because I want to promote stories that didn’t just get people to click, but stories that they actually found worth reading, and think other people would want to read. And, also, because authors rely on this as a source of feedback. There’s no question that what is recommended drives some of the conversations around here, as well as a sense of what people in the community are finding important.
So, I hope this new button makes it a little bit easier to recommend a terrific story that you just read on mobile. We added a little explanation about why a reader might want to, as well, especially maybe someone newer to the site. Tell me what you think of the new button, and also what motivates you to recommend a story — or why you rarely do.