With research and personas in hand we devised a couple experiments to validate assumptions against our broader audience. The results were instrumental in shaping the features included in the eventual rebuild. The experiments were run on the legacy tools in a way which minimized design and development effort.
1. Limiting the number of available social networks shouldn’t have a negative effect on usage and retention.
Maintaining and supporting 120+ social network integrations had a taxing effect on the codebase, and created additional design work as well. Feedback from publishers indicated they were only interested the in top networks, and actual usage data back it up. Most site visitors were only sharing via the top 10 social networks, with the shares via other networks falling off rapidly the further down the list you got. The list was culled to 24 networks. Over the course of the experiment, no change in usage or retention was noted.
2. Simple visual improvements + code optimization would boost retention.
In addition to validating the assumption that improving the visual design of the buttons would boost retention, this test modernized the codebase that deployed the legacy buttons across millions of publisher sites. In the end, when the assumption was validated, the retina ready buttons and refactored codebase were rolled out across the entire network of legacy share buttons.