GetFirefox.com vs Firefox.com?
We were having a debate about URLs on t-shirts today here at the office, and since the results were inconclusive I thought I would turn to you, friendly blog readers, for your expert advice.
The Issue:
When creating t-shirts our standard practice is to put the art on the front and then a smallish Firefox logo + URL on the back. The question is, what URL should we use? Historically, we’ve always used GetFirefox.com, but it’s always worth re-evaluating these things every now and then to make sure we’re not acting only out of habit.
The Case for GetFirefox.com
* action-oriented…gives the reader a clear directive of what we want them to do
* from a brand perspective, seems to have more personality and character than just Firefox.com
* historical precedent…this has been our primary marketing URL for years, so we have some equity built up in it
The Case for Firefox.com
* more direct and to the point…nothing extraneous distracting from the core Firefox message
* might be easier for people to remember if they see it on a shirt and are trying to recall it hours later when they’re at their computer
* this URL actually performed better when we did some SEM tests earlier this year (search results and t-shirts aren’t exactly apples to apples, but it’s interesting nonetheless)
I have my own preference, but I’ll keep it to myself for now to avoid any possible bias. And just to be clear, this isn’t an official survey or anything, but I am quite interested to hear what people think…if you have an opinion, please post a comment.
Thanks!
(image courtesy of Tara)
October 17th, 2008 at 4:04 pm
Interesting topic! I enjoyed debating this with you guys today. I too have my own opinion / preference but am curious to see what people say. There are pros and cons to both.
October 17th, 2008 at 4:36 pm
Actually I’ve always thought it was weird that something other than firefox.com was used for marketing. For an internet company, the domain name often *is* the company name in a very real way – google, myspace, facebook, etc. I realize that’s an apples-to-oranges comparison, but it always seemed to me that firefox.com would be the obvious choice of URL to promote firefox on. (And therefore, I always figured that Mozilla must have some pretty compelling evidence to the contrary since they were using this weird getfirefox approach)
October 17th, 2008 at 4:37 pm
I have been advocating for firefox.com for years simply because all the pros you noted and cons for all non-english speakers. What does ‘get’ means to my mom who does not speak English ?
October 17th, 2008 at 4:48 pm
Well, as you have to take a action to get firefox, it makes sends to use getfirefox. Google for example can be used from google.com. Firefox first require to be downloaded.
Also, getfirefox.com indicate a action, with firefox.com, it’s unclear what the purpose of the website is. As both firefox and getfirefox.com redirect to the same page, it would make sense to combine both. Give the ‘get’ a different colour, like blue. That way, you still indicate a action, but if somebody enter firefox.com instead of getfirefox.com they still end up in the right location.
October 17th, 2008 at 4:48 pm
Firefox.com gets my vote because a) it looks cleaner/better than GetFirefox.com and b) for the reasoning pascalc outlined.
October 17th, 2008 at 4:59 pm
+1 for Firefox.com
Because, looking at the two images, Firefox.com is much easier to read and understand quickly. Often people will only give a label a fraction of a second before moving on. Also, it’s the brand name. Let’s KISS (pun intended).
October 17th, 2008 at 5:03 pm
firefox.com for the reasons everyone else mentioned.
October 17th, 2008 at 5:06 pm
My opinion is, to keep getfirefox.com, be cause the domain is well known. I didn’t even know there is firefox.com.
AND:
You’ve discussed about the advantages of Firefox.com. Why don’t you try to apply the advantages of the domain to getfirefox.com? For example by underlining Firefox, printing it in another color or by “Firefox\ngetfirefox.com”
October 17th, 2008 at 5:17 pm
Firefox.com
The verb “get” doesn’t add enough (it’s rather vague – doesn’t immediately suggest downloading software to me) to justify the extra length and English-specificness.
The logical domain name is almost always productname.com. I was always under the assumption that getfirefox.com was only used because firefox.com wasn’t available.
October 17th, 2008 at 5:20 pm
I have kind of become used to getfirefox.com (back from the days when firefox.com was something else) or mozilla.com. But for people that aren’t familiar, I would say that firefox.com seems much neater. Most people don’t have verbs in their domains – usegoogle.com? forecastweather.com? sendanemailwithhotmail.com? It’s just feels a bit odd – like you couldn’t register the right domain so you added a word (as was originally the case)
October 17th, 2008 at 5:36 pm
getfirefox.com – hands down. It’s been the URL for a long time that I have given to many friends and family and I don’t see any glaring reason NOT to use it. So while there may be good reason to use either URL, why not stick with what has been used and is effective.
getfirefox.com
October 17th, 2008 at 6:27 pm
firefox.com
…or mozilla.com
October 17th, 2008 at 6:46 pm
Firefox.com
The shorter one is always better…
October 17th, 2008 at 7:00 pm
firefox.com it’s better for non-english speakers and more «natural» for the web. And, in my opinion, «get» meansa lot like oblige people to make it. I always use mozilla.com or firefox.com.
October 17th, 2008 at 7:11 pm
As noted by pascalc, I think that firefox.com is much better chose. People are getting to know the product, and the first thing to do (even before googling for “Firefox”) is to try the domain + tld option – For some it might be firefox.com, and for others it might be firefox.your-country-tld-goes-here.
I know alot of people getting into firefox.co.il when they are looking for anything-firefox in Hebrew, and I’m sure the French users for example are getting traffic to firefox.fr.
October 17th, 2008 at 7:18 pm
+1 for firefox.com It states the product name and domain in a compact way, in the way most people expect it.
October 17th, 2008 at 7:51 pm
getfirefox.com for sure!
Firefox.com makes me think of the 90s when everybody would put .com on the end of their business name without really knowing why. It would be better just to have a t-shirt that says Firefox if that’s they way you are leaning.
getfirefox.com on the other hand says go to this website and you will get something! It’s an invitation to participate. It’s got purpose. The reader knows the reason why the url is there.
October 17th, 2008 at 8:07 pm
Absolutely Firefox.com, especially for non-Roman-language parts of the world. Let’s focus on the name we want people to remember, not the “get” which means nothing in place where English is not used.
October 17th, 2008 at 10:20 pm
The “get____.com” trend feels a little old and tired. A simple domain seems cleaner to me.
October 17th, 2008 at 11:19 pm
+1 for firefox.com
“getfirefox.com” is not easy to perceive for non English speakers.
“firefox.com” is a natural choice: you speak with someone about the “xyz” product, first reaction of a lot of people is still to type “xyz.com” (or xyz.local-TLD)
October 17th, 2008 at 11:19 pm
I’ve had multiple instances of friends getting confused when I’ve referred them to GetFirefox.com.
So for the t-shirts, I think Firefox.com should be used. The person who sees it already has to remember the URL and remember to type it in when they get to a computer. That’s a lot more steps and a lot more complex than if they saw a clickable URL on some website. So since its inherently more complex when seen on a t-shirt (or another physical object), it should be simplified wherever possible.
October 17th, 2008 at 11:54 pm
Assume that people have the memory of gnats.
firefox.com is more memorable than getfirefox.com. It just is.
I don’t think people are going to be compelled to get firefox because of the URL, but later should they decide to download it, remembering the simple URL is more valuable.
I don’t think the SEM tests are not insignificant and that getfirefox, though there was some reasoning, is legacy to a goodly extent. Originally if we had owned firefox.com from the beginning, I think that’s what we would using now. It makes sense that people should make the association in their brain and tuck it away for later.
For the extreme case, see openoffice.org.
October 18th, 2008 at 1:59 am
Reading your blog I was thinking that Firefox.com was better, but looking at the pictures changed my mind.
The .com behind Firefox is very disturbing to me. The t-shirt should either read GetFirefox.com or just Firefox. And if the goal of the t-shirts is for people to get firefox, I’d choose the first.
+1 for GetFirefox.com
October 18th, 2008 at 2:21 am
I’d say [anthing]firefox.com is really no the best option, for many reasons:
- not everyone thinks first in English, will you make a [get-in-every-language]firefox.com alias ? thought so
- if your name is Peach, then call your pages Peach too, and not GetPeach or WhateverPeach, it’s make everything cleaer, strenghten the name, nobody has to think about what that page name was again, and it just seems superfluous and highly unnecessary
- the T-Shirts [or any PR stuff for that matter], well, the “Get” part just takes up space and doesn’t add any information or value
Have you ever seen a GetFerrari.com, or a GetDodge.com for that matter ? Right.
October 18th, 2008 at 2:43 am
Vote for Firefox.com
Two capital letters in one name (GetFirefox.com)is confusing for the “Wait a moment”-effect.
October 18th, 2008 at 3:17 am
Very much in favour of the simple ‘firefox.com’. The Get part is entirely unnecessary, and indeed un-intuitive – if I want to look for something on the web, my first guess is always going to be productname.com. “Get Firefox” might be fine as a marketing slogan, but it’s not a good choice for a domain name…
October 18th, 2008 at 8:20 am
+1 for Firefox.com, as it’s simpler for new users to grasp and remember. That’s kinda’ the point of t-shirts — to get new users — right?
imo, Mozilla should really start pushing the “Firefox.com” name more. As a longtime Firefox user, the “get” url is almost adorably iconic of Mozilla, since Songbird and Miro also use that. However, no other Powered by Mozilla app uses it (e.g. “flock.com”.) It’s a niche at best, and new users aren’t going to get much more out of a “get” url than a regular “firefox.com”. By all means, keep the “get” urls (I use them out of habit!) but Mozilla should start pushing “firefox.com” more in marketing.
October 18th, 2008 at 10:44 am
“gives the reader a clear directive of what we want them to do”
So why would you take that away when 3 letters can make a big difference?
The main reason you want people to go the site is to get Firefox and by using GetFirefox.com you maintain continuity. It tells people that they are in the right place and what they are there to do.
Firefox.com is too broad. I image it as offering general Firefox content and/or information such as Firefox add-ons, news, help etc.
Firefox.com on a t-shirt (or other) would be cool to wear as a symbol of pride just as I’d wear a Boston Red Sox t-shirt but I don’t see how it would motivate people to visit the site let alone do anything if they did decide to go there.
While I’m here I wanted to bring up the point that I don’t actually see anything on GetFirefox.com or Firefox.com telling visitors to download Firefox (though mozilla.com does).
They’re instructed to View the top new features, See the Awards, Launch the Video, and Learn Some New Secrets, but there isn’t anything telling them to “Download Firefox”. Of course they still do but if suggestive text wasn’t important then it wouldn’t be on the page as it is in the ways that I listed above.
I worked as a DJ in nightclubs for 9 years and my role in marketing was equal to my role as an entertainer because I could have been the best DJ in town but that didn’t mean anything if there wasn’t any customers to entertain so I had to bring people in and then keep them there so that they’d spend their money and in both cases I found that there was a great difference between suggestive and instructive marketing.
Suggestive would be something like “Why don’t you come out and join us Friday night for the party” whereas instructive would be “Join us or Party with us Friday night”.
Another example, “We have $2 Kamikaze shooters for the next 10 minutes” as opposed to “Go grab a Kamikaze shooter for just $2 for the next 10 minutes”.
You get the point, and I’m getting thirsty.
Finally, I’d like to visit Mozilla.com and see Mozilla related content such as what is currently offered in the footer and About menu.
In my opinion, Mozilla.org represents MoFo and very well, but what I don’t see anywhere is a page, a portal, or whatever that represents the Mozilla Corporation and gives it a distinct identity.
Wikipedia has a more official MoCo page than Mozilla does and the closest thing to anything official in the search results for mozilla corporation on Google is the “Mozilla Foundation Reorganization” statement from August 3rd, 2005.
Thanks for your time and for the floor.
October 18th, 2008 at 12:08 pm
I’m back.
After reading all the comments it’s obvious that the people writing them are experienced Web savvy users as are the greater majority of Firefox users. We all need to step outside of what we know and what is familiar and consider what would be most effective from a marketing stand point when targeting average Internet users which is the majority and the ones that we want.
There is way too much information to remember and keep track of nowadays and so there needs to be a way to stand out from the rest and that “Get” does that. Remembering something is easier to do when there is an action or command involved.
Using Google, MySpace, Facebook, whatever as a comparison is a poor one. Those sites all provide online activities and services, that’s what they’re there for. You use their service online and return to it so it’s mission accomplished for their ad execs.
Mozilla is different and it faces a much tougher task.
It’s (pretty much) a one shot deal to get consumers to bring Firefox into their lives. They won’t be returning to Firefox.com on a regular basis so keep the message simple and clear so visitors will do “what we want them to do”.
The point of the word being too English specific is a very good one so perhaps it should be dropped in the international Mozilla Store but marketing slogans written in English from U.S. based companies have been used successfully Worldwide. It’s not biased or discriminatory it’s just a 3 letter word.
October 18th, 2008 at 2:55 pm
Firefox.com
October 18th, 2008 at 4:51 pm
Every time I see a url like “getthing.com” or “thingmovie.com” I always think to myself that “thing.com” must have been taken.
October 18th, 2008 at 8:51 pm
Alex Faaborg: At the the time getfirefox.com was registered, firefox.com wasn’t completely under the control of Mozilla. (It was a two-way redirector, one to Mozilla, and the other to some other company that owned rights to the name Firefox).
I registered “getfirefox.com” because given what was available, it was short, to the point, and included an imperative
October 19th, 2008 at 8:02 am
+1 Firefox.com
No issues with l10n, product==brand==domain, one-word domain, more ‘official’ (meaning: “That’s a genuine Mozilla tshirt/domain, not a scam”[1]), doesn’t provoke questions like “Don’t they have Firefox.com?”, easier to read, shorter, easier to spread verbally (e.g. on the phone).
[1] BTW, I think this is one of the reasons why Firefox.com scored better in the SEM tests.
October 19th, 2008 at 8:08 am
@Ken Sounders
“Firefox.com is too broad. I image it as offering general Firefox content and/or information such as Firefox add-ons, news, help etc.”
Where else can one expect to download Firefox? We have the Big Green Download Button pretty everywhere on the site, so I think your point is actually another vote for Firefox.com
October 19th, 2008 at 8:30 am
+1 Firefox.com
Let’s think about what is actually going to happen “in the wild.” A person catches a glance of a logo and url on the back of a shirt. That person falls into one of three classes:
1. Firefox user. We don’t care about this class for the purposes of this discussion.
2. Has never heard of Firefox. For this person, we just need the the logo and url to be memorable and interesting enough that s/he will remember it and visit the url later. Firefox.com wins. GetFirefox.com confuses the matter. “Yes, I should Get Firefox…wait, what is Firefox? What am I getting?” Better to just point these people to the site for more info and push the download there.
3. Heard of Firefox but does not use it. The only persuasion possible here is that of an additional data point– “Huh. Another mention of that Firefox browser.” At some point, after enough data points, this thought is followed by, “maybe I should check it out.” The data point as a data point is no more persuasive as GetFirefox.com than as Firefox.com, and the latter is probably more memorable and more quickly understood.
October 19th, 2008 at 8:42 am
Hie!
I prefer GetFirefox.com, as an action-oriented URI but I have to say that, as a french guy (and don’t blame me ^^), Firefox.com is more “multilingual”. For many people, Firefox is like a brand, unless “Get” means nothing for them. Actually, I think that the major part of the population firefox has to seduce could be the part that doesn’t really understand english, so we have to think about them, and try to make the marketing around firefox more “multi”. I hope you understood my ideas.
Bye!
October 19th, 2008 at 11:53 am
GetFirefox.com, for consistancy with GetThunderbird.com and GetSunbird.com (not registered by mozilla, but does forward to mozilla pages).
I don’t think which URL has been used in the past matters at all – we’re not talking about removing either URL, we are talking about promoting the products to new users.
October 20th, 2008 at 6:44 am
+1 on firefox.com – it’s easier to remember, and is easier to read and understand in the split second most people will have when seeing the tshirt in an airport or whatever.
October 20th, 2008 at 7:06 am
Get[Anything].com says to me: “we couldn’t get the domain we wanted.”
October 20th, 2008 at 7:58 am
firefox.com — I agree with the other commenters who said “get” doesn’t add enough message to justify the increased complexity.
October 20th, 2008 at 10:04 am
“Firefox.com” reads easier on my eyes than the CamcelCased “GetFirefox.com” does, but one of the things I like about GetFirefox.com is that it implies something about the user experience of the website at that location: it’s going to be tailored to helping the user obtain Firefox (and perhaps learn more about the product) as quickly as possible. Even without going to GetFirefox.com, one can picture a site with a big button on it that says “download”, which isn’t necessarily the case with firefox.com. This perceived ease-of-use might lower the barrier to entry to some extent.
Another thing I like about GetFirefox.com is that it implies certain things that may not be obvious to those of us who have used or even heard of Firefox: for someone who has literally no idea what Firefox is, if they see the FF3 T-shirt contest winner, they might think it has a cool design, but the shirt doesn’t actually tell them what Firefox is. At least with GetFirefox.com, it’s evident that Firefox is indeed something to be “gotten”, as opposed to e.g. a service that’s subscribed to (“GetFlickr.com” doesn’t make much sense) or an ad agency or a restaurant.
October 20th, 2008 at 1:10 pm
An example of when a “getthing.com” domain makes sense: http://paint.net/
But if we have thing.com, we should just use it, for the win.
(BTW. paint.net is similar to what used to be at firefox.com, no?)
October 21st, 2008 at 2:59 pm
Lose the Get. It’s clunky.
October 21st, 2008 at 6:46 pm
Thanks to everyone for the great comments…this has been a really interesting discussion.
Although I can see the wisdom of the points on both sides, after reading through everyone’s thoughts we’ve decided to switch to the Firefox.com URL from now on (starting with all the new shirts coming to the Community Store – details: http://musingt.com/?p=30).
It’s always great to get our amazing community’s input…thanks again!
October 21st, 2008 at 6:50 pm
@Ken Saunders (comment 11043) – Ken, thanks so much for all your thoughts. Re: the issue of representing MoCo on Mozilla.com, that was actually a goal of ours when we did the redesign, so I’m sorry to hear that’s not coming through for you.
You might have already seen them, but we created these pages with the idea of giving site visitors a better understanding MoCo, MoFo and the community in general:
http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/about/
http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/about/whatismozilla.html
http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/manyfaces/
If you get a chance, let me know what you think.