Hey there, SUMO Nation!
We are happy to see you reading these words at the beginning of 2018 – and curious to see what it brings… But before we dive deep into the intriguing future, let’s take a look back at 2017. It has been a year full of changes big and small, but we were all in it together and we could not have reached the end of the year as a team without you. There is quite a lot to talk about, so let’s get rolling with the numbers and details!
SUMO 2017 – the major facts
- We had a fair share of “platform adventures”, switching the whole site over to a completely new front- and back-end experience for admins, contributors, and users – and then coming back to our previous (and current) setup – both for good reasons. It has been a rocky road, full of big challenges and unexpected plot twists. Thank you for staying with us through all the good winds and bad turbulence.
- More on the platform side – Giorgos and Ben have been quietly moving things around to ensure a stable future for the site – the works are finishing only now, but the prep work happened all in 2017.
- We proudly and loudly took part in the biggest event of 2017 for everyone at Mozilla – the release of Firefox Quantum! Remember – even if you never contributed a single line of code to Firefox, your contributions and participation in what Mozilla does is crucial to the future of an open web.
- The “big one” aside, we also welcomed Firefox Rocket and Firefox for Fire TV to our family of “all the software for your burning browsing needs” ;-).
- We met in San Francisco and Austin to talk about all things Mozilla and SUMO – and celebrate our diversity and achievements.
- We also met in Berlin to talk about our community plans for 2018.
- We were invited to join the kicking off of the Non-Coding Volunteers project and are really looking forward to more of it in 2018.
- This humble blog took a dip in general activity and traffic (15 new posts vs 68 in 2016 and over 7,200 page views vs 9,200 in 2016). Still, some of the most read posts in its history appeared last year – and were written by you. We’re talking about community event reports, All Hands tales, and stories about bugs – quality over quantity!
SUMO 2017 in numbers – the highlights
Just like the year before, our activity and its results could be analysed from many perspectives, with dozens of data sources. Putting everything together, especially given our platform changes in 2018, is quite impossible – and the numbers have been affected by interruptions in tracking, as expected.
Capturing the potential, reach, and power of SUMO as a source of knowledge and help and as an example of community collaboration is something we definitely want to improve upon in 2018.
No amount of simple digits can tell the complete story of our joint voyage, but let’s try with the ones below.
General site stats
- Number of total page views: 855,406,690 vs 806,225,837 (2016) – over 49 million more!
- Number of users with at least one recorded session (= visit to the site): 296,322,215 vs 259,584,893 (2016) – over 36 million more!
- Number of sessions (= periods of active user engagement on the site): 513,443,121 vs 446,537,566 (2016) – over 66 million more!
- Percentage of people returning to the site: 44.1% vs 45% (2016)
- Average time spent on site per session: 01:26 vs 01:39 (2016)
- Average number of pages visited per session: 1.67 vs 1.81 (2016)
- Percentage of single page visits: 39.7% vs 25% (2016)
- 89.65% of users saw the website on desktop or laptop computers (90.9% in 2016). The remaining 10.35% visited us from a mobile device (9.1% in 2016).
- Percentage of people who visited SUMO using Firefox: 85% vs 84% (2016)
- Percentage of people who visited SUMO using Chrome: 5.8% / Safari: 5.8% / Internet Explorer: 1.6% vs Chrome: 7% / Safari: 4% / Internet Explorer: 3% (2016)
- Number of people who contributed for the first time: 1,174 vs 1,153 (2016)
Language & Knowledge Base stats
- Top visitor 10 languages (by percentage of sessions):
- English (no change)
- German (no change)
- Spanish (from 4th in 2016)
- French (from 3rd)
- Russian (from 6th)
- Japanese (from 5th)
- Portuguese (Brazil) (no change)
- Chinese (simplified) (from 10th)
- Polish (from 8th)
- Italian (from 9th)
- Top 10 visitor countries (by percentage of sessions):
- United States
- Germany
- Japan
- France
- Brazil
- Russia
- India
- United Kingdom
- Poland
- Indonesia
(No change for the top 10 visitor countries from last year)
- Number of all submitted article revisions in 2017 (important note: the numbers include only data from Kitsune – we do not have data from Lithium):
- for English only: 1,588 (over 4 a day on average)
- for the top 20 locales: 12,087 (over 33 a day on average)
- for all locales: 16,707 (over 45 a day on average)
- for English only: 1,588 (over 4 a day on average)
- Here’s an alphabetical list of the most active contributors to the Knowledge Base across all 12 months of 2017. If your username is below, you have gone above and beyond in making Mozilla and SUMO useful to users around the world – we can’t thank you enough for your participation!
albertdecastro
AliceWyman
Anticisco
Artist
avelper
Banban
Bogdancev
buluma_michael
bychek.ru
caitmuenster
cecilebertin
Channy
cloney1301
cynthiapereira
Daniel2099
dibery
dskmori
dwchiang
f1m15
FabioBeneditto
Goofy_BZ
Goudron
graba
haard37
harrierr
Hezorg
irahal
J2m06
JCPlus
jhonymoz
JimSp472
Joergen
Jotunheim
jsavage
kaneren
kazem82
kelimutu
KimLudvigsen
kkemenczy
Klofutar
kusavica
mansil
manxmensch
marcel11
marcelo.ghelman
marsf
maxcoder
merikes
meskobalazs
michro
Mikk
milupo
MozGianluc
Mozinet
naddo
OmTi
ouesten
petercpg
philipp
pierreneter
Pokno_Royal
pollti
rmcguigan
rtanglao
seulgi
slxxx
SonicSusi
soucet
T.Ukegawa
thiagopolicena
Tonnes
TyDraniu
underpass
Unghost
upwinxp
–V–
vesper
wxie2016
zerdo
zilmar
zint
(For more general data please check this document)
Support Forum
- With all the ups and downs in user sentiment and reactions after releasing Quantum you can imagine know how heated the forums got at times – but you managed to keep things civil, friendly, and informative – just look at the percentage of users who found what they were looking for (up by 15%).
- We think a part of the secret sauce that made this happen includes a few bad jokes here and there… but we’ll know for sure only next year, when more data is available for scientific analysis.
- The Support Forums were much more active this year and our numbers are growing. We had 97 core contributors coming back to help last year – and way more this year.
- 55 new contributors that contributed at least 10 times with answers!
- All in all there were 2560 (!!!) active contributors (with at least one answer provided) in 2017.
- Here are the top viewed forum threads for 2017, also considered to be the most “popular” in terms of issues raised by users across the board, in no particular order:
- Where are offline installers for firefox?
- Every website returns “Your connection is not secure”
- My youtube videos won’t load. “an error occurred, please try again later”
- Insecure Connection – “Your connection is not secure”
- Can we change the interface language of Firefox?
- How do I stop the taskbar from showing when I watch a video on full screen?
- The top threads that were searched for in 2017 are:
- The last update, 57.0, broke my browser, it is now impossible to use for more than 10 seconds without it not responding.
- Gah! your tab just crashed
- Unknown Mozilla dev addon “Looking Glass 1.0.3” on browser… or is it just malware?
- How do I post a bug report on Mozilla Firefox?
- I have no images or video on most websites.
- I hate 5.7. How can I roll back to 5.6?
- Can’t load local flash files in firefox
- Flash present or absent
- Why is the new, “improved” Firefox 57 hogging CPU resources (25-75% all the time) much more than the previous version did?
- Percentage of users (from 272 responses recorded through the Exit Survey):
- very satisfied with Firefox: 40.1% (up from 31.6% last year)
- satisfied with Firefox: 32.7% (up from 27.3% last year)
- neutral towards Firefox: 8.6% (down from 13.0% last year)
- dissatisfied with Firefox: 10.1% (down from 11.3% last year)
- very dissatisfied with Firefox: 7.4% (down from 11.1% last year)
- very satisfied with Firefox: 40.1% (up from 31.6% last year)
- Percentage of users who visited SUMO to:
- find a solution to a problem: 51.5% (down from 74,7% last year)
- learn more about Firefox: 25.6% (up from 13.2% last year)
- do something else: 22.9% (up from 12.1% last year)
- find a solution to a problem: 51.5% (down from 74,7% last year)
- Percentage of users who:
- found what they were looking for on SUMO: 55.8% (up from 40.2% last year)
- did not find what they were looking for on SUMO: 21.1% (down from 47.6% last year)
- don’t know what to say about the result of their visit: 23.0% (up from 12.2% last year)
- found what they were looking for on SUMO: 55.8% (up from 40.2% last year)
- The most active Support Forum contributors in 2017 – each and every one of you is a helpful guardian of the open web! Major shout-outs to:
Adelaa
aeons0000
Airmail
alan_r
alex_mayorga
AliceWyman
Ansamb
arejfour
Avengement
Beerbaron23
BelFox
brookej
bygabyga
CarolSaile
cezart44
Chaosrider
christ1
cor-el
databaseben
ddtudoran
dehe25
DRulz
Enigma-2U
Estevaomd
FabioBeneditto
feer56
ffw62
FireFoxFan1
Fizix
fredmcd-hotmail
gnospen
Happy112
herbert-wagner
Hv60T
iampowerslave
jagan605
jam70
James
jayelbe
jbacinti
JeremyRossJunior
John99
johnoo
Jonathan1
jorgk
jscher2000
kbrosnan
Lanselot
LasseL
linuxmodder
MagicFab
MaikelSantos
MajorMike
MarjaE
MattAuSupport
mattcamp
maxcoder
meskobalazs
Mikk
Mkll
moses
Noah_SUMO
oeekker
OmTi
ouesten
pcp04
philipp
phubert28
Pkshadow
poljos-moz
RevertSearch
Richardinengland
rmcguigan
rtanglao
safemanusa
Scribe_uk
Seburo
sfhowes
Slowpoke47
sludge7051-x
smorele
stellawrites
SueWitch
the-edmeister
Toad-Hall
Tolkien
tomatoshadow2
Tonnes
TyDraniu
Tylerdowner
user1121639
vesper
waynec444
wsmwk
Zachary_
Zenos
zilmar
Social Support
- The Social Support kept going strong thanks to 20 core contributors and around 40 casual helpers.
- We are still using Reply as the main tool and have added 4 new languages this year – we now support in Czech, Turkish, French, German, English, Portuguese, Spanish, Dutch, Bengali, and Nepali.
- We are still looking for more help in German, French, Spanish, Italian and Japanese – so there’s a lot of opportunity to have your name listed below ;-)
- Quantum was the highest participation we had in social all year, thank you everyone!
- The Army of Awesome is still being sunsetted… We are just waiting for a few more pieces to fall into place.
- Whew, now it’s finally time to meet the social superheroes! Each and every one of the great folks listed below is out there, making sure that no cry for help goes unanswered. Take a look here and also below:
3DIndian
74274265j
Aashish0506
Abbackar Diomande
adamclouder
Aditya113
Alex Mayorga
AlexOrdun
amitroy2779
Andrei Petcu
andresdeapia
Andrew Truong _feer56_
arunsathiya
ascasoft
asynchronous_javascriptor
awasthi_nayan
beffsstories
Benny Chandra
bilgicib98
canusupportme
Cynthia Pereira
Daniela Albarrán
danilovbarbosa
DGuarch
Dynisha Faust
emAditya_
Emailemail01
emeka_nwaoma
ethicaladitya
Fabio Beneditto
FxHelp
Gebruiker00
GuardianMajor
HarshSh05339652
herbertmoreno18
iamjayakumars
iamsooryanb
IvnRuvalcaba7
jdc20181
Jhonatas Rodrigues
joaoesteves10RS
jon20120
Josh Riley
João Paulo Polles
JPaulLucien
KL_Kunai
KonstantinMetz
Kumaresan C S
L3i1_
MajorMike
Michal Stanke
MikeMozmicky
MukeshPathak
Nayan_Awasthi
Nildëala Dorffer
Noah Y
otherCelo
ouesten
packetguardian
pavangudiwda
PavanKiran27
ptirth421
RafsanHashemi
Robert Sayles
Ronuad
ronuad
rtsayles
ryanolsonx
shaun6342
smorele
smorele
Sr3lliot
st3109ar
Stefan Costen
sumaiya_tasnim9
Swarnava Sengupta
syam
Valentin Angeli
ViniciusLifem11
Wim B
wizofe
Wolter_Miller
Zach Kingston
Zilmar de Souza Junior
SUMO 2017 in your words
We’ve shared our notes and insights from the last year with you… Now it’s time to hear from you! Please use the comment section to share your best and not so good SUMO (or Mozilla) moments from the last calendar year.
We look forward to hearing from you – both now and later in 2018!