Adjust Best Matching + Trending in design picker

[fditrapani]

During our latest self-serve call some more questions came up about the Best Matching and Trending sections.

We discussed being a bit more liberal in our definition of what to include for Best matching. It currently shows the overlap from ALL the selected filters. We discussed showing any overlap from the group of selected filters so that if the Blog, Portfolio, and Newsletter filters were picked, we would still show Best Matching if there was overlap in the Blog and Portfolio categories.

In addition to that, we discussed consolidating the trending themes under the best matching themes. This would mean that best matching would always show. For this one, we might want to be somewhat selective of how many trending themes we include. I'd say we only include the top 2-3.

[github-actions]

OpenAI suggested the following labels for this issue:

• [Feature Group] User Interaction & Engagement: The issue discusses changes to the Best Matching and Trending sections, which directly affect how users engage with the site's content.
• [Feature] Categories & Tags: The proposed adjustments involve selecting filters and overlaps, which relates to how categories and tags are utilized in content discovery.
• [Feature] Stats: Understanding user engagement with Best Matching and Trending sections can involve looking at analytics metrics, hence the relevance of Stats.

[richtabor]

For this one, we might want to be somewhat selective of how many trending themes we include. I'd say we only include the top 2-3.

I question the value of "trending" entirely.

I don’t know that they’re particularly relevant all the time, and I don’t see where I can change the “goals”—which make them seem disconnected from the filters entirely. See below, where I have podcast selected, but trending is a cookie blog theme, an e-commerce theme, and the default 2024 theme.

[richtabor]

Yea, I think we should always have best theme matches suggested for users, regardless of the combinations of filters/topics, etc. How are these surfaced today?

[taipeicoder]

Best theme matches: Themes that match ALL selected categories.
Trending for your goals: Top themes picked by successful sites that have selected goal X.

I agree that "Trending for your goals" is disconnected with the Design Picker since:

• Users cannot change goals in the Design Picker, and
• The Trending section is below filters but is not affected by them

If the desirable outcome is to always show a "Best theme matches" section, we could rebrand it as "Recommended themes" and show a mixture of themes that match ALL selected categories, and top themes by goal. We could also include partial matches there but we need to be mindful of not putting too many themes in the Recommended section. 3 or 6 sounds sensible, 9 might already be a bit much.

[fditrapani]

Thanks for chiming in @taipeicoder!

It looks like we all agree that "Trending for your goals" as a section should go.

For the "Best matches", I'm inclined to do partial matches but limited to a maximum of 6 options as @taipeicoder pointed out. I don't feel strongly about changing the title but am fine to go with Recommended themes if others prefer that. I also don't think we need to included the previously recommended themes based on the goals. I feel like we've been trying to add them because we have them but given everything else happening on this screen, it might be too much. Plus some folks on the call mentioned seeing themes that didn't relate to the filters in that list.

[taipeicoder]

Seems that we are aligned in that there's currently no significant value added with the "Trending for your goals" section. We can revisit this mechanism further down the line.

No strong opinions with "Best matches" vs. "Recommended themes", without trending themes in the mix "Best matches" makes sense to me as well. Either works for me!

Next actions would be to:

1. Remove the "Trending for your goals" section, and
2. Update the "Best matches" section to contain partial matches

Any concerns with this direction? @richtabor @fditrapani

[fditrapani]

This sounds good to me! Thanks for confirming!

No strong opinions with "Best matches" vs. "Recommended themes", without trending themes in the mix "Best matches" makes sense to me as well. Either works for me!

Best matches sounds good to me!

[taipeicoder]

Moving this to Ready for Dev.

[taipeicoder]

Heads-up that I just merged #98074. I'll create a follow-up issue for showing partial matches in the "Best matching themes" section.