Starting the Discussion: How to Make Mozilla’s Websites Better
As noted yesterday, there are many good things about Mozilla’s various websites, but the big picture of how they’re organized and work together leaves a lot of room for improvement. Entering our web universe can be really confusing for users, and the current setup limits the ways we can spread the word about all the stuff that’s happening around the organization and community.
So, to kickstart the discussion of how we might solve these problems, we held a public brown bag today to talk about the overall situation and how to improve it. Big thanks to everyone who attended and participated – it was really great to hear people’s ideas and input.
During the brown bag, I framed the solution as having four basic steps (none of which are easy, of course):
1. think about our sites as components of a larger network rather than a bunch of individual pieces.
2. tell our story effectively by making sure each site has a clear role and distinct focus.
3. group related content together so it’ll be where users can find it.
4. connect sites more effectively through cross-linking, UI elements, visual palette, etc.
More specifically, the central proposal that I put out there was that we should have a single Mozilla site (mozilla.org) that would focus on sharing the big picture of who we are and what we do, and would be a central hub for a bunch of product- and audience- specific sites to orbit around. As part of that, we would rename mozilla.com to more accurately reflect its current focus as the main Firefox product site.
The next question, then, is what to call that Firefox product site. For a variety of reasons (that will probably require another blog post to detail) my personal vote is to call it firefox.com, although there are certainly other options – mozilla.org/firefox or firefox.mozilla.org, for example. It’s an interesting discussion, although the specifics of the URL are ultimately less important than the overall goal of making our sites better.
Regardless of the name, though, there’s a lot we could do on this “new” site, such as integrating Firefox add-ons and support to create a single destination for all things Firefox. It would be a powerful communications vehicle for us, and a really useful resource for users.
Of course there are a ton of details that still need to be talked through, and some big questions to figure out. For example, where do key sites like Mozilla Europe fit into all this? Would this create an improper balance between the Firefox and Mozilla brands? What’s the right URL structure?
But, I’m confident we can answer those questions, and once we do the result will be a huge improvement for all involved: more relevant, accessible content for users; a clearer platform for communicating the mission; a better vehicle for talking about Firefox and other key initiatives like mobile, add-ons, services, etc. There are lots of really exciting opportunities, and I can’t wait to get started on them.
If you weren’t able to make it to the brown bag today (or even if you were), I’ve attached the full set of slides here, and Laura has put up a bunch of notes from the discussion session. The slides have way more detail than this this post, so please take a look and share any questions or comments in the comments section below. Thanks!
Update: David Boswell offers up some thoughts from the Mozilla Foundation perspective.
February 11th, 2010 at 8:27 pm
[...] for how to tell the Mozilla and Firefox story better In case you missed today’s brown bag about the Mozilla web universe, it was a discussion about how to use all of the community’s web sites together to tell our [...]
February 15th, 2010 at 11:06 am
Hi John, thanks for posting this. I’m sorry I wasn’t able to hear the event in real-time due to the time difference.
I think it’s timely that we are starting this effort. I think we as a project have made significant strides recently, the Mozilla.org redesign led by David Boswell as one example. The work that was done in order to redesign Mozilla.com for the Firefox 3.0 launch was also significant and has helped to provide us the base that we have today. That being said, I think a lot of the constructive criticism in your presentation is accurate and we do need to make a strategic redesign a goal, certainly in preparation for Firefox 4.0, ideally sooner. There is no question in my mind that we have so many sites, that there is not enough commonality among them, that it is confusing unless you are a regular visitor to our sites, which is probably only a fraction of the users.
A few thoughts in no particular order:
- the mozilla.jp numbers are not reflected in your stats table because that server is in Japan. Kohei can get you stats to update that slide and make the numbers more accurate.
- I love the idea of a common Mozilla footer. That’s absolutely something we should implement. Ideally it could be something that could be extended to our community sites as well.
- Website localization. If we are going to take the time to do this strategic redesign, let’s make absolutely sure that l10n is one of the top criteria driving the work. I believe we are near or past the tipping point where Mozilla has more non-English language users of the software than English (and I believe the fastest growth for Firefox is in non-English language locales), so moving forward, we need to be even more sensitive to website l10n in order to build on the success we have had to date. This is in the face of the faster product release schedule and additional products (like Fennec, Personas, etc.) so our l10n community is taxed as it is. You know this but key sites that can’t be localized are spreadfirefox.com among a number of others.
- Process. With respect to the process of a redesign, my main concern is that we make sure to take the time to makes changes over time, with measurement in place. I remember the big changes we made to our website when Firefox 2 was released and then Firefox 3 was released. That was not ideal because we switched users over to a new site design overnight. Ideally, we’ll have a design we’ll implement and we’ll move towards that over a number of weeks or months, measuring what works and doesn’t work as the changes are implemented. I think the worst thing would be to have a new design, drop it on many of the sites, and have confusion as we all learn how to use it. If we look at the most heavily trafficked websites, they change over time but not suddenly. That’s my primary concern with respect to how we implement any new design.
Hope this helps.
February 16th, 2010 at 9:12 am
Great thoughts, thanks Gen. The short answer is that I basically agree with everything you said.
A couple of other key points:
- l10n will definitely be a top priority. We always keep it as a key consideration when doing design projects, and will certainly do so in this case.
- about process, one key difference this time around is that we’re de-coupling major site changes from major releases. So, instead of having that sudden ‘flip the switch’ quality you mentioned, we’ll be able to test and tweak things until we’re totally happy. I’ve already talked to the metrics team about this, and they’re excited about being involved. Bottom line is that we won’t roll out anything new until we’re confident in how it will do with actual users.
February 18th, 2010 at 4:38 pm
[...] week John Slater held a brown bag to begin discussions around reorganizing the Mozilla web universe. As part of this proposed plan, mozilla.org would become the central hub connecting all other [...]
February 22nd, 2010 at 1:12 pm
While I unfortunately haven’t had time to look over this in detail, I just wanted to chime in and say that I think the overarching concept here of having a single overall Mozilla site and then other product and organization sites around it sounds exactly right to me. After all these years of overcomplexity, I’m looking forward to us moving towards a more tellable story and structure.
July 18th, 2010 at 1:38 pm
I think that having one main website and linking to the others is a great idea. That way everyone would be able to reach all of Mozilla’s web properties.