rob.brown

Another opportunity to engage and up sell?

2010-02-18T11:45:00Z

I made an online purchase recently and received the usual confirmation email and then this morning I received another follow up email.

It’s sole purpose is to help me identify the purchase on my bank statement, by providing me with the payment identifier. I’ve never seen this done before, but it’s actually quite a useful. Maybe we should recommend it to our clients?

It also seems like a missed opportunity.

Having just done me a favour (and one which I didn’t for), I may now be more open to being informed about offer products and services. Or would this be one step too far?

Just a thought.

Google Analytics illegal in Germany...?

2009-11-25T11:31:00Z

There has been an ongoing legal struggle in Germany for some time now between Google Analytics, Google Analytics professionals and the government over the legality of google analytics (GA) and whether it breaks their privacy laws. The struggle was put aside for a while, when Google launced Street View in Germany, but now it seems this struggle has stepped up a gear, according to a recent Tech Crunch article, Achtung! Google Analytics is illegal, say German government officials

The crux of the problem is that GA stores visitors IP addresses, which are classed in Germany as personably identifiable data. This is compounded by the fact that the data is stored and processed outside of Germany. This article suggests that 13% of German website publishers use GA – that’s a lot of illegal activity – and a fine of €50,000 per site – that’s a LOT of money!

At the recent GA conference in Silicon Valley, there where a lot of angry Germans asking Google what their take was on this and what they’re doing about it... “not a lot”seemed to be the answer.

GA uses the IP address to infer the visitors geo-location. A ‘simple’ solution would be to get the geo-location and then delete the IP address. Or another could be to ignore the IP address altogether and remove the geo-location functionality for German users.

What will Google do? I don’t know, my gut feeling is that Google don’t know what to do. The ‘simple’ changes above aren’t that simple when you’re talking about an application the size of GA. If they don’t do anything and Germany officials declares GA to be illegal, what then?

It’s quite a large market for Google to lose and once the precedence is set will other EU countries follow? If they do, what would other services may this affect? Any of ours...?

When is a logo not a logo

2009-05-13T20:08:00Z

During a recent Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) presentation we discussed the topic of alt text. Normally this is a simple one, but today a previously unconsidered conflict of interest emerged:

"What is the correct alt text for a company logo?”

The SEO consultant:
As a brand I want to own as much real estate on google as possible. So if somebody performs a google image search for “Brand Name logo” then our website’s logo should be the first result back. So to help acheive this SEO would dictate we use the alt text [Brand Name logo].

The Accessibility Consultant:
This conflicts with the requirements of screen reader users and those without image support. The majority of websites use the logo to link back to the home page. If they do then the user needs to be told this is the case so we should opt for [Brand Name home page] instead.

There are two other minor reasons why we shouldn't use the term 'logo' in the image alt text.

1. By using the term ‘logo’ we are effectively classing the image as there for visual purposes only. What relevance does a logo have to a blind person?

2. SEO itself dictates that we use a clear natural description of the content a link leads to. The logo is not linking to the logo, it is linking to the home page, so why would we want to confuse search engines by telling them we are linking to the brand logo?

We never fully resolved this 'hot topic', but after careful consideration here's where I stand:

1. If the logo links back to the home page then ALWAYS use ‘Brand Name home page’ for the alt attribute as this correctly informs the user of the link destination.

2. If there is a genuine reason to want to be at the top of searches for logos then suggest they create a page especially for the logo - it could include a high resolution version, the story behind it, it's previous incarnations. SEO can be applied to this page in the same way as any other page on the site. This would offer better SEO of the term 'Brand Name logo] for both image and non-image searches. It would also result in a more relevant search result for users searching for the logo.

Another largely debated topic was about ‘hidden’ content, e.g. content positioned off screen using CSS. We are not sure whether this will be viewed by Google as ‘spamming’ and so be detrimental to SEO.

We certainly hope it doesn’t as this could be a real problem if it does. There are many legitimate reasons for hidden content, e.g. tabbed content, hidden accessibility navigation, hidden field labels, and modern web design these legitimate reasons will continue to grow.

We decided we don’t have enough information to determine this. We are going to take a look at some web logs, see if Google spiders CSS and JS files then take it from there. Will keep you posted...

WCAG2 the easy way

2009-04-30T09:39:00Z

The W3C checklist is, quite frankly, one of the most complicated things I’ve ever come across. At first glance they seem simple, dig a little deeper and you will find yourself lost in a sea of text - WCAG 2.0 checklist

WebAIM to the rescue: they’ve created a simplified version of the list, it covers all the checkpoints, but they are grouped and reworded to make it easier to understand and implement - WebAIM's WCAG 2.0 checklist

Up up and away goes single A

2009-04-30T09:36:00Z

As you’re probably aware WCAG 2.0 are now the ‘official’ guidelines for accessibility, WCAG 1.0 is no more.

The major benefit to us, the developers, is that things don’t need to work when JavaScript is disabled – however ALL dynamic content needs to be accessible and understandable by assistive technologies. Also, your SEO friends will still want all the site content to be available without JavaScript so that the spiders can crawl all over it.

The major draw back, in my opinion, is that there is one requirement that will trip us up every time. This requirement is for video content to have synchronised captions, in WebAIM's words:

“Synchronized captions are provided for non-live, web-based video (YouTube videos, etc.)”

Unfortunately I can’t see us being able to convince the majority of our clients to go to this effort so there goes our Single A rating!

Three Peak Challenge Briefing

2008-03-27T17:46:00Z

I went to a 3 Peaks briefing session yesterday evening. In brief, it consisted of 2 presentations.

The first was one Care International, the work they do, they way they operate, fund raising ideas and the support they can give us throughout the weeks leading up to the event. This presentation was both inspiring and unnerving. Inspiring because the work they do truly is amazing. Unnerving because it was a bit of a reality shock – we have about 10 weeks left to raise £1000 each and get into shape.

The second was about the event itself, what to expect before each walk (bag checks, safety talks, etc.), working as a team, how gruelling it’s going to be. Again, this talk was quite unnerving – we really do have some training to do. Personally I need to give up the cigarettes today, get myself on the step machine and start cycling to work again!

It's going to be hard, we only have ten weeks left, but I know we can all do it!!!

If you're feeling generous and would like to help kick start our sponsorship funds then you can do so here:

http://www.justgiving.com/conchango3peaks

We need to raise £18,000 so please give generously!!!

How tall is a Smurf?

2008-03-26T14:29:00Z

I bet we've all got a little drunk and texted the textperts to see if we can stump them with a stupid question. Well, I thought I had until I woke up the next day to find their answer... which was not only correct, but showed brilliant customer service by ending the exchange with a humorous and personal touch.

What follows is the complete exchange between 66000 and myself:

Me: what is the weirdest question you've been asked

66000: We get asked many strange questions, including do sheep shrink when they get wet (A: No) and how tall is a smurf (A: 3.5 apples)

Me: I travel 350 apples south, 100 smurfs east, 35 apples & 90 smurfs west. I'm back where I started. Where am I?

66000: The smurfs live in houses made from mushrooms or houses that just look like mushrooms (often built from stone).

Me: I am not satisfied with my answer. Earlier I was told the height of a smurf is equal to 3.5 apples. Using your own pre-defined smurf to apple ratio can you tell me the only place on earth I could be that would fulfill the criteria of my previous question?

66000: We received 'travel 350 apples south, 100 smurfs east, 35 apples & 90 smurfs north'? No charge

Me: Correct. So using your smurf to apple ratio I travel 100 smurfs south then 100 smurfs west then 100 smurfs north and end up in the same place I started - where am I? (It may be easier if you think of a smurf as a unit of distance). P.S. this is not a trick question, it just requires lateral thinking.

66000: You're at the North Pole. Hope you're dressed up warm or your skin will turn the colour of a smurf!

Internet Explorer 8 - Protect your sites

2008-03-20T17:50:00Z

It's old news by now, but in case you hadn't heard: IE8 beta has been released.

A new version of Internet Explorer normally causes us Interface Developers to recoil in horror in the sure knowledge that our painstaking efforts to make our sites pixel perfect will be made null and void practically overnight.

Thankfully the nice people at Microsoft have listen to our desperate pleas and stories of woe - this time there's an easy solution to protect the visual integrity of your websites.

The fix is simple, just add the following code to the top of each page on your website and you'll force Internet Explorer to use the IE7 rendering engine, thus keeping your site looking as perfect as the day it was born.

Leave this snippet in place until IE8 is in a stable release and it's penetration warrants you testing and revising the code for IE8.

Whilst you've got the hood open you may want to check you usage of Internet Explorer's conditional comments, specifically those you've targeted at IE7 and above. The code you've dropped in there probably won't be applicable to IE8 so it may be wise to change them to specifically target IE7 instead, i.e.:

<!--[if IE 7]>

Some code for Internet Explorer 7 code

<![endif]-->