After being slightly distracted with other priorities, we were finally able to launch the new and optimized start page for Firefox Support that we designed and tested in June!
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:
Thanks to everyone who helped with the process of getting this new start page created and implemented!
Ken Saunders
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