Hi
First of all I want to congratulate the participants of yesterday’s State of the Onion event - it was a educative and interesting watch.
Despite not having any points of critic, it’s my opinion that feedback is always useful even in success scenarios.
- It was nice to see different members of the team talking about their own specialization. It introduces some variation.
- What I really liked was the dynamic created by including Pavel (a less technical person) in the conversation (44:19). The technical details are interesting for us nerds, but having a non-technical person asking questions gives a nice balance and the ability for all people to understand it. Note that a lot of funders and donators don’t necessarily have a technical background so having someone like Pavel to make things understandable is essential to make it appealing for those funders. Currently this was only done in the conversation with Anarcat, but I think it would also have been nice in more conversations.
- The visuals used in the presentation helped to follow the speaker. This was nice, the only thing that eventually could be improved is by animating these visuals? E.g when explaining behavior manipulation (24:50) instead of showing a static image we could have a animated Packettracer-like visual which is explained step-by-step?
- As extension on the previous point, an animation giving some kind of ‘demo’ of the explained tools would be cool. E.g when explaining the Tor Browser, show an animation of a url being typed in a browser and how the package travels through the circuit. When explaining Tails show an animation of a flash-drive being inserted in a laptop and the data being gone when unplugging it again. When explaining Snowflake show an animation of how a volunteers browser is used as proxy,… I think this would also be appealing to non-technical users.
- Reading the testimonial of the Iranian user (54:09) was a powerful message showing the importance of The Tor Project and how it helps people in the real world.
- Why not share more of those powerful messages? E.g the partnership with Repro Uncensored empowering women?
- The introduction (3:51) gave a nice and brief summary about Tor and it’s reason for existing. It’s a good thing the livestream started with this since it’s important to spread this message since a lot of people still only know Tor as a browser to access the ‘scary dark web’ instead of a tool used by journalists, activists, oppressed people,…
- The initial blogpost didn’t mention the livestream was also accessible through an onion link (see this post).
- Maybe I am just not looking right - but it seems that the event was not actively communicated on all socials like Facebook or LinkedIn. While the latter could be an important medium to reach potential funders.
- Coming from an e-commerce background I personally wouldn’t shy away from putting more marketing in the event (in a reasonable amount relative to the limited resources). I understand Tor is a non-profit and not a commercial entity trying to sell a product. But even then we are still trying to ‘sell’ something - namely the importance of Tor Project’s mission regarding internet freedom. Things like:
- Share more testimonials and give more examples of good things and partnerships Tor has done in the last year. Hearing technical details about how we improved anti-censorship is really interesting, but as a donator without any technical background I also want to hear about specific examples of how Tor positively impacted real persons in the real world.
- Use more visuals. Text requires the user’s brain to put effort into reading and thus does not have any emotional impact. Visuals are essential to grab attention and have emotional and memory impact. E.g when telling what payment methods are supported to make a donation (56:11) simply adding the logo’s (Paypal, a credit card, Bitcoin logo,…) of those payment methods can already make a difference.
- Improve CTA (Call to Action) for donations: The current CTA to make users donate was telling them to browse to donate.torproject.org. Meaning the user would have to read the url and open a new browser tab to do 20+ keypresses to type that url,… Every click/press reduces the conversion rate. Instead: Also show a QR code leading to the donation page saying “You can donate RIGHT NOW (immediate CTA works better) by scanning this QR code or by…”. This is a simple, clear and immediate CTA only requiring one tap for the user to open his camera app.
- Use a short trailer/promo video at the start of the livestream. E.g the introduction mentioned a scenario of a country being bombed and thanks to Tor people being able to still reach loved ones and let the world know what happens despite censorship (3:50). A short trailer showing that scenario would be extremely powerful.
- Such a film could function as a reusable promo for Tor in general (one time investment) and is an extremely powerful marketing tool since it heavily triggers people’s emotions. A good example of this is the Emergency SOS on Apple Watch trailer.
- Not saying we should become business oriented and use manipulating marketing techniques or spend all the funds on marketing or a $500k advertisement, but even a low-budget trailer and basic ethical marketing could help so much in boosting Tor and appeal funders.
I just wanted to share my point of view and again want to thank the Tor Project in putting effort in organizing this livestream. It’s nice to have updates about the status of Tor and I also learned a few things.