making add-ons people will love

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LOVE Justin Scott Mozilla Add-ons Workshop London 2010 Making Add-ons _ People Will

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13 tips and guidelines for making Firefox add-ons that users will love.

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Page 1: Making Add-ons People Will Love

LOVE

Justin ScottMozilla Add-ons Workshop

London 2010

Making Add-ons_People Will

Page 2: Making Add-ons People Will Love

You can’t please everyone, but...

• Great add-ons help the entire ecosystem• Here are some tips & guidelines for:

• minimizing frustration• maximizing delight• acquiring and retaining happy users

Page 3: Making Add-ons People Will Love

marketing

Listening

buildingPart I:

Part II:

Part III:

Page 4: Making Add-ons People Will Love

1 Clean First-Run

or·dealn.any extremely severe or trying test, experience, or trial.

an·noy·ancen.a cause of irritation or vexation; a nuisance.

Page 5: Making Add-ons People Will Love

1 Clean First-Run

• Annoying first-run practices:• require registration to do anything at all

• Modal dialogs and wizards

• Asking to change the user’s settings

• Annoying post-update practices:• Showing the add-on’s homepage

• Showing a changelog (unless a major change has been made)

Page 6: Making Add-ons People Will Love
Page 7: Making Add-ons People Will Love
Page 8: Making Add-ons People Will Love

1 Clean First-Run

• Don’t let first-run be the last-run by following these guidelines:• Modal dialogs/wizards should be part of

the first-run page or triggered by user action on the first-run page

• Limit of one first-run element. If you have a first-run page, you shouldn’t need a wizard, dialog, or sidebar open too.

• Don’t change user preferences

Page 9: Making Add-ons People Will Love

2 Don’t Clutter UI

“Extensions [should] integrate with the existing UI as if it were a feature

shipped with Firefox itself.”

“This is constantly reminding me that it’s an extension, and not really part

of my browser.”Survey respondent describing a disappointing add-on

Survey respondent on what practices all add-ons should adopt

Page 10: Making Add-ons People Will Love

2 Don’t Clutter UI

• Only add UI that is truly needed• Let the user choose what UI she wants

Page 11: Making Add-ons People Will Love

How many Delicious logos can you spot?

Seven.

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Eight.

Nine.

Page 14: Making Add-ons People Will Love

3 Earn & Keep Trust

“I give add-on developers a huge amount of trust when I install their extension. It is painful when they abuse it.”

“I read reviews and avoid any that sound annoying (change homepage,

collect private info, nav, etc.)”

“Add-ons [should] do what they claim to and not much else”

Page 15: Making Add-ons People Will Love

3 Earn & Keep Trust

• There are add-ons that want to:• change the user’s default search provider

without asking

• replace ads on websites with their own ads

• send all of the user’s search queries to a third party when the add-on isn’t related to searching

• bundle other add-ons or software the user didn’t ask for

Page 16: Making Add-ons People Will Love

3 Earn & Keep Trust

• No Surprises means that changing default settings or otherwise surprising the user requires:• a clear, upfront description

• opt-in

• revert on uninstall

• inclusion from the start (not in a subsequent update)

Page 17: Making Add-ons People Will Love

3 Earn & Keep Trust

• Choose core functionality and stick with it

Original photo by Flickr user AJC1(CC licensed)

Page 18: Making Add-ons People Will Love

3 Earn & Keep Trust

• Have a clear Privacy Policy• Install the proper way

• No .exes or 3rd party bundling

Page 19: Making Add-ons People Will Love

4 Stay Current

• Update compatibility before a Firefox release

• Avoid conflicts with other add-ons• Be on the lookout for new platform

features to take advantage of• Restartless add-ons

• Larger icons

• Mobile

Page 20: Making Add-ons People Will Love

5 Smooth Performance

• Add-ons should have zero performance impact on Firefox start-up time

• We’re working on tools & ways to surface performance data to help developers and users understand the impact of each add-on

Page 21: Making Add-ons People Will Love

6 Be Delightful

“Finding things that I don't necessarily use but push the platform is awesome too - the Strata theme and accompanying extension,

for example. It makes Firefox actually interesting again.”

“I really learn to appreciate the little things you forgot you installed whenever I am browsing on a clean install or when using another browser. Like Adblock (obviously) or even very little things like double clicking a tab like crazy only to realize you need Double

Click To Reload Tabs installed for something to happen.”Survey respondent describing delightful add-ons

Survey respondent describing delightful add-ons

Page 22: Making Add-ons People Will Love

6 Be Delightful

• Find little ways to delight your users • There’s no recipe for this. It’s specific to

your add-on.

Page 23: Making Add-ons People Will Love

marketing

Listening

Part I:

Part II:

Part III:

building

Page 24: Making Add-ons People Will Love

1 Descriptive Name

• An add-on’s functionality should be obvious from its name

• Adblock Plus

• Password Exporter

• FireFTP

• Video DownloadHelper

• Download Statusbar

• Flashblock

• User Agent Switcher

• WOT

• FEBE

• Yoono

• Cooliris

• Infoaxe

• Glubble

• Glue

- Safe Browsing Tool

- Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, MySpace, YouTube, Flickr, AIM, MSN, GTalk...

- Recommendations for Books/Movies/Music

: Full Text Web History Search synchronized between Firefox, IE on multiple computers.

Page 25: Making Add-ons People Will Love

2 Pretty Icon

• Icons are always shown, yet half of extensions use default

• Icon is part of your add-on’s brand• ... and they’re becoming more important

Large icons are coming to Firefox 4 & AMO

Page 26: Making Add-ons People Will Love

2 Pretty Icon

• We want add-ons to have great, relevant icons

• So we’re expanding our defaults,

• creating a Design Help forum,• ...and having a contest.

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Watch blog.mozilla.com/addons for details

Add-on Icon Makeover Contest

Coming Soon!

Page 28: Making Add-ons People Will Love

3 Helpful Screenshots

• Summaries are only 250 characters, but a picture’s worth 1000 words

• Make sure to add screenshots of your add-on and keep them updated

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4 Avoid EULAs

• We recently changed install buttons for add-ons that have EULAs

Old New

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4 Avoid EULAs

• EULAs prior to download kill conversions

View Details

Download

44%

View Details

Download

5%EULA

61%

Page 31: Making Add-ons People Will Love

marketing

Listening

Part I:

Part II:

Part III:

building

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1 Provide Support

• Users get frustrated when they encounter problems and can’t find any support avenues

• Add-ons should provide at least one, possibly including:• Support E-mail

• Support Website

• Get Satisfaction

Page 33: Making Add-ons People Will Love

2 Monitor User Reviews

• Users reviews are good, bad, and ugly• They hint at problems users are facing• Developers can reply to reviews to

provide support or address a misconception• (though we discourage bug reports and

support requests in user reviews)

Page 34: Making Add-ons People Will Love

3 Utilize Tools

• AMO provides numerous tools to help developers understand their add-on’s usage and standing• Statistics Dashboard

• Recent Activity Feed

• Compatibility Reports

Page 35: Making Add-ons People Will Love

3 Utilize Tools

• Statistics Dashboard can help you monitor key metrics, make product decisions, and answer questions like:• Should I continue supporting this platform,

application, version, or locale?

• Should I add support for this platform, application, version, or locale?

• How quickly do users update to the latest version of my add-on?

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Stats Dashboard revamp is coming

soon!

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3 Utilize Tools

• Recent Activity feed tells you what’s new with your add-on

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3 Utilize Tools

• Compatibility Reporter users help you test before the next big release

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Summary

1. Clean First-Run2. Don’t Clutter UI3. Earn & Keep Trust4. Stay Current5. Smooth Performance6. Be Delightful

building

1. Descriptive Name2. Pretty Icon3. Helpful Screenshots4. Avoid EULAs

marketing

Listening1. Provide Support2. Monitor User Reviews3. Utilize Tools

Page 40: Making Add-ons People Will Love

“Overall, I love the community of developers who continue to create stellar add-ons for the

benefit of the Firefox community.”Survey respondent

Original illustration by Mozilla Creative Collective member foxyboy

(CC licensed)