For example, one pattern we’ve noticed here at Mozilla is that the overall usage of Firefox seems to decline a bit during this time of year.  In 2007, for example, the number of average daily users (ADU) declined by about 2% from April to May.  Even though we’re currently less than halfway through the month of May, it looks like a similar pattern will likely hold in 2008.

So, the first question this raises is: is this pattern in Firefox usage representative of the entire internet population?  The answer seems to be “yes.”  Looking at comScore’s data (subscription required), the number of worldwide average daily visitors dropped during April and May 2007 (relative to its level that March), jumped back up in June and then declined again in July and August 2007.  This pattern tracked extremely closely with month-to-month Firefox usage.

The next question this raises is: “why?” (and why aren’t folks talking more about this?).  In short, the answer to the former seems to be holidays.  Much of the world celebrates some version of May Day or Labour Day on May 1st.  Moreover, countries like China and Japan enjoy “golden week” holidays.  While it may seem hard to understand how a single holiday can have such a macro level effect, consider this: all else constant, if overall internet usage drops by 30% within just a single day, that month will show a 1% decline in average daily users.

As cool as it is to uncover this pattern and its potential causes, the question I raise in parentheses above seems like the most interesting part of this discussion.  And it starts to touch on the recent discussion by John Lilly and Mike Arrington (and John’s follow-up here).  Many cohorts (curious users, university researchers, small businesses, etc.) would certainly be interested in the opening up of all sorts of data… indeed, much of the reason folks aren’t talking more about questions such as “how do people use the web?” primarily relates to information being locked up.

Thanks again to Phil and Vince of Net Applications for their concern and hard work.

One of the top sources for browser market share analysis recently released some interesting data showing a decline in worldwide market share for Firefox during the March to April time period.

Our internal numbers show healthy growth for Firefox usage during that time, and we found it a bit odd that both Opera and Safari also showed losses, while IE took a big step forward.  Thankfully, we were able to dig into the numbers via Net Applications’ service; and even more helpful than that, the good folks over at Net Applications sprung into action to see if they could dive even deeper into the data.

What did we find?

1. Usage of Firefox did not appear to decline in April.
2. Usage of IE saw an ultra unusual spike over the period of a few days in April.  While there was steady traffic from IE users – as measured by page views – for a short period surrounding April 18th, there was a huge spike in traffic from IE users – as measure by unique visitors – during the same time period.  When I say “huge spike”, I mean something on order of 25% to 50% greater than what could have been expected.
3. Most of IE’s spike was attributable to IE6 users on XP (with some assistance from IE7 users on Vista), and nearly the entire spike came from users outside North America.

We’re not entirely sure what explains the IE related events described above, so we’re continuing to work with Net Applications in researching the situation.  For example, one educated hypothesis is that it has something to do with Microsoft’s update mechanism (they released SP1 for Vista users around April 18th).

There are likely to be more articles about the data (such as this), so our goal here is just to be as open and transparent as possible.  We’ll keep you updated as we uncover more details.

I was curious about taking this knowledge one step further – how does the adoption rate compare on a percentage basis across time periods?

In late September 2006 (one month prior to the official release of Fx2), here’s what the situation looked like:
(Fx2 beta users)/(Fx1.5 users) = 1.4%

Today, here’s what the current situation looks like for Firefox 3:
(Fx3 beta users)/(Fx2 users) = 2.0%

How should one interpret these numbers?  There are certainly different ways to think about this.  However, I think the biggest takeaway is two-fold: (1) Firefox 3 rocks and (2) our users remain extraordinarily passionate.  Downloading a beta product requires a user to both make an informed decision and go out of their way to intentionally take an action, and the fact that millions of people around the globe have already taken this step with Firefox 3 is utterly amazing.

Why does this matter?  The example below, captured a couple months ago, provides a powerful illustration.  Neither of those two ads on the right-hand side belongs to Mozilla (nor are sending clickers our way)!  An advertiser was previously able to list anything they desired as the URL displayed and then send the consumer to a completely different, unrelated web site.  The process, from the consumer’s perspective, was non transparent, and in extreme cases, could be dangerous.

And here’s a close-up:

Please note: we’re always happy to see affiliates helping with the distribution of Firefox; we’d just prefer that other advertisers not use our actual domains (e.g., mozilla.com) in their ads (when those ads are not actually directing users to Mozilla’s sites).

What’s remarkable here is that Google may take a revenue hit as a result of this change.  I’m guessing they made this decision because it’s clearly in the best interest of consumers and because it’s the right thing to do.  It’s always enlightening to see a company put the interest of users ahead of the interest of shareholders.

Yesterday, I spent some time on Google’s localized sites (e.g., www.google.cn) searching for Firefox related terms. I was curious if a new Firefox user is able to easily find a Mozilla related web site and download Firefox if he/she decides that’s what they want to do. For the most part, the answer seems to be “yes” – search for “firefox” in other Google language versions and our web sites (and affiliates) occupy the top search results. There was one exception, though, where this was not the case (I’d prefer for the locale be remain nameless). Searching for “firefox” in this particular locale showed a questionable site as the #2 result and a “mozilla” search displayed a questionable site as the #1 search result. Within a few minutes, I created an adwords campaign for just that locale to ensure that more new users are able to more easily find us (we’re also working on a few other longer-term solutions).

So, you may be wondering why, between this story and previous posts on this blog, I’m so obsessed with search marketing? In short, it’s because of the Firefox user experience.

Typically, user experience is defined by a user’s experience and direct interaction with a product. With Firefox, for example, direct interaction consists of many things: all the technologies and development that goes into the product itself, as well as the forward facing interface (e.g., all the great work done by folks like Mike Beltzner and Alex Faaborg).

I’d like to add a slightly broader definition of “user experience.” For me at least, it seems as though a user’s experience with Firefox begins at the moment that person conceives the idea in their mind that they’d like to try Firefox. Once that idea is conceived, the user then attempts to find Firefox (e.g., perhaps they already know about www.mozilla.com or perhaps they go to a search engine). And once the user takes this step, he/she makes a few clicks and navigates their way to the download process. All of these interactions are important in this broader view of “user experience,” and making these interactions as efficient and delightful as possible for the user drives much of the marketing and analytics efforts here at Mozilla.

• Develop country specific en-XX localizations when en-US is the dominant localization (e.g., for India)
• Create a simple, straightforward process to help Firefox users access the localization of their choice (i.e., beyond the existing drop-down list in our site’s footer)

While some of the team’s arguments were based more on guess-work than science, these recommendations are definitely thought provoking and they bring up some new questions for us to ponder.

Lastly, we want to thank Ben Dickens, Chris Emba, Kelton Lynn and Rishi Mallik for all their hard work last quarter!

Community is also starting to build around this tool. First, a Mr. Kurt filed a bug requesting Spectator be bundled with all Firefox builds. Next, the friendly Andy Edmonds created a pmog mission around contributing to Firefox passively. Thanks Kurt and Andy!

Just as a teaser, some trivia that will make the Firefox 3 theme developers happy. What UI element has gotten the most action today? Back button. 

We are looking forward to digging deeper into this data set while exploring ways to share it.

We’ve taken a lot of time to strike a balance between helpful data and privacy. If you would like to contribute to usability at Mozilla, please give the extension a spin (only works with Fx3). All you have to do is install the add-on! It will run with out you ever even knowing it is there.

Please see our entry on wiki.mozilla.org for more details about the extension.