1024581 - testing new sync web-product sign up flows

Status: RESOLVED FIXED

(www.mozilla.org :: Pages & Content, defect)

Description

[Jennifer Bertsch [:jbertsch]]

Testing the new Sync sign up flow from the web page to the product

Comment 1

[Alex Gibson [:agibson]]

Jen, which page(s) specifically would you want this new API used on?

I'm assuming firefox/sync initially at least - would you like a CTA somewhere specifically on the page for this?

Comment 2

[Jennifer Bertsch [:jbertsch]]

Hi Alex-

Yes let's test it on /firefox/sync and then I could also see us adding it to /firefox/desktop/tips/#sync later if it is working well.

Let's just go ahead and add the "Get Started with Sync" button from firstrun anywhere on /firefox/sync for testing and then we can get the right text changes/UI from Holly and Matej - I'll set up a quick meeting.

Thx,
Jen

Comment 3

[Alex Gibson [:agibson]]

This is now up on demo1 for testing: https://www-demo1.allizom.org/en-US/firefox/sync/

note: to see the blue "Get Started with Sync" button you will need to add demo1 to your domain whitelist in about:config.

browser.uitour.whitelist.add.testing = www-demo1.allizom.org

Then restart your browser.

The blue button shows up only for users who are not already using sync. The button is located at the top of the right-most column, but we can place this anywhere once we discuss how the messaging should work.

This API is supported in Firefox 31 and up.

Comment 4

[Alex Gibson [:agibson]]

Attachment: sync-sign-up-button.png

Screenshot of Sync signup button

Comment 5

[Matej Novak [:matej]]

I have a few comments, but not about the button (punctuation, tracking, things like that). Should I save those for now?

Comment 6

[Jennifer Bertsch [:jbertsch]]

Matej - I'll open a separate copy bug to get the copy updated for this page with the new user flow.

Comment 7

[Holly Habstritt Gaal [:Habber]]

Thanks, Alex. For users that are already signed into Sync, if they land on this page they may still have a question about where to access their accounts and Sync management (or more generally, where the Sync feature is accessed in the browser). What do you think about exposing this to users that are signed into Sync, but alter the CTA copy?

Instead of "Get Started with Sync" for this user, something like "Manage your Sync Options".

Comment 8

[Alex Gibson [:agibson]]

(In reply to Holly Habstritt Gaal [:Habber] from comment #7)
> Thanks, Alex. For users that are already signed into Sync, if they land on
> this page they may still have a question about where to access their
> accounts and Sync management (or more generally, where the Sync feature is
> accessed in the browser). What do you think about exposing this to users
> that are signed into Sync, but alter the CTA copy?
> 
> Instead of "Get Started with Sync" for this user, something like "Manage
> your Sync Options".

Sure, we can provide any kind of messaging / conditions we decide. I'll see to updating this copy and we can try it out.

Thanks

Comment 9

[Alex Gibson [:agibson]]

Holly, for users who are signed in, would we want the link to go directly to: https://accounts.firefox.com/signin as opposed to about:accounts?

Comment 10

[Alex Gibson [:agibson]]

Hmm.. I see there is also https://accounts.firefox.com/signup 

Doesn't this negate the need to link to about:accounts?

Comment 11

[Holly Habstritt Gaal [:Habber]]

(In reply to Alex Gibson [:agibson] from comment #10)
> Hmm.. I see there is also https://accounts.firefox.com/signup 
> 
> Doesn't this negate the need to link to about:accounts?

The https://accounts.firefox.com/signin URL only addresses "Accounts" specifically. It does not mention Sync at all. Pointing to the item in the hamburger menu allows us to open the Sync specific sign-in flow for users that are not signed in. For users who *are* signed in, they will have a reminder of where Sync access exists in the browser, but also have access to the Sync settings from here. See screenshot of what settings window looks like (or click on your name in the hamburger menu when signed in): http://cl.ly/image/002D1s3W2t2j

Once we are able to directly open "about:accounts" via a link in the web without opening the hamburger menu and asking the user to click on the sync item there, we can consider doing so.

Comment 12

[Alex Gibson [:agibson]]

Please excuse me if I'm misunderstanding something, but about:accounts?action=signin and https://accounts.firefox.com/signin look like identical web pages to me?

This bug is not about pointing to an item in the hamburger menu, we've been able to do this from any web page on www.mozilla.org since Firefox 29? What this new API is addressing is linking directly to about:accounts?action=signin from a web page.

Comment 13

[Alex Gibson [:agibson]]

Ah, there is a slight difference between about:accounts?action=signup and https://accounts.firefox.com/signup (a small checkbox that says "Choose what to sync").

about:accounts?action=signin and https://accounts.firefox.com/signin do seem identical though.

Comment 14

[Alex Gibson [:agibson]]

To try and make things a bit clearer (and please test this via the web page CTA on demo1 linked in Comment 3), this new API will only link specifically to 'about:accounts?action=signup'. The '?action=signup' part is hard-coded, we have no control over it.

Comment 15

[Holly Habstritt Gaal [:Habber]]

(In reply to Alex Gibson [:agibson] from comment #14)
> To try and make things a bit clearer (and please test this via the web page
> CTA on demo1 linked in Comment 3), this new API will only link specifically
> to 'about:accounts?action=signup'. The '?action=signup' part is hard-coded,
> we have no control over it.

Hi Alex, 
I tested this in nightly and it is working. The problem with both of the links shown above (about:accounts?action=signin and https://accounts.firefox.com/signin) is that Sync is not mentioned in either. We should be sending the user to the Sync specific state of about:accounts. This is a step before Accounts sign-in to introduce Sync. It looks like this http://cl.ly/image/0R35322B3X0Q 

For signed-in users, it looks like this http://cl.ly/image/0U0W3z2p2s3e ("Manage" opens the browser settings)

?action=signin is specific to Accounts sign in. There must be a string specific to opening up that first step in the flow with Sync messaging.

Comment 16

[Alex Gibson [:agibson]]

Thanks Holly,

So this is making sense now :)

The problem is that Bug 998934 “Whitelist Sync marketing page to allow ability to link directly to about:accounts?action=signup” does exactly what it says on the tin.

What you want is just to link to about:accounts (with no action parameter). We need a change in the Firefox API again to do this. It can't be done via the web page unfortunately.

Comment 17

[Holly Habstritt Gaal [:Habber]]

(In reply to Alex Gibson [:agibson] from comment #16)
> Thanks Holly,
> 
> So this is making sense now :)
> 
> The problem is that Bug 998934 “Whitelist Sync marketing page to allow
> ability to link directly to about:accounts?action=signup” does exactly what
> it says on the tin.
> 
> What you want is just to link to about:accounts (with no action parameter).
> We need a change in the Firefox API again to do this. It can't be done via
> the web page unfortunately.

Hi Alex, 
The title of Bug 998934 was altered to include the parameter after a conversation with the Sync and engineering teams. In my opening bug description and in Gavin's comment (https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=998934#c4) it is noted that we need to send the user to the Sync flow at about:accounts. Since our need here is specific to users inquiring about Sync, I didn't realize "about:accounts?action=signup" would not send the user there. 

Gavin, 
"about:accounts?action=signup" doesn't send the user to the Sync specific flow, but to the general accounts flow instead. What would need to happen in order to send the user to the Sync flow? (See also Bug 998934).

We should be sending the user to the Sync specific state of about:accounts. This is a step before Accounts sign-in to introduce Sync. It looks like this http://cl.ly/image/0R35322B3X0Q 

For signed-in users, it looks like this http://cl.ly/image/0U0W3z2p2s3e ("Manage" opens the browser settings)

Comment 18

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

(In reply to Holly Habstritt Gaal [:Habber] from comment #17)
> Gavin, 
> "about:accounts?action=signup" doesn't send the user to the Sync specific
> flow, but to the general accounts flow instead. What would need to happen in
> order to send the user to the Sync flow? (See also Bug 998934).
> 
> We should be sending the user to the Sync specific state of about:accounts.
> This is a step before Accounts sign-in to introduce Sync. It looks like this
> http://cl.ly/image/0R35322B3X0Q 

That's not what we agreed on when we met - IIRC because that results in needing to click "get started" after you've already clicked a similar button on mozilla.org, and making the user click twice when they've already indicated intent to set up an account was one too many hoops.

If the issue now is that there isn't enough Sync branding on about:accounts?action=signup (there is the "Choose what to Sync" checkbox, but that's easy to miss), then I think that's a problem we should address separately by changing that page.

Comment 19

[Chris Karlof [:ckarlof]]

I can help clarify some of these issues.

FxA login to Sync is done in about:accounts. about:accounts is a wrapper for https://accounts.firefox.com and sends some additional parameters to signal to the page that we are logging into Sync. 

If you load about:accounts with no parameters, it first shows a "product screen" with a "Get Started" button, which takes you to the actual signup screen.

If you load about:accounts?action=<signup|signin> it skips the product screen and takes you directly to the account signup or signin page, resp. 

> "about:accounts?action=signup" doesn't send the user to the Sync specific
> flow, but to the general accounts flow instead. What would need to happen in
> order to send the user to the Sync flow? (See also Bug 998934).

This isn't actually a "general" acccount flow - it logs you into Sync, but I agree it doesn't make that clear. I suppose the rationale was that there was enough context up until this point that it was needed. As Gavin mentions, we can fix that, though: https://github.com/mozilla/fxa-content-server/issues/1339

Comment 20

[Holly Habstritt Gaal [:Habber]]

Thanks for the clarification, Chris. So this isn't the general account flow, it just appears this way because it has no sync branding or set up for what service it is that you are signing up for. 

You are both correct that sending the user to the first step in the account sign-up flow with no Sync branding or messaging (besides the small check box) does not offer enough context for what the user is signing up for in that step. The step that we send the user to should be clear that we recognize what they intend to sign up for - Sync.

It sounds like (as Gavin mentioned) that we need to update the design of the page. I didn't suggest this before since I thought the page served as the start of the accounts flow for multiple things (Loop, Sync, etc) and not just Sync.

I'll cc Ryan Feeley & John Gruen and address the page design with them. Thanks!

Comment 21

[Holly Habstritt Gaal [:Habber]]

The conversation with Ryan and John is happening in https://github.com/mozilla/fxa-content-server/issues/1339 so I won't need-info them here.

Comment 22

[Holly Habstritt Gaal [:Habber]]

Strings are now scheduled for train 18. That means that in around 3 weeks we'll be ready to send users to the Sync Sign-up flow from our Sync marketing page. 

I'll check in with John Gruen and Ryan Feeley in a few weeks to confirm that the changes are live and then we can push our changes to /sync on the Web Prod side.

Comment 23

[Alex Gibson [:agibson]]

Shall we close this bug seeing as it was just related to testing the API?

When the new strings land to might be good to open a new bug to track implementation, as we still need to iron out conditional messaging and user flows on our side.

Comment 24

[Alex Gibson [:agibson]]

Closing this for now and we will re-open an implementation bug in the coming weeks

Comment 25

[Holly Habstritt Gaal [:Habber]]

(In reply to Alex Gibson [:agibson] from comment #24)
> Closing this for now and we will re-open an implementation bug in the coming
> weeks

When I sign into Sync from the menu panel and also go directly to about:accounts?action=signup, it appears that the change has gone live. Keep this in mind for the upcoming Sync product page redesign.

Comment 26

[Alex Gibson [:agibson]]

(In reply to Holly Habstritt Gaal [:Habber] from comment #25)
> When I sign into Sync from the menu panel and also go directly to
> about:accounts?action=signup, it appears that the change has gone live. Keep
> this in mind for the upcoming Sync product page redesign.

Yes I see the following copy now:

"Create a Firefox Account" 
"Continue to Firefox Sync"

So looks like we are good to go at the end of the flow :)