Comments on: Firefox Retention

By: Robert M

Robert M — Mon, 27 Oct 2008 05:52:59 +0000

You could avoid duplicates by requesting the user to enter their email address or unique identifier before downloading (without the creation of an account). It wouldn’t be completely accurate, but it might be helpful.

By: Abhisek

Abhisek — Tue, 21 Oct 2008 08:24:14 +0000

Impressive work, but personally I dont think this is fully proved.
See, how can we mark a user as regular?if we put a curve, then the percentage you guyz are calculating is actually the percentage of downloaded package.
I personally use 3 pcs, one in home, 2nd one in office, and one of my friend’s.Personally I use FFox, but other guyz may not be using the same.Sometimes my frnd, or my little sis uninstalled FFox.
As a result I have downloaded again.
Last month(sept,2008)I have downloaded firefox 7 times in Win and 2 times in Linux platform.
If u try to put this data in graph it will surely come as increase in retention.But definitely n unfortunately its not the truth.

By: Rob

Rob — Mon, 20 Oct 2008 03:21:06 +0000

Tracking retention is not fool-proof. This is not ie. What I mean is take for example – me, I’ve downloaded firefox numerous times and have uninstalled it numerous times for various reasons. Sometimes I’ve reformatted my computer or installed a new os. This doesn’t mean that I’m not still a firefox users. So it really is impossible to accurately say the % of installers that are still users is XX% when I’ve uninstalled firefox at least 3 times on 2 of my computers. So you now have ‘6 users’ that no longer are using firefox after the original install. The only way to accurately track is to have usernames or have users create an account when downloading, but of course that would prevent at least 20% of people from initially downloading. With that it really is impossible to track retention, again I’ve uninstalled firefox at least 6 times but I still use firefox daily…

By: jon

jon — Tue, 07 Oct 2008 11:11:44 +0000

It certainly ’sniffed’ my Mac. I have installed FF on dozens of computers, and I have never had a problem, but I am reasonably PC-literate. I just find it hard to believe that people would bother to download something, and then not go through what is a simple process of installing. Is there some way the installer could be made even more idiot-proof? I doubt it.

By: mawrya

mawrya — Sun, 02 Mar 2008 05:18:14 +0000

I think I might have a clue about what happens to a large number of the people who download but never installed Firefox.

If you visit the download page

http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/products/download.html?product=firefox-2.0.0.12&os=win&lang=en-US

I know lots of people who would get lost on step 2. Where is this mysterious “continue” button that they should click? I tried downloading in both IE6 and IE7 and the process didn’t seem to match at the instructions exactly. Does the download page sniff the browser and change instructions based on this info? It should. And the instructions should be exact and dead simple. The page is close but could be made even better. Its a shame to think that people get to the point of downloading but just can’t figure out how to do the install due to confusing instructions.

By: kkovash

kkovash — Fri, 29 Feb 2008 23:58:17 +0000

Justin,

thanks for the comments. I didn’t fully explain it within this post, but we did adjust the daily usage numbers according to our findings here: http://blog.mozilla.com/metrics/2008/01/03/what-factors-affect-firefox-usage/

So, for the drop-offs in AUS numbers that we typically see with updates being released and with holidays, we did “smooth” our the daily numbers that you see in the graph (e.g., that burp around Christmas was actually much more extreme when looking at just the raw data).

With that in mind, this funnelcake sample should be extremely representative of other samples. We’re continuing to consider further funnelcake editions and other methodologies to both confirm and enhance our findings.

By: Justin Dolske

Justin Dolske — Fri, 29 Feb 2008 23:00:06 +0000

It would be interesting to compare these results with another Funnelcake sample… EG, do we always lose ~30% of users over the first 60 days, or were there other factors specific to October and November that contributed to that?

In particular, I was thinking of FF updates released +14, +28, +43, +47, and +116 from the Funnelcake date. I guess there’s isn’t an obvious correlation, though, now that I look.

Also interesting that the burp in the +80s matches up with the Christmas holidays.

By: Marcelo Wolfgang

Marcelo Wolfgang — Fri, 29 Feb 2008 20:07:24 +0000

That’s a impressive mark, but I really like to know what happened to the people that downloaded and don’t even installed it … it’s weird you have to agree with me