website mockups, what is fedora?

[Máirín Duffy]

On Fri, 2009-08-21 at 12:03 -0500, Mike McGrath wrote:
> On Fri, 21 Aug 2009, Toshio Kuratomi wrote:
> 
> > On 08/21/2009 07:52 AM, Mike McGrath wrote:
> >
> > > Now the 'vision' stuff.  We're kind of hoping the spins page (which will
> > > include KDE, the gnome spin and others) will become a strong way for the
> > > individual sigs to give a better indication on what the spin is, why one
> > > should download it, include pictures, videos, whatever to better market
> > > it.
> > >
> > I try not to be an active desktop-proponent but I do like to support
> > fairness.  To make the spin page viable getting to it has to be a lot
> > easier.  When confronted with this:
> >
> >
> > +=================================+
> > |                                 |
> > |      DOWNLOAD FEDORA NOW!       |
> > |                                 |
> > +=================================+
> >
> > (more download options)
> >
> >
> > There's not any incentive to visit the spins page.  If we expect the
> > spins page to be a showcase of talent, then we have to drive people to
> > visit the spins page to see that talent.  Otherwise the talent will
> > spend its time doing more important things.
> >
> 
> I'll defer that to the mo'ster.  But I think the idea is that advanced
> users will somehow be compelled to click on the advanced link (hopefully
> Mo's magic can make this happen)

That snippet above is from the mockup for the front page of
www.fedoraproject.org, a page which today has no download button.

The main download page has an additional much larger section "Other
download options" to the right of the panda:

http://duffy.fedorapeople.org/temp/woot/page2.png

These pages are also not the only exposure I intend the spins pages to
get. For example, for the www.fpo design we have conceptualized a lot
more rotating, static content driven little widgets that could be used
for marketing different aspects of fedora:

http://duffy.fedorapeople.org/temp/woot/page1.png

We could absolutely have a spins-centric content block that serves as a
promo for the spins site and maybe even cycles through highlighting
different popular spins. We could also have a small graphical banner on
the main download page to drive people towards it. Something like, "More
flavors of Fedora"

Don't forget we are also in the process of trying to get Fedora Insight
up and running, which I think is another great opportunity to promote
KDE and other spins and drive more traffic to the spins site.

> > Equally, how do we measure success?  If a higher percentage of people
> > download a non-default spin?

The goal here isn't to drive downloads of non-default spins. The goal
here is to get more people downloading FEDORA, period. I would measure
success, then, as being a greater number of total downloads, not just
for spins because again the goal is to not drive spins downloads up. 

I know our number of downloads increases every release. Does anyone have
the statistics-fu to figure out, based on current trends, how much we
should *expect* it to increase to, and then we could consider this
project a success if we drive downloads to be higher than we were
expecting them to grow to?
> >
> 
> You've peaked my metric curiosities.  I'll come up with a couple of
> metrics to measure and we'll discuss how accurate they'd be at measuring
> success.  Though I'd say right now if the ratio of Gnome : KDE downloads
> is similar I'd say at the very least we've not failed. 

Again, GNOME vs. KDE is a non-issue. We want to drive TOTAL Fedora
downloads up, irregardless of what desktop, arch, dvd vs livemedia, etc
etc etc is involved.

However, we do NOT want to do to this at the expense of other spins. So
we could also track KDE downloads respective to what we were expecting
to make sure we are not driving them down. If they are at least what we
have expected then we have not screwed up. (My guess/hope is that people
who knew to click on the KDE banner on the site as it is now will be
just as capable as clicking the link in the 'Other Downloads' section
that very specifically calls out KDE. But we won't know for sure until
we try it. :) )

So I think our metrics for success should be:

1) Total downloads of Fedora increase to well above the number we were
expecting based on downloads for the previous releases over time.

2) Total downloads of the KDE spin are at least the number we are
expecting based on past download trends over time.

AND as has been pointed out, if we fail on either or both of those
metrics, the design changes. I refuse to fight for a design that doesn't
achieve the goals it was set out to achieve.

Does this make sense?

~m