Onward and Upward for Mozilla.com
There’s a lot of activity happening over at mozilla.com these days as we refine, tweak and modify it to be as effective as possible…here’s a quick overview:
Sprints
In the past, we’ve timed the big site overhauls to coincide with major product releases, with smaller updates in the interim on a project-by-project basis. In order to create more consistent momentum, Mike Morgan and I have kicked off a series of tightly scoped two-week sprints designed to showcase the latest web technologies, open up a better window into what’s happening in the Mozilla community and, of course, encourage Firefox downloads.
Our initial sprint, the results of which should go live tomorrow, involved enhancing the Firefox 3.5 download stats page and integrating it more into the main site. After that we’re going to tackle the “plug-in problem”…i.e., the fact that most people aren’t aware that their plug-ins may contain some pretty serious security holes. Stay tuned for more details on these and other sprints coming soon.
Site Optimization
As Ken Kovash likes to point out, the economies of scale with mozilla.com are such that even slight improvements to the site can positively affect millions of users. So, Laura, Alix and I are stepping up our efforts to work with the Metrics team to identify and solve any ongoing pain points. Here’s what’s in the works for now (with much more to come):
* communicating to users about their plug-in vulnerabilities, both with the upcoming sprint noted above and in the longer term.
* clarifying our messaging on the upgrade page to address recent findings that show some user confusion around whether an update replaces their existing Firefox, removes bookmarks, etc.
* SEO enhancements on the Firefox download page (based on a suggestion by community member Michel Galibert – thanks Michel!).
* improvements to the What’s New experience, such as serving up different content depending on the user’s upgrade path (2.0->3.5 being very different from 3.5.2->3.5.3, for example).
Mozilla Mission
The Mozilla mission and everything it represents is a huge part of what makes Firefox Firefox, so one of my ongoing goals is to do a better job of weaving that story into the site as a whole. In the first step of what will surely be an ongoing process, we’ve added some prominent mission-focused text to the First Run page (see screenshot below). Next up: the 3.5.3 What’s New page and the Firefox download page.
As for the messaging on First Run, in the two weeks since the change was made that link has been clicked on about 171,000 times. Not a particularly gaudy number, but it translates into a few million clicks when multiplied across an entire year (and doesn’t account for the more subtle influence on the millions of people who have already read it without clicking, of course).
August 18th, 2009 at 12:11 am
I have aired my thoughts 2-3 months ago with the whole thing.
*gets on soap box*
I think that the uses and purposes of the different sites should be separate with clear uses… OOOR.. Merge all content to one page… so that getfirefox and mozilla.com and mozilla.org are all the same page or point to the same URL.
Mozilla.com should be about the organization. not about downloading its products. If it has a download on mozilla.com.. then get rid of it on getfirefox and .org..
I also think that all of the products should be easy to find.. or clear as to if its a mozilla product or not. What about Bugzilla? What about branches like seamonkey, songbird, sunbird, chatzilla.. I never know if I’m supposed to find them at a .com or .org or hidden in the developer pages.
I think content is good. but it should be easy to know where the content is first.
By making the pages more user friendly.. you have gotten rid of content and thrown it on a different URL completely… Or you could make a new page called http://www.whatmozillapagewillhavewhatimlookingfor.org
*gets off of soap box*
August 18th, 2009 at 5:59 pm
Definitely reassure users. If they’re running something else, tell them “You can keep your existing browser, Firefox will read in its bookmarks when it starts”; if they’re running earlier Firefox tell them Firefox will seamlessly keep their bookmarks, history, etc.
Regarding the Upgrade page:
The three clocks are confusing. Light blue reads as a good color, so it seems I’m getting less goodness.
“3,669 ms” is hopelessly geeky. “3.67 seconds” is obviously better.
And the stopwatch advance doesn’t match the times, it’s showing 45 seconds, 8 seconds, and 3 seconds. You put weird markings on the stopwatch as a hint these aren’t seconds, but it’s “truth-y” graphics at best. If you had regular 12 division clock face and showed actual second hand positions with recognizable “1.52 seconds!” underneath them it would be more readable and more impressive.
Cheers,
August 18th, 2009 at 6:54 pm
[...] a part of our renewed efforts to innovate more rapidly on mozilla.com, our first sprint brings download information to mozilla.com. From release to release we hope this [...]