The old Firefox Support Start page

The old start page had a number of problems:

• The bounce rate was relatively high, especially on the in-product start page (although we’ve learned since the start page redesign effort that a big reason for that is the F1 keyboard shortcut that people press by accident)
• The search box didn’t provide example searches to encourage people to use it
• The design wasn’t emphasizing on the fact that we are here to help and that we do provide a way to get personal support if the search doesn’t return any useful results.

For a complete list of what changed in the new start page, see the image on Flickr with notes explaining all the differences.

The new and optimized start page

The preliminary site statistics indicate that the impact of the new start page is even bigger than we anticipated based on the A/B test. So far, the start page shows a 3% decrease of bounce rate, which is pretty fantastic.

This translates to an improved user experience for over 400,000 Firefox users (annually)!

We’ve started to work with localizers on how to update the non-English start pages too. There are instructions available for how to do this and some locale leaders have already updated their start pages:

• Supporto a Firefox (it)
• Firefox-Support-Starteseite (de)

Thanks to everyone who helped with the process of getting this new start page created and implemented!

Given the number of people with these add-ons on their system who would be notified by Firefox, we anticipated that users would come to Firefox Support with questions about the blocklist.

Indeed, since October 15th, “windows presentation foundation” and “blocklist” are the top recent gaining search terms.

For this issue, we already had an article about the add-ons blocklist, and a mention of the .NET Framework Assistant in an article about uninstalling add-ons. To accommodate the increase in search traffic about the recently blocklisted items, we created 2 new articles (1 for each MS add-on), and expanded the add-ons blocklist article.

If you come across any users asking for more information about these blocklisted items and how to enable or disable them, you can direct him/her to these articles:

• Windows Presentation Foundation
• .NET Framework Assistant
• Add-ons blocklist

As an example of the real threats of using outdated plugins, consider the popular Flash plugin created by Adobe Systems. It is used to play videos on YouTube and many other sites, and has a history of serious security issues. What this means is that if you haven’t upgraded to the latest version of Flash, it doesn’t matter if you’re using the latest and most secure version of Firefox because plugins are independent pieces of programs running inside the web browser, which Mozilla doesn’t control (and didn’t create). Of course, this is true for every web browser out there, including Internet Explorer.

In other words, no matter how safe your web browser is, you’re still vulnerable to security exploits if your plugins are not up to date, because they open up security holes beyond the web browser’s control.

So how do you ensure that your plugins are up to date? Mozilla’s new Plugin Check page comes to the rescue! The page went live today on mozilla.com after a few weeks of testing and is a very important step in making the web safer. To see if you’re running any outdated and insecure plugins, just visit the Plugin Check page and update any plugins marked as out of date.

For Firefox Support and the SUMO community, this is an important milestone since 30% of the reported crashes are caused by plugins. By increasing the number of users running updated plugins, the number of reported problems on SUMO should drop significantly. Also, giving users access to a page that allows them to take control of their security is a good example of how important web safety is for Mozilla.

This Plugin Check page is just the first step in making it easier to keep your plugins safe. Future versions of Firefox will have this functionality built in, eventually making the experience as seamless as keeping Firefox itself up to date. In the meantime, we’ll make sure to link to the Plugin Check page wherever it makes sense to do so on SUMO.

SUMO – support.mozilla.com – was launched as the official in-product help for Firefox 3. SUMO is built on top of TikiWiki (an open source wiki built with PHP and MySQL) which had never been used on such a large scale website before. In this case study we’ll cover the steps used to get SUMO up for Download Day and keep it up since. We’ll cover:

• Systems approach and diagnosis
• Profiling
• Database architecture, replication, and full text search
• Making caching work (in so many ways)
• Tricks, hacks, and workarounds
• Load testing: the architecture of our test cluster and tools and how we use them

The presentation starts at 1:45 pm in meeting room J2. Be there, or be sqrt()!

There can be many different reasons why people leave a website without interacting with it. When it comes to a support website, one of those reasons can be that the website isn’t helpful enough, or doesn’t provide sufficient instructions on how it should be used. This is something we are trying to minimize on SUMO so the support platform becomes as easy to understand as possible.

In order to improve the current start page, our first step was to figure out how people are using it today and identify areas where we could improve it. chofmann dug up a lot of the initial research about common web design mistakes which our start page was suffering from, and proposed some ideas on how we could use those insights when redesigning the page. chofmann and I then sat down and brainstormed about how we could improve the page, after which I created a simple mockup of our ideas.

Before we could actually test our ideas, we needed to turn the mockup into a polished web page that we would feel comfortable showing to our users, so we turned to Mozilla’s master of design and creativity, John Slater, who connected us with web designer Naz Hamid. The result of our collaboration can be seen below:

The new start page. Click on the image to see a version of it with notes explaining the differences between the current start page.

The test turned out to be successful. With the new start page:

• More people used the search box (+1.3%), which is the best way to use SUMO to find the solution to your problem.
• Fewer people left the site immediately without interacting with it (-0.5%), which means that more people are able to get their problem solved.

For the full report and many interesting insights about how people interact with this new page versus the current page, read the original blog post based on the full analysis of the A/B test by Ken Kovash and Mozilla intern Eric Hergenrader: Improving a User’s Experience with Firefox Support (part II).

Our effort to improve the support experience for our users will of course not end with this test. It’s an ongoing process and a continued focus of the SUMO team to make our support platform as easy to understand and use for as many users as possible.

When looking at the results of our test, it should be noted that the bounce rate is still very high (86%). As I mentioned earlier, there could be many other reasons why people quickly leave the website. One reason, that I suspect plays an important role here, is the fact that you can reach Firefox Support simply by pressing F1 on your keyboard. My theory is that many people accidentally do this when typing on a web page, leading to many unwanted visits to Firefox Support.

The most common SUMO bookmark?

That is one of our next things to test on SUMO: among the people that visit Firefox Support by pressing F1 on the keyboard, how many people close the website right away? Are the people that visit the site by selecting the Help option in the menu more interactive?

We will have the answers to these questions soon.

Firefox 3.0.x users will be able to view screencasts in Flash format, but we also support the open video format called Ogg/Theora. Firefox 3.5 users will be able to view Ogg/Theora videos without the need for a plugin. For more information about open video, read In Support of Open Video.

What makes screencasts on SUMO especially great is that the SUMO knowledge base is a wiki. Adding a screencast to an article can be done by anyone! (That means you!) We have provided a tutorial on adding screencasts to the knowledge base, with a list of software you can use to create them. Adding of screencasts is fully integrated with the article editor; so if you know how to edit a knowledge base article, you know how to add a screencast. If you need any help adding screencasts, you can always ask in the Contributors forum. And the next time you’re having trouble explaining something about how to use Firefox, you’ll be able to show them.

There are a number of ways to help. If you’d like to work with users in real time over live chat, you’ll need to get the Spark client or you can use any jabber client and be available as a resource to our contributors. Just as important is answering questions on the support forums. To get started, simply register for an account and start posting. To join in what’s sure to be an exciting community atmosphere and keep on top of the latest issues and problem, just join us in the #sumo IRC channel on irc.mozilla.org. That’s also a good place to go if you need help with any of the above.

In addition to helping our users, this is also a great opportunity to interact with some of the hundreds of millions of Firefox users worldwide and share with them the excitement of getting a new browser. And it’s lots of fun.

If you’re interested in support or SUMO and didn’t receive an e-mail, just let us know your e-mail address and we’ll be sure to have a survey sent out ASAP.

• Adding screencasts will work just like adding images, and go through the same review process as all article edits.
• Articles will not be limited to one screencast. If an article has different sets of instructions, there will be a separate screencast for each set of instructions.
• We will support both Flash and the open video format called Ogg/Theora, which the upcoming Firefox 3.5 will support natively (without the need of a plugin). For more information about open video, read In Support of Open Video.

We also have a pool of videos from the Screencast Contest, which we will be adding as well. Stay tuned for more information!

We haven’t forgotten! In the next three months, we’d like to test out
the idea, and see how it goes. The purpose of the newsletter would be to
provide a digest of news from the SUMO world for those who are not
actively involved, but still interested in knowing what we’re working on.

Over the next three months, we’ll publish a newsletter each month, and
depending on the feedback from the community, we’ll know whether or not
to make the newsletter a regular thing. Stay tuned for more information.