Just a note to self: Firefox caches pages with back/forth button in a way that no javascript is run again – which is a dealbreaker with some ajax pages. Add a script tag with an alert just to the very beginning of the head tag, navigate away from the page and come back: no popup; I did forget about this one… Solution:
window.onbeforeunload = function(){}; I decided to get a dedicated host at HostGator, so that I can host assorted crap – nothing really serious, but I do need something more flexible than Google Pages. So, that’s it, so far I’m pretty happy with their offer and I finished making a simple landing page which (including the 3d modelled cup and the icons) took only a couple of hours. And the domain name? It’s after one of my favourite books, Rozsamez, once again, no big secrets here.
Some seo and marketing companies believe or state that the split testing (running two different versions of a page, pages or services on your website) or multivariate testing (certain page elements are being replaced and tested in paralell with other variants) is the magic bullet for increasing your rate of profit; but before we believe everything, let’s think twice: do people like malls and supermarkets? They do; Tesco, Salesbury or Auchan are popular examples of supermarkets where price is a major winning factor: one doesn’t go to Tesco because shopping is a “joy” – one goes to such place, because the quality is “pretty much okay” while the prices (and season sales) are unbeatable.
During split tests usability should be a major concern: an ad filled, blinking-scrolling website “probably” will not be as popular as a clear, well designed web shop – during these early periods the split test will show what we prety much know: I wouldn’t go to Tesco for a weekend shopping if it was a dirty, rotten place on the end of nowhere. Or I would: give me an unbeatable price and I might consider spending my money there (hence many butt ugly webshops with Joomla, Drupal and other home made CMSs exist) – with a better, comfortable environment the rate of return would clearly increase. But what happens if the services are fine, the layout is okay, navigation is user friendly – and you get all excited about testing small design elements here and there? Would I go to Tesco more often if they painted the doors red? Would I spend more money if they relabel all the products with shiny happy smily labels talking to me in a distinct voice, “have a good time here, dear customer”?
Probably I couldn’t care less. As long as the services are “okay” and I get what I want for my money, it’s just fine – treating the customers like a bunch of monkeys, trying out small “fine tunings” on your shop (let it be a webshop or a real store) will not boost those numbers; either because your monkeys don’t care (they already know where the banana is, how it looks like and the trees already look and feel pretty familiar) or just because monkeys and psychology don’t mix. You, as a designer, can tell yourself how your newly designed click-me button is so much better, or you, as a copy writer can tell yourself how your new copy makes the user want to click on the product, in the end you just convince yourself about what you want to hear. And what will happen in these cases with your numbers? There will be 1-2% fluctuations, nothing else. Have fun figuring out those numbers.
I usually had been very harsh with others when I got to uncommented, undocumented, badly written code, especially in house – most of the time I thought about this as a matter of capability, but when I myself resort to low quality code I really have to stop for a moment and think twice before criticizing others. So far I have been trying hard not to argue with my boss (on matters that should not concern me or on matters I have no authority to comment on / change), but now this is the time for the same policy with colleagues.
Where specifications are most of the time scarce or badly written, where deployment is always the most important thing (even if the timesheet for the next week is still empty), where most people just don’t feel the need to comment the code (or just remove comments with refactoring), where insane ideas from management people pop up on a regular basis, when doing split tests on the live site for the sake of 1-2% lead increase is more important than thinking about how large scale parallel versions will affect the application logic itself, where search engine optimization comes way before code quality and user experience most of the time (pretty ironically) negating the means of standard, well-proven accessibility: I really wonder, how am I supposed to deliver high quality software? And what’s worse, noone really cares for the quality part (they would say “yes, we really do” wholeheartedly here, but caring for me rather means maintainability than rolling out new features as fast as possible). Without starting to figure out who’s right or wrong, which I really don’t feel like anymore, I really am close to understand someone who just wants to “get the job done” – while I myself am facing the fact that neither I, nor most of us have the qualities to produce “best quality” under such circumstances.
I do know how my boss would react and how impudent this all sounds (with keeping in mind that – fortunately – this is a for profit company, not a bunch a freetard hippies in a cave), but even though I’m doing my best, I felt very frustrating that no matter how hard I try, I cannot comply with my own standards, angry with myself and others, now I think it’s time to change and let things go on their own way. I still try not to break things, I still comment my files, I still try to write clean and readable code, but I feel less guilt with the terrible hacks I or other team members do day after day.
I am by no means a SEO expert, but after doing frontend related development for a couple of years, I think there are many small “tricks” one can use on his or her site, before shelling out big damn bucks for so called SEO experts.
The tone may not be to your liking, but you asked for it:
Yes, these recommendations seem to be trivial, but as I implied above, anyone promising you to skyrocket your visitor numbers just with a magic formula is a liar bastard; should you believe his words is your problem, not mine.