Firefox ponders marketing overhaul

By Tom Sanders on Aug 14, 2007 6:15AM

The Mozilla Corporation is preparing a number of changes to the marketing of the open source Firefox browser in a bid to further grow market share.

"To date, Mozilla has done a reasonably good job getting people to download Firefox, but our data shows that a very high percentage of those people do not become long term, active Firefox users. We need to figure out how we overcome the default behaviour of 'clicking on the blue e'," JT Batson from Mozilla's marketing team wrote in a blog posting earlier this year.

Approximately half of those who download Firefox never actually install the application. Another 50 percent of those who do install the software are counted as active users, according to data posted on a Firefox wiki.

The group plans an abundance of changes. The Firefox icon, for instance, could be accompanied by a text that more clearly indicates its purpose, and the developers will attempt to place it more prominently on the user's desktop, the Windows quick launch bar or the dock in OS X.

The group also plans to change the way it prompts users to set Firefox as their default browser. The change is supposed to make the prompt look "nicer".

Other suggested enhancements include a support website, the introduction of a feature that allows users to scroll through browser tabs with previews, resembling how applications switch in modern operating systems.

According to a Mozilla Wiki, the group aims for a 10 percent monthly growth rate for Firefox and a 30 percent market share by June 2008. The application is currently gaining users are a rate of 3.7 percent per month.