The folks at Gemius have been kind enough to aggregate their individual country data (e.g., www.en.ranking.pl/) into a single view across their entire sample – a sample totaling more than 60 Billion page views each month.  For an overview of the various market share providers and their samples, please read here.

We’ll eventually look to expand the conversation around this data, but for now, we’ll highlight just one breathtaking view.  The chart below shows weekly browser market share data since the beginning of 2007 and it includes aggregated data from across nine countries – Czech Republic, Bulgaria, Estonia, Hungary, Lithuania, Latvia, Poland, Russia, and Ukraine.

• People love Firefox!
• There is a small segment of existing users running into a particular problem – Firefox is not saving their preferences

Taking a step back, let’s walk through how we arrived at these findings.  We previously described our efforts integrating user outreach into mozilla.com.  For this post, we’re going to focus just on comments left by users during their visit to the Firefox “First Run” page, which brand new users hit upon downloading/installing Firefox for the first time (analysis of the Whatsnew and Getting Started pages will soon follow).

About 1,200 people left feedback over the past month, and below is a breakdown of the feedback.  If you’re curious how this worked from the user’s perspective, click here to the firstrun page and then click on the orange feedback button.

So, overall, the feedback looks really amazing.  For such a high percentage of people to go out of their way to say something positive is incredible.

On the downside, there were two issues identified by users that we weren’t previously aware of:

1. Many people complained about the open video freezing.  I’m not sure exactly what the issue is, but we can note that the next version of this page (for Fx3.6) will not include the same video.
2. Perhaps more critically, many users talked about their frustration around Firefox not saving their settings.  The most common comment was along the lines of, “why does this page open every time I open Firefox?  Please get rid of it.  I previously set my home page and Firefox won’t save the setting.” In addition, some people noted other preferences/settings not saving – add-ons, personas, favorites and bookmarks.

How do we know that this latter group of users is frustrated?  In addition to reading their actual comments, we can also look at the average satisfaction score (scale of 1 to 5) left by users in each feedback group.  The findings are below… it’s pretty clear that this group, with a satisfaction score of 1.9, has been feeling extremely frustrated.

What’s the good news?

Thanks to this insight, we’ve been able to prioritize a fix via bug 495735, and we’re hoping to ship it in the next release of Firefox!  Thanks to Dietrich Ayala, Mats Palmgren, the Firefox team, and several others for making this happen.

Congrats everyone!

For those interested in “before and after” pictures, below is one way to visualize the browser market share landscape (based on Net Applications’ data).

Now that this new program has been live for about a week, we thought we’d check the numbers (cumulative since last week):

Considering that this page hasn’t been directly pushed to users, these numbers are significant.  There are a couple spots within mozilla.com where users can click to find this page, but otherwise, our web analytics reporting tells us that about 90% of the traffic has been coming from news and technology related web sites.

Next, you may be wondering where people ventured upon clicking to “Update” or “Research”.  Here’s a breakdown:

We’ll continue to keep an eye on these numbers, and perhaps more excitedly, there are plans to soon integrate this feature into the browser itself.

Emerging from the summer months, both reports show Firefox gaining about 1% (over the past couple months).  And looking at September specifically, Net Applications shows Firefox gaining more than 0.75%.

Net Applications:

StatCounter:

Beyond just the past couple months, you’ll notice that overall trending also looks quite good.  Over the past year, Net Applications shows Firefox picking up more than 4 percentage points, and StatCounter shows more than 6 percentage points.

• 99% of internet users (desktop) have Flash.
• The vast majority of people have an out of date version.  One study claims 80% and mozilla.com’s own traffic stats show about 75% of visitors on a non current version.

So, what has transpired since last Wednesday?

In one week, 10,000,000 people have clicked on the “flash update” link below.

Taking this analysis one step further, we wanted to gain a better sense for users’ interaction with this page.  Breaking down the data by day, we looked more carefully at the en-US version of the 3.5.3 whatsnew (or update) page and pulled the following numbers:

1. How many total people hit the whatsnew page?
2. Of this cohort, how many had an out of date Flash version, and hence, saw the message above?
3. And of this smaller cohort, how many people actually clicked on the flash update link?

Beyond the total impact of 10,000,000 clicks, the most impressive pattern that stands out is the click through rate.  While the Firefox whatsnew page generally sees a click through rate below 5%, the flash update link alone has generated a click through rate north of 30%.  Phenomenal!

This insight brought me back in time.

When I first started talking with Mozilla folks a few years ago (before joining the org), one of the first things I wanted to do was make sure I was using the latest version of Firefox.  At the time, I went to mozilla.com and tried looking for information about how to do so.  I didn’t find anything and then searched on Google (again, unsuccessfully).  Eventually, I gave up and just did a fresh download and install, all the while not feeling totally sure I was doing the right thing.

Now, armed with our new insight, a couple changes are either on the way or have just been implemented:

• The Firefox team is making one small UI change (mentioned in Rob Strong’s blog post)
• The marketing team changed the main Firefox product page at www.mozilla.com, as seen by existing Firefox users.  Below are the two page variations, and I’ve highlighted the new additions to the pages.  These features point to this newly created FAQ page answering many key questions related to… how do I update/upgrade?  do I need to do a fresh install?  do I need to uninstall first?  what will happen to my bookmarks?  etc.

Thanks to Laura Mesa, John Slater, among many others, for their efforts.  It’s always nice to see our metrics activities come full circle – data -> insights -> actions/changes -> improved user experience!

1. Virtually everyone who provided feedback had previously used Fx3 and subsequently reverted back to Fx2.  This was 100% descriptive of this cohort and largely described all other users who were kind enough to share their thoughts.
2. Some of the issues cited have since been resolved (since last summer).  Clearly, many users tried Fx3 when it was initially released, then reverted back to Fx2 shortly thereafter, and now they still won’t consider upgrading because of their initial experience (even if that initial issue has since been resolved).  You never get a second chance to make a first impression!

Returning to our cohort of users not fully satisfied with or fully comfortable with the awesome bar, we’ve released a series of enhancements in Fx3.5 that should resolve their concerns.  Alex Faaborg provided an extensive walk-through, and here’s one key section that should help this group of users:

Ability to Control What Appears in the Location Bar Search Results (Proactive Privacy)

When we expanded the capabilities of the location bar to search against all history and bookmarks in Firefox 3, a lot of people contacted us to say that they had certain bookmarks they didn’t really want to have displayed. In some cases users had intentionally hidden these bookmarks in deep hierarchies of folders, somewhat similar to how one might hide a physical object. Having something from your previous browsing displayed to someone else who is using your computer (or even worse) to a large audience of people as you are giving a presentation, is really one of the most embarrassing things that Firefox can do to you. So now in Firefox 3.5, users have complete control over what types of information are displayed in the location bar (or suggestions can be turned off entirely):

So, what actions items can come of this user feedback?

If we think this concern surrounding the location bar is solely limited to existing Fx2 users, we could consider some special messaging for them.  However, I would venture to guess that some small fraction of the Firefox user base currently on either Fx3 or Fx3.5 (93% of all users) share similar thoughts about the location bar.  If so, then it would likely be worthwhile for us consider a couple options:

• Modify Firefox itself.

Below is a simplified mock-up of just one idea I came up with (please note that I don’t know anything about UI).  I’m not sure if the average user knows about Tools->Options, so the concept here is that a person could easily understand how the location bar works and adjust it (according to their preferences) within a fraction of a second.

• Up-level messaging about the location bar and its latest enhancements.

Utilizing key touch points, such as the firstrun page, whatsnew page, or firefox.com page, could help users feel more comfortable with the location bar and its awesome functionality.  For example, is it more important for us to be using these critical touch points to promote open video formats and Fx add-ons, or to highlight Firefox’s most utilized feature and how it can best help a user in his/her everyday life (and not frustrate them)?  At the very least, this seems like a question we should be asking.

What are your thoughts?

(Please ignore the Fx version numbers in this screenshot.  Unfortunately, we don’t have an exact copy on hand.)

For people interested in leaving their feedback, here is the survey they saw:

In total, nearly 5,000 users provided feedback.  Similar to our other recent feedback efforts, we decided to manually read through comments from the second question above in order to extract the most insight and best understand the true pain points and thoughts of these Firefox users.  Sorting through the comments, I noticed about fourteen different types of comments/issues that were cited multiple times… a distribution breakdown and example comments are below.

Location Bar (clearing history) = “There are several issues with Firefox 3, but the browser is not very secure if browsing history cannot be deleted from the location bar. The Tools->Clear Private Data command was no help.”

Speed/Memory Leak Concerns (real or perceived) = “I had heard it made your computer run slowly when it first came out….but after a few months i had forgotten about this tid bit and installed ‘3′. It did indeed bring my computer to a near standstill. My friend did this as well. Another friend then jarred my memory as to why and so…i then un-installed it and re-installed ‘2′ and since then my computer has been running great….so….would you take the chance again?”

Add-ons Compatibility = “There are a number of add-ons which will not work with Firefox 3, Getmail, Silverscreen, Feebe and others.”

Look & Feel (general UI) = “Compared to v2, v3 has an interface that sucks, sucks, sucks big time.  Graphically, it’s much worse: harder to read (too dark, type too small), icons lack color, etc.”

Bookmarks (UI) = “Getting to alphabetized bookmarks with the latest version is a serious pain in the fundament and my wife and I continue to be amazed as to why you decided to take a huge step  backwards with what was supposed to be an advance. Cure this problem and we’ll move up. Thank you.”

Crashes = “Firefox 3 Crashes every time I install it.  Even with a clean upgrade.  It won’t load at all it just crashes restarts and crashes again.”

Lost Stuff when Upgrading = “Last time I took a Firefox upgrade, my entire Favorites list was wiped out.  It would take me more than a year of frustration and work if that happened again.  So, I’m afraid to take another upgrade.”

Developer for Testing = “I am Web developer and have to test my page in all browser. So I am keeping ff2 alongwith ff3 and other browser .”

Don’t Fix What’s not Broken = “I need more time to figure out what to do.  I am happy with all the stuff I have and the status quo.  My computer works well as it is.  Do I really need this update? ”

Fonts (size) = “The window is huge.  the writing is huge.  when I go searching only 2 or 3 websites fit in the window.”

U3 Compatibility = “Firefox 3 does not work on U3 devices in fact it makes the device unusable and so does the latest version of Thunderbird. The U3 device only accepts the mobile versions although I keep getting upgrade versions popping up.”

Cost? = “If you say this is free. I have always heard there is really nothing free in this world.  Times are tough all over, especially for us seniors living on social security.”

Printing Problems = “When printing from FF3, text comes out as scrambled ASCII. doesn’t work on Win(XP/Vista), Linux, etc. Big pain in the butt. I love FF3 otherwise, but as a network admin I just can’t make the switch.”

Enterprise Support = “We can use only software expressly approved and that works together with our network and other older software.  We can’t download or install anything on our own.”

In our next post, we’ll provide some interpretation around these findings and discuss possible implications from a product standpoint.  Stay tuned for Part II!

Lastly, thanks to Sam Sidler for implementing this survey and to Eric Hergenrader for providing much of the analysis.

The metrics and SUMO teams have been working hard to better understand the traffic at support.mozilla.com and users’ experiences there.  One critical item we’ve had trouble wrapping our heads around has been the unusually high bounce rate on the SUMO home page.  Looking strictly at the web analytic numbers, roughly 86% of visitors immediately exit the site.

As a multi-pronged approach to figure out what the heck is going on here, we considered a couple options:

1. Implement a feedback button/form on the home page, allowing users to tell us what is on their mind – more on this below
2. Modify our tracking so that we can see the percentage of visits that are derived from people hitting the F1 key on their keyboard – the SUMO team will soon be discussing the details of this change

For approach #1, we initially implemented a button in the bottom corner of the page (button and feedback form are pictured below).  This page sees nearly 10,000,000 visitors monthly, so we were fairly sure that we would be able to understand some key insights rather quickly.  Unfortunately, events did not play out as expected.  Over the course of nearly a month, we had fewer than 1,000 total responses, which translates to a click-through rate of roughly 0.0001% (ouch!).  To boot, there didn’t appear to be any revealing patterns or insights within the responses.

At this point, we felt bewildered and didn’t know where else to turn.  So, what did we do?  We implemented a pop-up.

Let me stress that I hate pop-ups, hate them.  Given our circumstances, we decided to run the feedback pop-up question for just a 24-hour period and show it to 60% of visitors to the SUMO home page (they saw it when trying to leave the page).

The findings were amazing. Firstly, out of 700 total comments, only one or two people said something negative about the pop-up itself.  Many comments were along the lines of, “Firefox is great” (someone even pointed out that we should have included a positive category within the survey form).  Here’s one example:

“i admire this site and this browser. it is faster, and safer,…….. so many add ons that can use and its fun…… i think this is the best internet browser that i have…. i using ubuntu 9.04 and its work fine…tnx more power to you…. and to your team….”

Secondly, we were able to confirm a hypothesis – nearly half of the traffic to the SUMO home page appears to be accidental (e.g., a user accidentally hitting F1 on his/her keyboard).  The screenshot below comes from Kampyle’s dashboard (they’re the feedback analytics firm who helped us with this project) and it shows a breakdown of people’s feedback by category.  That blue slice of the pie is “Arrived by Mistake”… that’s huge!  Even though it shows as 40%, we’re guessing that the true percentage is closer to 50%, as some folks arriving by mistake likely closed their tab/window within a fraction of a second and missed our feedback question.

[As a side note, this is a perfect example of why pure web analytics – alone – can fail us (analysts, marketers, business managers, etc.).  Without hearing real comments from real people, we could have easily been led down the wrong path by relying solely on the data.]

Lastly, we wanted to look at the exact feedback left by people visiting support.mozilla.com by mistake.  The vast majority indicated that they indeed realized that they had accidentally hit the F1 key.  Diving in a little further, we wanted to share a small sample of actual comments.  Enjoy!

“actually the cat walked on the keyboard”

“bent over to pick something up and accidentally leaned on the f1 key”

“Cat jumped onto laptop”

“CHILD GOT A HOLD OF THE KEYBOARD AND STARTED PUSHING BUTTONS.”

“finger too big.  finger hit f1 by mistake.  stupid bigfinger.”

“i was dusting, its nice to know this site exists.”

“I was stretching in my chair, and next thing I know, I’m on the FF help site. OOPS!!”

“I was using a netbook in the dark and thought I was pressing 1 but I hit F1 by mistake. Aside from that I’ve usually found the firefox support site quite helpful on the rare occasion that I’ve needed it.”

“my 2 year old was playing with the keyboard”

“My 9 month old was playing with my keyboard.”

“My baby likes to grab my computer and press buttons.  She grabbed my keyboard and held the F1 button down so the Support site opened in about nine tabs.”

“My cat stepped on my laptop. ”

“My daughter is always pressing it. I never knew which button it was before now.”

“my fat finger syndrome is acting up again”

“My nails are long and I constantly hit the F1 button.”

“now I know which key my baby hit when he was banging on the keyboard.”

“Oops. Accidentally hit F1, but wow! The support site is great! Lots of info. I may have to come back intentionally!  Thanks for a great product!”

“the key was hit by the telephone”

“Yes, I arrived at this site by pressing F1 key. No matter how I came here but would like to let you know – I love Firefox and thanks for provinding us this great product.”

“cat hit keys”

“Cat on keyboard”

“Dropped food on keyboard”

“my cat hit the help key….lol”

“My cat pressed F1, but it’s cool”

“my pet rat walked over my keyboard and hit the F1 Key LOL – Sorry!”

“No clue–my cat was wandering around and probably stepped on something but it was nice ending up here because I’m seeing all kinds of things that look very interesting.”

“my son was hitting some random keys on my laptop and suddenly I get this.”