876427 - Understand How Much Traffic Comes Direct from Browser

Status: NEW

(Firefox :: General, defect)

Description

[Gareth Cull [:garethc]]

I'd like to be able to understand how much direct traffic is directly attributed to the browser. 

Implementation: 
Can we please implement and append the following GA utm parameters to all links that are generated by the browser and drive traffic to mozilla.org:

?utm_medium=inproduct&utm_source=browser

Prerequisite:
We need to identify all inbound links generated from the browser.

Comment 1

[Chris More [:cmore]]

Gareth: Bug 846944 is currently being worked on to update the www.mozilla.org links in the Firefox desktop product. We're going to discuss here about those query parameters. If we didn't use UTM tags, what about something like "?product=fxdesktop" ?

Comment 2

[Raymond Lee [:raymondlee]]

Lets see what gavin suggests.

Comment 3

[:Gavin Sharp [email: [e-mail]]]

"All links generated by the browser" is a long list, and is not currently tracked in any one central place. So we can do this, but it's going to require a lot of grunt work (both to identify and then change all the relevant links).

(I would love to have a "centralized" repository of in-product links, which should make it easier for both your team and mine to manage these. But that's a bigger project - we should look into that separately.)

Comment 4

[:Gavin Sharp [email: [e-mail]]]

It would perhaps be helpful if you had a list of links that you're most interested in tracking, too. The way to proceed would be to file a tracking bug in Firefox::General, CC me (or we can just morph this bug).

Comment 5

[Chris More [:cmore]]

(In reply to :Gavin Sharp (use [e-mail] for email) from comment #4)
> It would perhaps be helpful if you had a list of links that you're most
> interested in tracking, too. The way to proceed would be to file a tracking
> bug in Firefox::General, CC me (or we can just morph this bug).

It is just the four www.mozilla.org URLs in here:

http://dxr.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/source/browser/branding/official/pref/firefox-branding.js

For example, a URL would change from:

https://www.mozilla.org/%LOCALE%/firefox/%VERSION%/whatsnew/?oldversion=%OLD_VERSION%

to:

https://www.mozilla.org/%LOCALE%/firefox/%VERSION%/whatsnew/?oldversion=%OLD_VERSION%&utm_medium=inproduct&utm_source=fxdesktop

Comment 6

[:Gavin Sharp [email: [e-mail]]]

We can certainly just change those URLs. Can you provide all of the new values for the URLs you care about?

Comment 7

[Chris More [:cmore]]

Gareth: can you provide updated versions of these URLs with UTM tags? I gave an example in comment 5. Also, I am thinking that we should change the www.mozilla.org/firefox/ to www.mozilla.org/firefox/new/ because that redirect is going to be removed when the family page launches. 

pref("startup.homepage_override_url","https://www.mozilla.org/%LOCALE%/firefox/%VERSION%/whatsnew/?oldversion=%OLD_VERSION%");

pref("startup.homepage_welcome_url","https://www.mozilla.org/%LOCALE%/firefox/%VERSION%/firstrun/");

pref("app.update.url.manual", "https://www.mozilla.org/firefox/");

pref("app.update.url.details", "https://www.mozilla.org/%LOCALE%/firefox/notes");

Comment 8

[Gareth Cull [:garethc]]

Here are the updated urls you mentioned above with UTM Tags appended:

https://www.mozilla.org/%LOCALE%/firefox/%VERSION%/whatsnew/?oldversion=%OLD_VERSION%&utm_medium=inproduct&utm_source=fxdesktop

https://www.mozilla.org/%LOCALE%/firefox/%VERSION%/firstrun/?utm_medium=inproduct&utm_source=fxdesktop

https://www.mozilla.org/firefox/new/?utm_medium=inproduct&utm_source=fxdesktop

https://www.mozilla.org/%LOCALE%/firefox/notes?utm_medium=inproduct&utm_source=fxdesktop

Also, /plugincheck gets a lot of direct traffic as well, which i believe is generated from the browser:

https://www.mozilla.org/%LOCALE%/plugincheck/?utm_medium=inproduct&utm_source=fxdesktop

Comment 9

[Chris More [:cmore]]

Gavin:

Here are the new values in http://dxr.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/source/browser/branding/official/pref/firefox-branding.js:

pref("startup.homepage_override_url","https://www.mozilla.org/%LOCALE%/firefox/%VERSION%/whatsnew/?oldversion=%OLD_VERSION%&utm_medium=inproduct&utm_source=fxdesktop");

pref("startup.homepage_welcome_url","https://www.mozilla.org/%LOCALE%/firefox/%VERSION%/firstrun/?utm_medium=inproduct&utm_source=fxdesktop");

pref("app.update.url.manual", "https://www.mozilla.org/firefox/new/?utm_medium=inproduct&utm_source=fxdesktop");

pref("app.update.url.details", "https://www.mozilla.org/%LOCALE%/firefox/notes?utm_medium=inproduct&utm_source=fxdesktop");

Then in this file: http://dxr.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/source/browser/app/profile/firefox.js

updated plugincheck URL:

pref("plugins.update.url", "https://www.mozilla.org/%LOCALE%/plugincheck/?utm_medium=inproduct&utm_source=fxdesktop");

Note: the app.update.url.manual URL also includes a /new after the URL because /firefox is currently a redirect to either /firefox/fx/ and /firefox/new/ and in the next few months that redirect is going to be replaced with a family website talking about all-things firefox. /firefox/new/ is the main download funnel.

Comment 10

[Gareth Cull [:garethc]]

I believe /update is also another major page where we get a ton of direct traffic.

https://www.mozilla.org/%LOCALE%/firefox/update/?utm_medium=inproduct&utm_source=fxdesktop

Is this only a /en-US/ page Chris?

Comment 11

[Chris More [:cmore]]

(In reply to Gareth Cull [:garethc] from comment #10)
> I believe /update is also another major page where we get a ton of direct
> traffic.
> 
> https://www.mozilla.org/%LOCALE%/firefox/update/
> ?utm_medium=inproduct&utm_source=fxdesktop
> 
> Is this only a /en-US/ page Chris?

That's not coming from the product. That's coming from the whatsnew templates as we discovered last month. So there is nothing Gavin can do about that. We need to tag the whatnew pages to be able to do that. I think it is whatsnews... could be firstrun.