Closed Bug 961262 Opened 10 years ago Closed 7 years ago

The Download Firefox Button attracts users who would not benefit from it

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(support.mozilla.org :: Knowledge Base Software, task)

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RESOLVED WORKSFORME

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(Reporter: ibai, Unassigned)

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This is a follow up from this bug:

https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=941376

At the moment, the Firefox Download button in SUMO attracts double the amount of people who are up to date (and the button is not helpful for them) than those we are not up to date. We did create a doorhanger to explain that Firefox Reset is the right thing for them....but it's not working as expected.

We need to find a solution to explain that Downloading will not fix anything for them.
I am trying to think why users would do this. My ideas:

What about if the user is trying to do a clean reinstall of Firefox ?

Maybe the person has decided a clean reinstall is required.
Or has some problem Reset will not fix. 

Did we recently discover in a small trial that a large proportion of people obtained Firefox from unofficial sites. I wonder would any of them have highly modified  but up-to-date firefox + bundled software and so were looking for an official version hoping it would resolve issues. 

I think from reading forum question some users may try to reinstall unnecessarily and sometimes repeatedly. I agree the link to the firefox reset KB article is a good move. I wonder if it would help if the doorhanger or the KB article also linked to the support forum, just in case some users are running into another dead end because the reset does not help them. 

Maybe they have already tried reset and it did not work.

There are things reset will not fix.
We do not say that in the  kb article,
or the door hanger. 
We do not point users anywhere else after that. 
So unresolved problems remaining  could be for instance: plugins including Flash player and globally installed software; hardware acceleration issues, some site issues; malware etc resulting in a user.js or shortcut modification, bookmarks issues & some crashes.
I have tested this with some non SUMO people and they are confused by the copy, they don't really understood what the doorhanger means.

A solution could be to play with colours, font weights and copy. I'm thinking that we should highlight the route to Reset and reduce the weight of "continue to download".

Bram?
Flags: needinfo?(bram)
I’ve mocked up two possible solutions to this problem.

The idea here is twofold:

1. Make Firefox Reset a much more enticing option by emphasizing its quickness, ease and security. By extension, we will also need to change the prevailing mental model in the technical world that consists of “reinstalling = fresh = problem-free”, by saying that downloading will not solve problems but resetting is the way to do it. Option #1 says so in the heading.

2. Emphasize Firefox Reset not only with colors, font weights and copy, but also images. And make Reset a feature that can be tried right away, rather than “go somewhere to learn more about how to do it. Option #2 makes the help bubble an actionable mini KB article.

What do you think?
Flags: needinfo?(bram)
Those are improvements.That helps users that are expecting an ordinary reinstall to resolve the issue, when in fact a reset would be better.

It does not help those 
 who do not benefit from a reset, 
  do not benefit from a plain reinstall
   but would benefit from a clean reinstall. 
There are still a subset of users that would benefit from the download if they knew what to do with it, but are now in a dead end with no further advice.

I suppose there are limits of what can be done from for instance a door hanger. KB articles could be re-written but do we have any evidence of how many do fall into the subset of users needing a clean reinstall rather than just a reset.
I like the second option but it's fairly en-US centric. Localizing and maintaining it could be undesired additional work.

We can try 1, but for some reason my eyes keep going to the second link. 

Something in between maybe?
Since our reinstall process doesn’t resolve the same problems that other reinstall processes do, could you provide a full set of situations where reset would be appropriate, versus those where where “plain” reinstall and “clean” reinstall would fix?

My plan is for the design to be able to say, “We know you click on Download because you have a problem. Let’s try identifying your problem and see if Download is the right solution for it.
(In reply to Ibai Garcia [:ibai] from comment #7)
> I like the second option but it's fairly en-US centric. Localizing and
> maintaining it could be undesired additional work.
> 
> We can try 1, but for some reason my eyes keep going to the second link. 
> 
> Something in between maybe?

What if we adopt the second option but omit the second image because it will create l10n headache?

So the content of the help bubble would say:

Type “about:support” in your address bar
[address bar image] <-- this stays the same across all locales
Click the “Reset Firefox” button in the upper-right corner of the page


You’re right about the first option. The link to download is much more clickable. I also happen to think that it’s wordy, but not terribly informative. Another alternative to try here is for the link to Reset and Download to appear horizontally, side-by-side, rather than on top of each other.

What do you think?
(In reply to Bram Pitoyo [:bram] from comment #9)
> (In reply to Ibai Garcia [:ibai] from comment #7)
> 
> What if we adopt the second option but omit the second image because it will
> create l10n headache?
> 
> So the content of the help bubble would say:
> 
> Type “about:support” in your address bar
> [address bar image] <-- this stays the same across all locales
> Click the “Reset Firefox” button in the upper-right corner of the page
> 
> 
> What do you think?

This sounds like a better option to me. 

If we want to explore the solution that you are proposing in comment #8 perhaps the solution is to drive these users to an article with more context? Or even an overlay if we want to make it more contextual, almost like an alert:

"You are trying to download Firefox but your Firefox is already up to date so it will not help much.

In your case you should do XYZ.

If problems persist, try to do ABC.

If there's any other reason that you want to download Firefox for, please click here (small link)".

I wish we could capture some of the people that are going through this process in the real context to understand why they are doing it and how can we help them better.
Though my solution over on comment 8 promises clear solution for specific issues (ie. when this happens, that is the cure), I am also aware of the fact that Firefox is a complex piece of software that’s designed to be run on such a wide variety of system.

So maybe, having a very pinpointed answer (when you see x -> do y) is less helpful than actually telling people to reset, and telling them that it’s not a destructive process.

(Plus, remember of all the text strings that will need to be localized).

I like the proposed solution on comment 9 better, coupled with the design on attachment 8405178 [details]. It’s simpler, more direct, and doesn’t involve the localization of image.

Should we try this solution and see how it performs, then revisit if it fails to do the job?


Let’s talk a bit about user motivation research. Fortunately, doing this is easy. We can select a subset of SUMO user (let’s say, 1% of visitors) and display a questionnaire when they click the download link. We can ask “Why are you trying to download Firefox? [a] My Firefox is slow/crashing/full of errors, [b] My Firefox is old and out of date, [c] Others” – And after they answer, we can let them proceed to download.
(In reply to Bram Pitoyo [:bram] from comment #11)

> 
> Let’s talk a bit about user motivation research. Fortunately, doing this is
> easy. We can select a subset of SUMO user (let’s say, 1% of visitors) and
> display a questionnaire when they click the download link. We can ask “Why
> are you trying to download Firefox? [a] My Firefox is slow/crashing/full of
> errors, [b] My Firefox is old and out of date, [c] Others” – And after they
> answer, we can let them proceed to download.
< [d] If you still have problems after following this advice please use [crafted ask a support question link] to ask for further help. You may wish to copy this special link now.

If you give them a link to the forum we then get full information and hopefully the person gets a solution. Craft the link to open a question with a specific tile such as 
"A new download failed to solve my problem (bug961262)" 
The questions can easily be found on the forum and the results used in your user motivation research.

It may be of interest to see if a lot of the issues are ones that will require a clean reinstall and not a reset to solve them. Or if they have been misinformed or misunderstood something we have a chance to discover what advice they followed.
(In reply to Bram Pitoyo [:bram] from comment #11)
> Let’s talk a bit about user motivation research. Fortunately, doing this is
> easy. We can select a subset of SUMO user (let’s say, 1% of visitors) and
> display a questionnaire when they click the download link. We can ask “Why
> are you trying to download Firefox? [a] My Firefox is slow/crashing/full of
> errors, [b] My Firefox is old and out of date, [c] Others” – And after they
> answer, we can let them proceed to download.


Bram, we did this research last year. Things might have changed since then, but the results were as follows:

Question: Why did you click on the "Download" button?

Answers: 
I want to update Firefox:                           53%
I want to install Firefox again to fix a problem:   23%
I don't have Firefox on my computer:                16%
I want to see where the button would take me:        2%
other:                                               6%


Ibai, any decision on how to move forward? We should choose now, to have this implemented in the next sprint.
Flags: needinfo?(ibai)
Given that Firefox is already self-updating, it’s interesting to note how so many users indicated wanting to click the button because they want to update.

So what’s going on here?

Conventional wisdom says that users don’t usually care about keeping a software up to date. In fact, they care about keeping their experience as unchanged as possible. This means no new UI, no new login/password combination, and having all the websites that they’re used to work just like they have before.

In other words, the convenience and comfort of a familiar UX holds a much bigger appeal, even when contested against something important like improved security.

Furthermore, Firefox has been set to automatically download new versions for a while now.

So this only deepens the mystery: why the need to click the “Download” button? I can hypothesize only one possibility:

A website tells user that his version of Firefox isn’t compatible with it, or a website refuses to work properly. The user may or may not know that the Firefox installed the newest version.

In this situation, the solution is most definitely not to update.

So maybe, after the user click the “Download” button, we should say “Your Firefox is already the newest version. Try Firefox Reset to resolve your problem. If you have tried this already, [click here to search Mozilla Support for your problem], or [click here to ask a question to our support forum]”.

I know that the download page is not under SUMO’s purview, but it’s something we can try to do, to make it more targeted.

Another alternative to this hypothesis is that people who click on the “Download” button really do want to update, and they really do know that their Firefox (for whatever reason) is out of date and fails to update automatically. Maybe their friends are telling them to download a newer version. Maybe they’re trying to get a new copy to put on a USB stick and install elsewhere. The reasons here are numerous.

What do you think?
Bram,

I like this idea of being more aggressive. Honestly I don't see what good does to download a new version of the browser if the one in the computer is already running the up to date version.

Some cases where it does make sense to download a new installer:
- You are downloading it to add it to a external storage so you can use that installer in another machine.
- You are trying to download a version for another OS that you have running in a virtual machine.

Both seem edge cases to me (the first one may not be an edge case in some developing markets) when talking about the support site. Maybe we can be extra aggressive but offer a fall-back to the Mozilla.org site somehow? Maybe not from the door-hanger but from a more visible article?
Flags: needinfo?(ibai)
(In reply to Bram Pitoyo [:bram] from comment #14)
> 
> So this only deepens the mystery: why the need to click the “Download”
> button? I can hypothesize only one possibility:
> 
> A website tells user that his version of Firefox isn’t compatible with it,
> or a website refuses to work properly. The user may or may not know that the
> Firefox installed the newest version.

* Downloading a new version of a piece of software is still a very common update process. 
* For Firefox, downloading a new copy is the one "for sure" way to update to the latest version. 
* On mozilla properties (mozilla.org and sumo) we let you know when your Firefox is out of date (though in those cases we link you to https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/update-firefox-latest-version
* Before we implemented those conditional messages on mozilla properties we heavily promoted downloading as a way to update - for example, Fx 3 Download day https://blog.mozilla.org/blog/2008/07/02/were-official/ (followed up by download campaigns for Fx 4 and now Fx 29).

So it's not surprising to me that many people want to download Firefox to update it.


> So maybe, after the user click the “Download” button, we should say “Your
> Firefox is already the newest version. Try Firefox Reset to resolve your
> problem. If you have tried this already, [click here to search Mozilla
> Support for your problem], or [click here to ask a question to our support
> forum]”.

Maybe better than the mockups of instructions in this dialog would be to extend the API created for the new user/update tour to include a reset button that can be clicked directly from that dialog (and articles about resetting).
Hi Michael,

I would be so happy if the “Reset” button could directly open the Firefox Reset dialog! I think that it will solve many of the core issues that caused this problem in the first place.

In addition to opening a new bug to extend that API, maybe what we can do now is to be a little aggressive, just like what Ibai had said.

What I propose is:
* In addition to the download button, let’s have another button that says “Reset Firefox” right alongside. This button should have a title that makes it very attractive to people who has problems. For example, the title I proposed is “Reset Firefox: Fix problems and restore performance”.
* The download button will continue to function as intended, for people who need it, but perhaps the title should be made less strong. On the current mozilla.org homepage, we use the button title “Free Download” rather than “Download Firefox”, so let’s try that.
I think this is already fixed. I only see the Reset button (there's no download button) if I use Firefox. There is a download buton if you use other browsers.
we have other download button bugs, i think this is fixed, setting to wfm
Status: NEW → RESOLVED
Closed: 7 years ago
Resolution: --- → WORKSFORME
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