A few weeks ago, JT and Beltzner presented their 12-point plan for improving Firefox retention. David Rolnitzky and I were tasked with point #5 - “Improve download and first run pages”, so I’m happy to say that we launched a new download page earlier today.

As a bit of context, this is the page that users see after they click the Download Firefox button, and it remains up throughout the entire download process. So, rather than just showing a promo for a messenger bag (which is what the previous version of the page did), our hypothesis is that users will be better served by seeing instructions (with visuals) on how to complete the installation process.

We plan to keep testing and evolving this page over time, so consider this more of a work in progress than a “final” page. Obviously the use of screenshots complicates the localization process, so we’re just launching the en-US version now while we actively try to figure out the best way to localize these pages worldwide. In addition to the Mac page shown here, we also created XP and Vista versions, and other OS’s may follow eventually.

Update 9/4/07: Several commenters correctly pointed out that this page wasn’t always viewable from certain key browsers. That was a known bug at the time we launched the page, and I’m happy to report that it was fixed last week.

Thanks to Alicia Patterson for her design work on the many iterations of this page.

…but it’s worth mentioning that, just in case, we now have a much snazzier site outage notification:

There are many facets to Mozilla marketing, but one of our biggest objectives is very straightforward: convince people to download Firefox. Since the vast majority of Firefox downloads come from getfirefox.com, we naturally want that page to be as strong as possible.

The general feeling here is that the current version of the page isn’t as effective as it could be, so David “The Professor” Rolnitzky and I have been working on optimizing it. Step 1 is some A-B testing, meaning we will serve up alternate versions of this page and see which one does the best job of getting people to click that big download button. Assuming the results are conclusive, step 2 will be to implement the “winner” as the new getfirefox.com. The Professor also hopes to introduce multivariate testing in the near future, so we can be even more sophisticated in our methodology (that’s really his area, though)…refining these pages will be an ongoing process.

The test versions will be going live soon so I wanted to share them with you guys (comments and feedback are welcome, as always). There are also other subtle variations to what’s shown here, but this is a good overview…be sure to click on each image for a larger version so you can read the copy, as that’s an important part of the testing strategy. As you read, keep in mind that these are aimed at mainstream web users who may not be that familiar with Firefox.

Enjoy!

The current getfirefox.com:

Test version #1:

Test version #2:

Lastly, thanks to Huggybite Design and Active Ingredients for their design work on the various options.