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Category: Web Design

Something Inventive 16: It’s never finished

Ben and Al discuss when a website is ready to go live and some great tools and articles to improve your marketing and search optimisation.

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Something Inventive is an entertaining and lively podcast on creativity and the web. Subscribe on Apple Podcasts or search for ‘Something Inventive’ in your favourite podcast player.

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Show notes

The Hosts

Al Osmond (@inventiveal) – An unusual mix of logical thinker with a creative eye
Ben Kinnaird (@benkinnaird) – Knower of Social Media, SEO and ‘the Web’

Promote your service for the price of a tweet

If you’d like the opportunity to have an advert for your product or service read out on our podcast, for FREE! Simply tweet what you’d like to promote, mentioning @RatherInventive and the hashtag #podvert and we’ll read it out over the coming episodes. Here’s an example:

‘Sick of writing boring blog posts? Try Wordbirdy.com #podvert @RatherInventive’

First come, first served. So get your tweets in early.

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Audio edited by Donalize – ‘Goofy Vocal Groove‘ intro music by Dave Girtsman – Photo: Loozrboy, High five

Accessibility and Email Campaigns

Following my interview with Bik Lee from the RNC I came across this helpful article on accessibility in email from Campaign Monitor in my reading queue.

Blindness and other degrees of vision impairment are more common than many would think. 285 million people worldwide are considered to be visually impaired

Worth reading for those who have a hand in the design of their email campaigns. Many of the points they mention also apply to website development and copywriting.

 

Visual impairment on the web interview

Bik Lee, Digital Media Officer for the RNC (Royal National College for the Blind), explains the importance of making the web accessible for all and why using too many #hashtags in social media is far from helpful.

Find Bik on Twitter @bik_lee, follow @RNC_official or visit www.rnc.ac.uk.

Filtering Google Analytics (GA) referral spam

Google Analytics has seen a recent rise in fake traffic known as referral spam 1. This skews your stats by polluting real visitor data with links from sites that are questionable at best.

Like email SPAM it’s not easy to get rid of but there are a few things you can try.

1. Tick the “Bot Filtering” box

Analytics exclude bots checkbox

You’ll find this option in Google Analytics by clicking “Admin” in the top bar then under “View” select “View Settings”. I’ve not seen much effect by turning this on but I’m sure it cannot help.

2. Add a new segment to temporarily filter out potential SPAM referrers

Analytics segment filter

Segments in Google Analytics allow you to split out and filter visitor traffic in a way that doesn’t damage the underlying data. You can create your own segment to filter our the offending referral spam by removing keywords for the sites you’d like to remove. To get you started you can import my Segment Configuration to test out the filter for yourself.

3. Add permanent filters to stop SPAM traffic ever getting registered

If you are happy that the traffic the SPAM cleaning segment above filters out then you can add this in as a filter under “View > Filters” to get rid of future SPAM data 2. Be warned though that unlike a segment this filter is permanent and if you’re not careful you may lose real traffic data.

 

If you’ve got any other clever idea or thought on this do let me know via Twitter @benkinnaird

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1. Referrer spam involves making repeated web site requests using a fake referer URL to the site the spammer wishes to advertise. Sites that publish their access logs, including referer statistics, will then inadvertently link back to the spammer’s site. These links will be indexed by search engines as they crawl the access logs. This technique does not harm the affected sites, just pollutes their statistics.” Wikipedia.

2. I also read recommendations to block countries like Russia, Indonesia and Brazil where spam may emirate from but be careful here as this could also remove good traffic data. For a more detailed guide on referral spam including how to filter out bad data read ohow’s guide.

 

Top Usability Mistakes in Web Design

A good web structure guide from Christian Vasile disguised as a rant. Many of the authors niggles reflect my own feelings, particularly the ones I’ve pulled out below. It’s from 2013 but still relevant.

 

You can’t expect them to search for links by hovering with the mouse on all the words until the cursor changes to a pointer.

I have a firmly held opinion that links should be underlined. Colour is less of a concern but if possible then blue works well. The most important thing is to make them clear.

 

I simply can’t understand why a hair saloon doesn’t show me how much does it cost[s] for me to cut my hair.

I’ve never quite understood not sharing prices either. Even if the price is complicated to calculate, it must be possible to provide a guide estimate in most cases. If we can articulate parts of the business in a way that will help people buy then it should be available online.

 

Make the registration forms as short as possible.

Christian goes on to explain that the more you block access to your product before people have a clear idea about whether they will like it the fewer “form fills” you will have.

I recommend you can read the full article on http://designmodo.com/usability-mistakes-web-design/.

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Image Credit: https://pixabay.com/p-534103/

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