Moving the Needle
Visual design can be such a subjective thing that it’s always nice to get some quantifiable data that either validates your approach or suggests ways to improve.
Recently my esteemed colleague David Rolnitzky did a little number-crunching and found that the redesigned and reconfigured Firefox 3 first run page has so far been more enticing to visitors than its Firefox 2 counterpart. That’s good news, because as the initial page that new users encounter when they launch the browser, it’s an important one to our retention efforts.
Of course, most people who hit the first run page just want to get started with their browsing, but it also gives us a great opportunity to present the concept of add-ons (through our Get Personal page) or introduce them to interesting sites that show off Firefox 3’s capabilities (through our Getting Started page). The more familiar people become with these ideas, the more likely they are to become regular Firefox users.
The older version of the page was centered around providing some quick tips on how to use the most basic Firefox features (like tabs). From May 1 to June 16, 96% of the people who visited this page exited without clicking any additional links.
When we redesigned the page for Firefox 3, we worked with Mike Beltzner and the UX team on reconfiguring it so it would be less about the features and more about giving you a few simple options on things to do next. From June 16 to August 22, this version of the page saw 90.3% of the visitors exit, with 4.4% clicking Getting Started and 2% clicking ‘learn more’ to access Get Personal.
Although a ~6% improvement may not seem huge, when you consider that millions download Firefox and visit this page every month, that’s actually hundreds of thousands of additional people who’ve been introduced to useful concepts like add-ons.
So where do we go from here? We have further site optimization ideas in the works for the rest of the year, so stay tuned for details on how we’ll be continuing to refine this and other key pages on Mozilla.com. And if you have suggestions of your own, please don’t hesitate to let any of us know.
September 17th, 2008 at 1:47 am
Regarding the “Cut Out Computer Clutter” tip, I’d suggest to include “Or press middle button of your three-button mouse” as a third option or better yet, as the first option since users find the other ones to be “too tedious” and thus opt not to use tabs altogether. I know what I’m talking about I see it everywhere.
September 17th, 2008 at 3:05 am
From the numbers you quote it seems that the link to the Support page isn’t getting much attention. And I think this makes sense: the user has just installed Firefox for the first time
Are there any other use cases that make this link belong on that page? Deleting the user’s profile?
It seems to me that we could try to replace it by something else.
September 17th, 2008 at 8:10 am
@FunTomas – good thoughts, but that tip actually appears on the Firefox 2 version of the page (that no longer exists). The current page is the 2nd of the two screenshots.
@Stas – I think the original idea was to use that link to expose people to SUMO, even if it was only introducing the concept (because like you said, very new users won’t have much need for it). But, if we can come up with a more useful link to put there I could definitely see us making a switch. Any ideas?
September 17th, 2008 at 5:13 pm
Wow, cool that we had that much of an effect.
I think the next steps are to bring some of the task-focus from the Getting Started page forward into the First Run page. Perhaps by showing users the types of interesting things they can learn how to do with Firefox, we’ll end up being a little “stickier”.
September 18th, 2008 at 7:38 am
@John:
1. an evangelist idea: when I speak to friends using Firefox, they either don’t know that Firefox is open source, or they do, but they don’t know what it means to them (and the Web). I think something referring to this organic nature of Mozilla with a link reading “What does it mean to me?” might have great educational value. The trust that people have in us is one of the advantages that make us unique. And when I explain this to my friends, they say: “wow, this is great, why don’t you advertise that?” to which I reply “well, in fact we do”. So I know that we explain this on mozilla.com, but I somehow imagine that people start reading only after they download
2. testimonial idea: present a compelling story of some real person about how Firefox helped them/empowered them/changed their web experience.
3. dictionary idea: we can’t ship many spellcheckers with Firefox due to licensing problems. Include the link here, not on the Getting Started page.
4. survey idea: gather feedback from new users: include a link reading “I’d like to help Firefox by taking a short survey after I have some time to use it. Please remind me about it in a month.” After a month, a yellow infobar appears inviting the user to take the survey (with buttons: “take”, “not now, remind tomorrow”, “not now, never remind”).
Well, these are just brainstorming ideas, some of which may turn out to be really bad ones
But I’m still interested what you guys think! 
September 19th, 2008 at 4:10 pm
Stas, those are great thoughts – thanks!
January 23rd, 2009 at 5:08 pm
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