1165532 - Change root firefox.com and getfirefox.com vanity URL redirects

Status: RESOLVED INCOMPLETE

(Infrastructure & Operations Graveyard :: WebOps: Other, task)

Description

[Chris More [:cmore]]

Currently, firefox.com and getfirefox.com redirect to www.mozilla.org/firefox. The www.mozilla.org/firefox directory then redirects to www.mozilla.org/firefox/new/.

We want to change firefox.com and getfirefox.com to redirect to www.mozilla.org/firefox/products/ instead of /firefox/ since the new /firefox/products/ page is the portal page for the Firefox family and we are more than just a desktop browser.

These two vanity URLs represent 6.4% of the visitors and 5.4% of our downloads from www.mozilla.org/firefox/new/ and thus that traffic would be shifted to www.mozilla.org/firefox/products/.

While there will be potential for a drop in downloads, we may see an increase in the number of people who use our other browsers names Firefox on Android and Firefox on iOS (when it launches).

There are a number of other firefox.com/foo redirects in place and the change to the root redirects should not change all of the other one-off redirects. For example http://firefox.com/os should continue to redirect to https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/os/.

Also note that the change to the root vanity URL redirects should also keep the same UTM parameters as defined in bug 896570.

Let's ensure that Jen Bertsch, Holly Habstritt, and Gareth Cull are all on board with this change before we have the webops team make the change to the vanity domain.

Comment 1

[Chris More [:cmore]]

:jbertsch :habber :garethc: ^^

Comment 2

[Shyam Mani [:fox2mike]]

CC'ing the Engagement Engg folks too, since some of these *might* be on their side (and if not, for their information).

Comment 3

[Paul [:pmac] McLanahan]

Thanks Shyam. Don't think we control those redirects, but I appreciate the heads-up. Seems good to me.

Comment 4

[Holly Habstritt Gaal [:Habber]]

Thanks for summing this up, Cmore. This is inline with the plan we discussed with you when launching the Firefox Family project. It is also worth noting that on /firefox/products/ we offer a conditional notification for non-Fx and not up-to-date users that encourages them to get the latest version of Firefox. This should help to not negatively impact our download rates, while balancing it with the benefits we'll notice from cross-product adoption. 

Could you remind me why we would not use /firefox/ instead of /firefox/products/ for the Firefox landing page content? This would not require us to change the redirects (www.firefox.com and www.getfirefox.com), but instead change the URL for the Firefox landing page.

Comment 5

[Gareth Cull [:garethc]]

I'm fine with the change. Will just need to annotate GA and monitor downloads to see the impact. Another option could be running a quick A/B experiment to test the impact on downloads prior to it going live? When is this change expected to go live?

Comment 6

[Chris More [:cmore]]

(In reply to Gareth Cull [:garethc] from comment #5)
> I'm fine with the change. Will just need to annotate GA and monitor
> downloads to see the impact. Another option could be running a quick A/B
> experiment to test the impact on downloads prior to it going live? When is
> this change expected to go live?

That's true. We could redirect these domains from /firefox/new/ to /firefox/products/ via optimizely test given that there are specific query parameters we can match on. Let's do this test after the spring campaign to see the impact. The results should be similar to the previous optimizely redirect test, but the second redirect test will 100% confirm the impact of these specific domains.

Comment 7

[Chris More [:cmore]]

Going to needinfo myself as a ping to myself in the next few weeks.

Comment 8

[Jennifer Bertsch [:jbertsch]]

(In reply to Holly Habstritt Gaal [:Habber] from comment #4)
> Thanks for summing this up, Cmore. This is inline with the plan we discussed
> with you when launching the Firefox Family project. It is also worth noting
> that on /firefox/products/ we offer a conditional notification for non-Fx
> and not up-to-date users that encourages them to get the latest version of
> Firefox. This should help to not negatively impact our download rates, while
> balancing it with the benefits we'll notice from cross-product adoption. 
> 
> Could you remind me why we would not use /firefox/ instead of
> /firefox/products/ for the Firefox landing page content? This would not
> require us to change the redirects (www.firefox.com and www.getfirefox.com),
> but instead change the URL for the Firefox landing page.

Hi Holly-

We originally made this decision to protect the SEO value of /firefox/new and to monitor conversion rates on the Family page before transferring that redirect traffic from /new to the Family page.

-Jen

Comment 9

[Jennifer Bertsch [:jbertsch]]

(In reply to Chris More [:cmore] from comment #6)
> (In reply to Gareth Cull [:garethc] from comment #5)
> > I'm fine with the change. Will just need to annotate GA and monitor
> > downloads to see the impact. Another option could be running a quick A/B
> > experiment to test the impact on downloads prior to it going live? When is
> > this change expected to go live?
> 
> That's true. We could redirect these domains from /firefox/new/ to
> /firefox/products/ via optimizely test given that there are specific query
> parameters we can match on. Let's do this test after the spring campaign to
> see the impact. The results should be similar to the previous optimizely
> redirect test, but the second redirect test will 100% confirm the impact of
> these specific domains.

Hi Chris-

Can we run this test in July?

thx,
Jen

Comment 10

[Chris More [:cmore]]

Yes, let's do it when I get back from PTO.

Comment 11

[Shyam Mani [:fox2mike]]

Time out. Please re-open when you're all ready to go with this.