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Only 25% of Firefox Downloaders Are 'Active Users'
bheer writes "The Guardian points out a page on the Mozilla wiki noting that 'only 50% of the people downloading Firefox actually try it out, and only a further half of those continue to use it actively.' ZDNet has some commentary on the browser's retention rate. While a 25% retention rate isn't necessarily bad, Mozilla is trying to improve these figures with a 12 point plan that includes more TV and media advertising, a better start page and several installation tweaks."
I use Firefox as my main browser, but I've downloaded it many times to different PC's (which I may use only occasionally). I wonder how this affects their numbers.
Think about what the internet was like in 2002, when Mozilla 1.0 was first released. We encountered IE-only sites daily, Safari didn't exist, and MSIE definitively dominated the web landscape. Anyone complaining to a bank or power company about a Mozilla problem just claimed to be using Netscape -- the Gecko browser people had actually heard of -- and rarely got anywhere. Those of us using Mozilla preferred it for a variety of reasons, and hoped for wider adoption so that our preferred browser would receive acceptable support from webmasters.
Today, Firefox is a decidedly mainstream browser, listed on most "supported browser" lists, and Firefox-only sites are about as common now as the remaining IE-only sites. Do we need more adoption? If Firefox is serving its existing users well, is it worth the cost of an advertising blitz to capture a few more?
Of course this is common. These people not using FF after downloading are the same people that have AOL icons on their desktop they never use. Have old trial version software all over their comp, pre-installed or not. As nerds and geeks, we usually uninstall stuff we do not need, but you are telling you that you have installed and used everything you have downloaded? I know I run a pretty tight ship when it comes to my machines, but I know I have downloaded things and not used them for whatever reason.
Back to the average Joe, they do this way more often then us. They get the link to download for whatever reason and download it with good intention, but not everyone installs it. Of those that do install, they try to use it, realize it is too different or whatever and go back to IE without bothering to uninstall... that is not important to them. To them, having 100 programs installed is the same as 1 - they know no better.
If you realize that you, being a slashdot reading computer user, are not the "average computer user" then you may be able to put these numbers into perspective and understand how they came to be.
Invexi - a Phoenix, AZ based web design and web development company.
I've been sitting with "average" users while they show me something or try something and you'd be surprised how many of them click on something that sounds neat that they want to try, it downloads, they close the download window, then say something like "Where'd it go? Oh well..." then move on to something else. This was partly the rational for Firefox's default to download straight to the desktop.
I'd bet some people are downloading the installer, lose it, and just never bother to find it.
The typical Windows user is logged on as an Administrator, out of the box. Therefore the typical Windows user will never see this issue, nor need to work around it.
Those who don't login as an administrator either know what they're doing (and therefore have the skills to understand the problem), or they're a large enough business that their IT department should be familiar with problems like this. Firefox is hardly the only program that expects to be able to write to it's program directory, which isn't allowed by normal users.
Now, logically, since you are a technical user, and set your primary account as a normal user, you should know that normal users can't write to %ProgramFiles%. Therefore when you attempt to run an update, that you know damn well requires writing files out to %ProgramFiles%, you shouldn't be surprised to see problems or errors.
Instead of giving your normal user account full access to the program directory, you should maintain security and install updates after logging in as an administrator. The normal user can see when an update is available, which gives you the push to login as an administrator and install it, but obviously the normal user shouldn't be able to do it.
That everyone pointed to every other problem under the sun instead of this illustrates the overwhelming number of Windows users who run as administrator. I've got a couple dozen programs installed that refuse to run if the logged in account isn't an administrator. At least Firefox manages functions just fine for everything except program updates.