Impact Mozilla

Marketing Plan Final Proposal

Firefox’s current marketing strategy is based on “Speed, Personalization and Security”. The Speed and Security parameters are difficult to measure, especially so for non-techies. Besides, several other browsers such as Internet Explorer, Opera and Safari are aggressively touting their products to be the “The Safest and Fastest”. This results into that Firefox ends up being “just another browser” and hence resulting in the low retention rates. Also as some browsers come default with the operating systems, users are not even trying to see what Firefox can provide to the typical user.

Hence, we propose revamping of the current marketing strategy putting a lot of emphasis on Personalization, to make it stand out in the web browser war. It is virtually impossible for the other browsers to match up to Firefox’s Customization features unless they embrace Open Source Technology. In other words, personalization flexibilities go hand in hand with Open Source. Further, even new internet users can readily appreciate the huge Customization features that Firefox provides them with. This makes them understand that Firefox is inherently different from other browsers.

Plan Summary:

Our entire Marketing Strategy is based on add-ons, since they form the core of the Firefox’s customization features available. We first propose to improve the range and accessibility of the add-ons and then devise a marketing campaign to popularize this new avatar of Firefox.

Statistics and Analysis of the current situation:

We have conducted an online survey involving 985 Internet users primarily engineering students . 510 of them are using Firefox, all of them are using it as their primary browser. Although an amazing 866 users have Firefox installed on their computers, 356 have stopped using Firefox. Only 48 of the 356 users have stopped because they thought Firefox was slow. But the rest said they had no compelling reason to keep using Firefox. Of those 356 users 337 have never installed an add-on! This figure shows how low the penetration of add-ons has been. Further, it shows how this has been driving people to stop using Firefox.

Another trend that came out was that of the 510 users who are currently using Firefox, only 124 have add-ons installed. About 365 users said they found no big difference between Firefox-3 and Internet Explorer-7. Their reason for using Firefox was just that they considered Open Source to be good. So, out of the 866 users who installed Firefox only 124 + 48 have ever installed add-ons and tested what all customization features Firefox offers. But of those 124 users who installed add-ons 93 listed this as their primary reason for using Firefox. So, it’s sad that such an important feature has had such less penetration.

Further, of the 124 users who have installed add-ons, only 23 have installed 6 or more add-ons. The general opinion among them was that, although they knew they could completely change the look of their Firefox browsers using add-ons, they considered that procedure tedious. Most of them did not know of the blogs that provide the appropriate add-on listings, which we gladly told them.

We have also appended a tree diagram (Fig1) of the given statistics. The above given trend are more favorably oriented towards Firefox, as the survey involved enginnering students. Research has always shown that the usage rate of Firefox has been more among techies. But, having a look at the number of students who never used add-ons, it becomes clear that increasing marketing of add-ons can go a long way in increasing market retention.

This elucidates the need for add-on centric strategies. But, the number of add-ons that were available for many of the basic internet users was found out to be terribly low. This is probably because all the add-on developers are themselves heavy internet users. All those developers that we had conversations with, suggested that this is because they are not used to thinking from the basic user’s perspective.

Studies invariably show that a large number of people, use the internet just for the primary functions such as e-mail and small amount of specific browsing. The add-ons being listed right now in the AMO site are by and large for people who spend a lot of time online. The virtual lives of these people are intricately tangled with their real lives and hence find they find these add-ons almost impossible to do away with.

But amidst all this, the browser at the other end of the spectrum finds nothing of interest in the current listing of add-ons. Firefox offers no Personalization features as far as he is concerned. This is sad because Personalization is the only way we can reach the lower end of internet users. Speed or security features hardly make any difference to most of them.

So, it is imperative to foster the add-on development in this area. In a series of several objectives listed below, this very desirable but tough objective is achieved. As customization is a key differentiator for Firefox, it should let its users know, on the main window itself, that it provides those cool features. Hence, we suggest an alternative, Add-on Suggest, to highly simplify the personalization process.

Fig1: Tree Diagram showing survey statistics

Goals and Plan Execution Strategy

Phase1: Add-on Development

We plan to develop a large scale central medium of online communication for add-on developers. Thus far, there hasn’t been much need of such a platform. This is because the add-on developers have been making add-ons for people like themselves. The add-on development has been totally haphazard. For example, there are many add-ons that having intersecting sets of functionalities. We also find sets of add-on pairs doing exactly the same thing. In a way, this erratic nature of add-ons is what led to its present success. The Mozilla community let the geek users do whatever Add-ons they wanted to do for Firefox. The community gave them no directions or advice. This has helped because no one really knows which add-on turns out to be a hit and hence trying to steer add-on development into a specific direction can turn out to be very dangerous. This is especially so, in the beginning stages of the add-on development scenario.

But time is ripe now to reevaluate the entire situation. Something has to be done to foster the add-on development for the masses. And, the first step in this direction would be to communicate this intention to the add-on developers. A web platform has to be set up for this purpose. Slowly, this web site will evolve and begin to do a number of other functions.

The add-on development scenario would be allowed to grow into two starkly different branches. The current add-on development process should be allowed to grow as it is. Another branch sprouts from the web platform that would be set up. These two branches will be very highly complementary in nature. The functionalities they perform, the kinds of people involved in the add-on development and the kinds of people served by these too branches bear no co relation to each other. But together, they form a powerful combination. This second branch, by using the web platform will foster the add-on development for general users. Here, unlike in the first branch there is no single person responsible for an entire add-on. All the add-ons are made as part of a community effort just like any other open source product. But since the technicalities involved in making such an add-on are a lot less than the other Open Source products such as Linux, Firefox Browser or Thunderbird, we expect a lot more people to take part in this.

Right now, the add-on developers seem to have a problem trying to understand the needs of a low end (or basic) user. One of the reasons for this is that there are myriad kinds of basic users out there: Bankers, Lawyers, Doctors, and Businessmen who spend very little time online. And in this time, the kind of browsing done by each one of them is completely different from one another except for some activities such as e-mail. What seems like a very simple task for accustomed Internet users, such as zooming a web page can present itself as a headache to these users. This difference in perspective is what has led to the current status of the add-ons.

We cannot expect these users to communicate their problems directly to the add-on developer. But there are a number of middle level Internet users who do understand the specialized needs that these basic users have. But, they cannot go on to develop an add-on on their own either due to lack of skills, or time constraints. We had conversations with about fifteen individual and independent add-on developers. From these discussions we found out that they develop add-ons mainly for the creative challenges involved in it. They like using stuff that they themselves develop. Thus even if the current developers are suggested ideas, they will not embark on implementing someone else’s ideas into products which they never use.

So, in order to solve this problem we decided to separate the idea generation from the idea implementation part. But, if the idea generation is separated from the idea implementation part, there needs to be a motive for people to work on the implementation part. We cannot expect the current developers to take up this implementation as their own motive is missing. Hence, the target developers’ base changes for the second branch. Currently, just about 2% of add-on developers are students. Our goal is to inverse these statistics for this branch and get the add-ons coded primarily by students. A lot of engineering students these days are equipped with basic web development skills such as CSS, HTML and JavaScript. Apart from this, a little knowledge of XUL is sufficient for these students, to start developing basic add-ons. Complex functionalities are seldom involved in making add-ons for the basic users. Certificates of Appreciation are given to all the students clearly mentioning all the work performed and the skills used in performing this given work. These certificates form the primary motivation for the students being involved. This is akin to an online certification exam. But there is also an added satisfaction of working on a part of a project of a big brand.

For this to be implemented all the coding tasks have to be made uniform, regular and simple. Hence, the community as a whole during the idea generation phase itself works out all the details to the finest possible level. Just the plain coding part is left for the implementation segment. Work is assigned very clearly to these students .If the coding part of an add-on is very large it can be further divided into parts to be given to different students. A comfortable time frame is given for them to finish the coding. The web platform helps these students make intermediate submissions of their work and discuss their progress with the community members. So, the work that these students are left to do becomes completely mechanical in nature and all the strategic responsibility lies solely with the idea generation community. This community constitutes a variety of people together forming a potpourri of skills. Creative people familiar with the internet usage behavior of the masses plant the seeds for add-on development. Once, the add-on idea begins to mature, people with developmental knowledge are going to play a bigger role. We expect the Mozilla Community members who are acquainted with writing code for the Mozilla Products to chip in at this stage. Not much of time investment is required from them, but their role of breaking down the add-on developmental work and assigning it to the students will be absolutely crucial for the project.

Now, two voids still remain. Although we have setup a platform to generate ideas, we are still in need of a bigger framework to steer the development process into the right direction. Or else, there is every chance for this entire process to become completely haphazard. Secondly, we need to establish a suitable system to supply these add-ons to the masses. This is a huge concern. The prevailing method of procuring individual add-ons from addons.mozilla.org (AMO) will not work because most of these occasional users “are themselves unaware of what they are going to need.”, as one of the Add-on developers that we have talked to put it. We have resolved these two issues in the following steps.

The gravity of the problems always defines the direction of development efforts. For example, this entire project has been started because of the observation that the low end users constituting a massive 70% of the Internet Population are not being served any add-ons. So further clues to driving this project in the right direction can be got from further analysis of the problem statement. For example, if the percentage of Kids among the 70% of the Internet population is very high, then our first priority is to make add-ons for them. So as part of this project we have done the following things:

1. Based on the above findings, we devised a preliminary add-on classification system. In this, we have listed about 50 areas in which we need to see the growth of add-ons. Each of these areas acts a placeholder for about 2- 10 add-ons. Our goal in the preliminary years of this web platform would to be to fill these areas with the required number of add-ons.

2. The Internet population has been studied at a greater level in order to learn about the profiles of people making up this 70% of Internet population. Based on this we have made a scale determining the relative importance of each of these groups. It is important to note that many of these groups share a lot of intersecting activities, which we tried to ascertain.

Add-ons Areas List:

After conducting a thorough study on the reports available on Internet demographics we came up with the following list of Add-on areas, again divided into three broad categories.

Specialized PrePacks:

These areas serve those populations with more or less uniform needs.

The Add-ons in each of the above areas can be used directly to make Packs such as “Kids’ Pack”, “Senior Citizens’ Pack”. The Kids’ Pack was given a disproportionate rating of 10 because this will be used to conduct the Marketing Campaign to be explained later.

General Real Time PrePacks:

The below listed add-ons are more general in nature, and can be used by a number of people of different kinds. So, these have to be catered to the users by using the Real-Time Pack system. Most of these add-ons could be just a listing of some of the popular web sites on specific topics. Though all of these tasks can be attained by a simple online search, it is important to understand this issue from the point of view of the Internet beginners. These beginner users aren’t really accustomed to internet features and capabilities as the techies do and can definitely benefit from these add-ons.

User (browsing history) based packs:

No one can ever gather as much information about an online user as much as a web browser can. Not even a best search engine! All the web sites that a user visits, all the web searches that he makes, all of this information could be made use of to provide personalized service to the user. Based on this information, likeminded people can be identified based on their online site visits and online queries a. Once identified elaborate networking facilities can be provided to enable interaction between these users. Even if people don’t personally communicate, by using this system we might gather information about some of the best visited sites on the user’s concerned topic and list them to the user. This networking based web site suggesting service could be of immense use in the below mentioned areas.

Add-on Suggest:

Once the add-ons for the targeted areas are developed, there should be a proper means for these add-ons to reach to the light Internet users group. The present system of AMO listing and Add-on Management tool becomes a little too tough to handle for the “Once in a while” user. Although, the new add-on manager in Firefox-3 has greatly improved the add-on management scenario, we suggest bringing a part of it to the main window. As our survey results show, we have found out that a sizeable number of users stop using Firefox without even trying an add-on. We propose the “Add-on Suggest” tool as shown in our picture attached (Fig2), which suggests 5 add-ons per day to the user. The suggestions can be based on many parameters like the user’s RAM (If it’s high, suggest 3D ones like Cooliris, TabSwitch), whether the user previously preferred sleek add-ons or colorful ones. It can suggest related add-ons the moment the user visits sites like GMail, Facebook and Twitter. Several such personalized suggestions can be done.

Fig2: Add-on Suggest tool

Phase 2 – Contest Details:

The goal of this entire plan is marketing Firefox. But for that we needed something extra to what is present, Add-Ons for every segment of users rather than for only a limited community of heavy browsing users. We have solved this issue in the first phase of the plan, which gives complete description of what and how these Add-ons are going to be developed.

Once they are made they have to reach every user. For this purpose we have chosen high school kids as our channel. The reasons for the choice are

1. The kids themselves constitute as much as 15% of the overall internet community.

2. An elegant way to reach a broader spectrum of people who includes associates of children like their families, teachers, and friends.

3. More economical way to reach a broader population.

The exact way of reaching them is through a contest ‘KiDevelopers’ at the high school level. Unlike what the name suggests the contest will not be a technical one. The contest will be in such a way that the kids have to install the newly developed ‘kids pack’, use it and propose 3 better add-on ideas that are not there in the pack. Though the contest inherently shows open source nature of Firefox, the major aim of the contest is to make everyone aware of the improvements in the Firefox. Generation of ideas for development of new add-ons may be an added outcome.

With the proposed budget constraints we will implement this contest in three countries U.S, China and India. We have chosen these countries as they constitute more than 50% of the Internet population. This same contest can be replicated in a grandeur way if the budget permits later on.

Operating Plan:

The advertisement for the contest will be through poster-ads, which will be dispatched to each school via mail. With the existing brand image of being a successful open-source browser we can confidently expect the schools to advertise this contest.

The contest will start right when the kids pack is ready i.e. by the start of next August. There will be elimination round for the proposed ideas submitted by contest participants. This elimination will be done by the overall Mozilla developer community as a large participation is expected. Then about 10-15 will be short-listed and all the ideas are posted on the site for implementation. This can be expected to be finished by mid October. Once they are developed, they will be ready for downloading. The add-ons with the highest combined downloads will be the grand winner of the contest.

Timeline and Budget Details

Financial Details:

The cost involved in the overall contest will be in the preparation and dispatch of poster-ads and prizes for the grand winner and runner-up. As per the Indian Postal Service we have contacted, the dispatching of posters will be via bulk mail service which is very economic and according to the data we gathered, the following estimation is made.

Number of schools to participate 5000

Cost of making and dispatching of poster-ads: $1.2 X 5,000 =$6,000

1 Grand prize winners for each country: $1000X3              = $3,000

1Runner-up prize winner for each country: $500X3            = $1,500

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Overall cost of the project                                                  $10,500

Targeting Market size:

With an average of 1500 students in a high school it can reach up to 7.5M students who will get the basic idea of what the contest is. This section of people may or may not participate in the contest so we can not take people associated with these children. Only some students will try Firefox ‘Kid’s packs’ at home to know what the contest is. We can take this kind of people as one third of the total students. As they use it in their home with an average of four people in every family, overall number goes up to 1/3(7.5) X 3=7.5M people who are associates of the children get to know of the packs system in Firefox.

Overall we can expect a reach of 7.5M+7.5M =15M million people.

This comes to 7-8% of the overall market share of Firefox. But this population largely consists of what Firefox is missing at present, the beginners and the general people who are not from the heavy browsing community. And this is the immediate reach of the campaign. Once this is achieved we can expect an exponential growth with the mouth-to-mouth advertising.

Geographic Areas: U.S., India and China

Timeline:

• 1-15 January 2009: Setting up of the web platform which is done either by the Mozilla or developer community

• 15 January: Ideas begin on the 99 add-on topics (300 (out of 800) existing code developers and nearly 200 (out of 3000) designers will be involved at this stage)

• 30 February: The preliminary ideas are decided on the Kids Pack Add-ons

• 15 March: Work assignment is finished on Kids Pack add-ons This is done by 30 student developers which we have gathered via advertising explained previously.

• Start of April: Work finished on Kids Pack add-ons ( preliminary work for KiDevelopers kicks off)

• Start of July: Preliminary ideas decided on all the add-ons. This works in parallel with the contest.

• Start of August: Work assignment is finished on all add-ons.  and Preparation and dispatching of poster-ads

• Mid of august: Start of the contest

• Mid of September: Elimination round deadline

• Mid of October: Short listing of ideas

• December: Implementation of selected add-on ideas

• December- January: Posting of Add-ons for download

• January: Selection of Winners

Education:

Undergraduation: M.Sc in Biological Sciences

Bachelor of Engineering in Electricals and Electronics . Birla Institute of Technology and Science, Pilani, India . (to be graduated in 2011)

High School: Jawahar Navodaya Vidyalaya, Nizamabad

Work Experience :

Interned at L.V Prasad Eye Institute, Hyderabad

Worked for Byrraju Foundation (CSR arm of Satyam Computers)

Member of Nirmaan, a Non-Profit Organisation

Achievements:

Stood as regional topper in 10^th grade

Interests:

Playing Badminton, Photography, Multimedia

Education:

Undergraduation: Bachelor of Engineering in Mechanical Engineering . Birla Institute of Technology and Science, Pilani, India . (to be graduated in 2010)

High School: St. Joseph’s Public School, Hyderabad, India

Work Experience/Achievements :

• Underwent Internship as a H.R. Management trainee  at Ratna Infrastructure Projects Pvt. Ltd. , Hyderabad from May-July,2008
• Stood as a School Topper consistently

Interests:

Online Quizzing trivia, Tennis, and lots of web surfing.