website mockups, what is fedora?

[Toshio Kuratomi]

On 08/21/2009 10:22 AM, Máirín Duffy wrote:
> 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.
> 
No it's not.  It's from page2.png.  when you view page2.png, above the
fold, there's a Download Fedora button and a small link that only says
"Other Download options".

After that there's a pull box which says a bit more about them.  But
that's below the psychological fold.  It's beyond the main part of the
page.  It's in a pull box  (In fact, it's the last item in the pull box
so it's even below the psychological fold of the pull box.  This is not
a good design for getting people to the information on the spins page.

Side note: In the context of the larger website, it's not a good design
either.  By the time someone clicks on a download link, they're looking
for downloads rather than info.  There needs to be a more information
about spins link on the front page that takes people to the spins page too.


> 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"
> 
The problem with the rotating banner ads is that they serve a different
purpose.  They're an ad, not navigation.  Navigation needs to be
findable.  A randomly rotating banner ad fails to do that.

> 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. 
> 
That is not the goal.  If Fedora downloads double but Fedora KDE
downloads drop to zero, I would argue strenuously that the new design is
a failure.

I don't expect anything that drastic to happen, though -- that's why
there needs to be a better definition of success and failure.

> 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?

Looking at the trends is interesting but it's also dangerous to decide
to base success or failure on them without a lot of thought.  I'd expect
that since RHEL5 is getting older and older and people are getting
antsier about what RHEl6 could look like, we're going to see an increase
in Fedora12 above just the trends from F9 to F10 to F11.  But if we fail
to see that, does that mean the redesign is a failure?  Similarly, if we
don't account for that and we do see a huge increase, was it due to the
age of RHEL5 or the newly designed page?

So whatever metric we are using, we need to decide that beforehand.  And
if we can't decide on metrics that's going to tell us that we're going
to have a very hard time judging success or failure after the release.

>>>
>>
>> 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. :) )
> 
Cool -- taken together, I agree with these two paragraphs :-)

> 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?

Yep.  The tricky part is deciding what the trends are supposed to be and
how seriously we take failures.  So we need a few actual metrics that
implement these to dissect and argue over the percentages and trends.

-Toshio

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