website mockups, what is fedora?

[Máirín Duffy]

On Fri, 2009-08-21 at 12:08 -0700, Toshio Kuratomi wrote:
> On 08/21/2009 10:22 AM, Máirín Duffy wrote:
> > 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.

It is on both.

What I was told I should do with the design is make it easy to get
Fedora for people less experienced with open source software, and to
make it possible to get other flavors of Fedora for people who know what
they are doing.

People who know what they are doing are certainly more capable of
clicking on the smaller 'more options' link or looking at the pull box
(which may or may not be below the fold in the final site, the
resolutions in the mockups are not accurate representations) than the
less experienced users are capable of making a design between get fedora
or get more fedora. 
> 
> 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.

Yes, they are looking for a download. Not a novel and a screenful of
combinatorical links.

> 
> > 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.

That's not true. Many times banner ads are more effective than actual
navigation. I also never proposed that the banner rotate, I think you
read that into it. It could rotate by featuring a different spin, e.g.,
like so:

More Flavors of Fedora
like: Fedora Kde!

Check them all out >

---

More Flavors of Fedora
like: Fedora Electronic Lab!

Check them all out >

---

More Flavors of Fedora
like: Fedora Security Lab!

Check them all out >

---

More Flavors of Fedora
like: Fedora XFCE!

Check them all out >
> 
> > 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.

Right that's why you have to read the whole email :) I said the metrics
should be both that total downloads increase and that spin downloads do
not decrease.

~m