Mozilla Marketing
Some new “What’s New” Firefox Pages
When a user upgrades to the latest version of Firefox, they see a landing page that announces they’ve successfully installed the latest version of Firefox. In general, we’ve used this page to let users learn more about a particular release, or to introduce new Firefox features. This page is a valuable component of our retention program and one of the main ways that we communicate with existing Firefox users.
This week, during the next regular update to Firefox (version 2.0.0.8), we’ll be trying out a few new versions of this page that we think make the idea of browser-customization a little easier to understand while giving users the opportunity to download a selection of consumer friendly add-ons directly from the landing pages.
JT Batson had a good previous post about the reason for trying some improvements to these pages:
“Our primary audience is people who have not tried add-ons before; either because they have never heard of them or they don’t quite understand what and how useful they are. We hope to use the learnings from this effort to continue to improve how we communicate the “customization” benefit of Firefox across all of our properties.”
The add-ons that are listed on the pages below were selected to present a wide variety of general consumer-focused add-ons and many were drawn from the Mozilla add-ons recommended list. There are many other great candidates that could have been included in this initial test. If these pages are well received (based on number of people who click through and try them out), we’ll continue to refine them and roll them out beyond the en-US locale.
The pages are posted below — what do you think?
Alternate page #1
Alternate page #2-A
Alternate page #2-B
Alternate page #2-C
Alternate page #3 — this is the page that user will get if they click through the “See more add-ons” button
Discussion
13 comments for “Some new “What’s New” Firefox Pages”
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giant spatula:
I like these mock-ups a lot. My only critique is that the final one seems a bit crowded. But, the separators on that specific page and the icons for each add-on helps.
I would be interested to see the results of this experiment. Mozilla has so many add-ons and the browser’s extensibility seems to be such a differentiator, it’ll be nice to see you write about the findings from this experiment. Can’t wait to see what the giant spatula cooks up.
I like the look of this, however, firefox does need a batched extension install process.
Updated, now go thru the tiresome process of installing each extension individually….
Firefox needs a google pack type experience for it’s addons
I really like the first mockup. It helps show users new possibilities without overwhelming anyone that doesn’t want to have to deal with it. I particularly like the equal weight given to “Customize it now” and “No thanks”
I think this is a great idea
I like those “What’s New” Firefox Pages. But I think Alternate page #2-A to C are pretty useless, why not just right from page 1 to page 3?
I’m worried people don’t see the difference between extensions and an official MoCo/MoFo product… and associate a bad extension experience with the actual product. Blaiming MoCo/-Fo. Even thought the hand picked list of extensions is of high quality, this is a big risk.
And are these the chosen addons? What ever happened to the most popular addons on AMO, i.e. flashblock, noscript and adblock plus? I’d imagine those extensions would be popular with the general public too. The cynic in me is guessing these choices were corporate friendly (esp.wrt. adblock)?
I think it would be nice for it to detect how many extension are installed. If the user already has a threshold (maybe 5) of extensions installed and/or themes than it could assume the user is already familiar with extension and give him/her a more meaningfull page, instead of assuming they unfamiliar with extensions.
Well done, Giant Spatula. The results of this test and our current advertising campaign (as described in your earlier post) should give us some good insights on how to explain the benefits of add-ons to the non-techie masses.
Thanks for the feedback.
Re: auto detecting how many add-ons a user has
This is certainly a good suggestion and would make for a more focused message to users. However, there are privacy implications for doing this — and we take this issue pretty seriously here at Mozilla.
The current “Take your pick” page makes it quite difficult to get more information about an extension before installing it: Neither its icon nor its name is a link, and the “More Information” image is hardly readable and looks about as disabled as possible (even more greyed out than what Windows does for disabled menu items). What’s wrong with a white-on-blue question mark and e.g. black-on-grey text for that image?
Furthermore I agree with Seth that the page still looks crowded. Couldn’t we reduce the list further to 3 * 2 extensions which are (randomly) cycled so that on a default resolution you can see all of them without having to scroll?
Effective simple idea!
However, the first confusion I see is that the “Update Complete” is smaller compared to “Now it’s time to get personal” because I wouldn’t expect to see that screen after upgrading Firefox.
Secondly, can we actually mention what add-ons are? Something like “Add-ons are extra features you can install. These add-ons are written by Firefox users just like you.”
I really like the idea! My favorites by far are Alternates 1 and 2a through 2c. I agree that the last one seems a bit crowded. If I had to thrown down the hammer, I would go with the layout of the three popular extensions (although what extensions to be included could be debated endlessly, and they must be heavily tested extensions so there’s not as much concern about quality). I would probably stick with the ones that have more of a larger user base or a backing organization (ForecastFox, eBay Companion, etc.) that have already been tested, and of course to remember to include stuff the regular user would like to try (stuff like noscript is great for those more advanced, but for people such as my girlfriend or stepdad, you just confused them and they just clicked away).
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