PushON Ltd » Web Design

Is it time to bury Internet Explorer (IE7) for good?

Ali Ashik — Wed, 27 Mar 2013 14:52:33 +0000

We’ve all been there. For the past couple of years it’s been a nightmare for us developers to spend hours either changing our CSS or HTML mark-up just so Internet Explorer 7 (IE7) can render our webpages correctly. Since the launch of IE7 back in 2006, web technologies and web standards have changed significantly. Whenever I develop websites for clients, I usually don’t have any problems in regards to testing it cross browser, 98% of the time my websites work seamlessly on pretty much all the modern browsers until I’m asked to test it on IE7.

It is understood that most developers (including myself) still optimise websites for IE7, simply because there happens to be a small minority of users who still use that browser. Latest stats as of February 2013 show that usage of IE7 has dropped to less than 4% globally. The question we need to ask is, is it still worth putting in the effort to optimise websites for IE7 for this minority of users?

Based on my previous experience, it takes an enormous amount of time to make a website or web application optimised for IE7. Due to these problems, and the very small percentage of people who even use the browser, it doesn’t make it worthwhile as far as time, effort and money is concerned. Yes, it would be nice to have a website that is compatible with all browsers, but what are the chances of your visitors (target audience) accessing your website using IE7?

Why should we stop optimising for IE7?

Big name websites such as Google and Facebook officially announced last year that they no longer support older browsers like IE7 because they don’t have the capabilities to handle today’s modern web browsing needs. Google has urged people to update their browsers for a better and safer browsing experience. Facebook’s timeline has been completely phased out from IE7. When users visit their Facebook profile page they won’t see the timeline, but instead will be presented with the old profile page.

Some ecommerce websites have even started charging an ‘IE7 tax’. Australian retailer www.kogan.com was one of the first websites to come up with the idea of charging their users with an extra 6.8% tax. The website detects when visitors are using IE7 and issues a pop-up warning about the tax if the users purchasing goods from their website. The purpose of this approach is to encourage their users to upgrade to a modern browser for a better browsing experience of their website, thus avoiding the extra charge at the same time.

Why are people still using IE7?

One of the biggest reasons people are still stuck with IE7 is because some of them are still using Microsoft’s older operating systems. IE7 came pre-installed when Windows Vista was first launched in 2006, an operating system that many PC owners still use. Microsoft has also used several methods in an attempt to get its users to upgrade, but some organisations find it very expensive and time consuming to get all of their PC’s upgraded to modern standards. Most importantly it is our fault as developers as in the past we have spent hours optimising websites for IE7. This has only encouraged IE7 users to continue their browsing experience with IE7.

What can we do encourage users to upgrade their browsers?

We can use similar tactics like the Australian retailer “Kogan”.
Create landing pages that can detect if the users are using IE7 and provide them with a warning and upgrade solution.
Use badges and small banners somewhere on your website to encourage users to upgrade. Last year a website called “The IE7 Countdown” launched to dedicate the countdown of IE7. They provide code snippets that can be easily embedded on your website to display tiny badges and banners. www.theie7countdown.com

I think it is time to stop spending unnecessary time fixing IE7 bugs and instead using that time to do something more productive.

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Magento Certified Developers in Manchester

Pedrom Pourkashanian — Mon, 28 Jan 2013 10:00:31 +0000

As Magento Silver Partners and diligent employers we made a commitment to staff training. PushON are proud to announce that Sam Rutley and Humayun Khalid have passed the Magento Certified Developer certification, joining an exclusive group of Magento Certified Developers in the UK.

PushON have been working with Magento for over three years and in 2011 joined their partner program as a Magento Silver Partners, delivering Magento Enterprise builds to clients, including Bench Clothing.

We have another two Magento developers undergoing the on demand Fundamentals of Magento Development training in preparation for the Magento Certified Developer exam.

The exam consists of 70 questions, and takes approximately 1.5 hours to complete. More information on the certification and resources can be found on the Magento website.

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Using Javascript to speed up CSS changes

Dave Sims — Thu, 22 Nov 2012 16:33:32 +0000

Whenever building new sites, adding CSS to a site is always quite a long and tedious process, whether it be having to try different things out in Chrome’s inspect tool and then copying and pasting across to our stylesheet and saving the changes, or using a specific CSS program such as Stylizer, these changes all mount up and you no doubt end up missing one change and then spending the next period of time working out what you have missed or you will get sick and tired of having to swap back and forth between your browser and your text editor.

I have been using a new piece of Javascript that seems to have this all covered though. It listens out for changes in your CSS document and then will refresh the page automatically to show these changes. It is a great way to speed up styling a new site as well as for small bug fixes. The plugin has been developed by http://cssrefresh.frebsite.nl/ and is a simple case of copying their code and inserting a link just underneath your css file in the header. It doesn’t rely on having any other framework installed and works straight off.

They do also have a Bookmarklet that you can install in your browser too that will work in the same way, but personally I would prefer to include it myself.

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Threaded Comments – The only way to go for effective commenting and engagement in my opinion

Roy Wilding — Wed, 14 Nov 2012 14:10:16 +0000

Just noticed the good people over at Modern English tweet out this story about Facebook testing threaded comments.

It was a timely tweet as it’s something that’s been bugging me about Google+ for a while. I just can’t understand why it’s not standard to all commenting systems, social networks and/or blog platforms because for me anything other than threaded comments makes no sense.

When we’re in social situations we don’t queue up one after the other to make a comment. Conversations are organic and they jump about. People want to comment on the originating statement; others want to comment on comments and conversations fragment and spin off and wonderful things happen.

Socially Conversations Fragment and Naturally Thread

Having a linear commenting system just doesn’t represent real life social situations and conversations get stunted and/or disjointed so anyone joining the conversation at any point other than within the first few comments has a very difficult time joining in and probably doesn’t bother.

Here’s a good example on Google+ of a post where a good amount of people buy into the subject and start a conversation https://plus.google.com/100535338638690515335/posts/6f4muBXyGPe

Google+ Comments – Using usernames to attempt to join up the conversation

Louis Gray sparks a conversation up about a new Acer Chromebook and people begin to comment. There are various issues discussed within the comments made including price point, the OS and battery life but it’s hard to follow because it’s fragmented. There are people attempting to thread the conversation by responding directly to comments with users Google+ names but the conversation still becomes a jigsaw puzzle of some complexity for anyone arriving late.

Visually, threaded commenting can be difficult to represent but it’s a key area that social networks should put in effort. If topics from break off threads within conversations can be identified and made clear then I believe conversations will go on longer and more users will join the discussion.

Does anyone have any examples where they think threaded comments is working particularly well due to the functionality and/or way they’re visually represented?

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SAScon 2012: Increasing Site Engagement

Laura Swain — Fri, 18 May 2012 20:51:33 +0000

SAScon Conference 2012, Manchester – Day 2

Morgan McKeagney – IQ Content

Paul Rourke – PRWD

Craig Sullivan – Belron International

Simon Williams – Carat

What is engagement and what can site creators do to encourage it?

Things they can put in place to ensure that people stick around for more than 30 seconds.

Different things to keep them interested – content to spark curiosity and encourage them to spend time

Taking steps to build momentum

Levels and nature of engagement needed is determined by KPIs

Engagement is only one metric: from this measurement alone you cannot gauge level of engagement or quality of user experience

Example 1: Ling’s Cars

From face value it looks like a cluttered and off-putting site.

The creator has opted for the ‘Marmite effect’ – and in fact this eCommerce site is incredibly successful.

An opposite of the classic ‘user friendly’ site – but it can be considered persuasive in its eccentricity.

It delivers a unique brand experience – engagement comes from the personality of the brand.

She has created a memorable experience – and despite first impressions – it works well in terms of service.

Metrics prove a 10 of out 10 rating on ‘visitor engagement’.

Example 2: MonkeyFish Marketing

Keywords and standard SEO elements are there but users are bombarded with content.

The huge phone number and ‘Talk with us Today’ call to action come across as a ‘hard sell’.

Although this critique comes from first impressions and not from a detailed analysis of metrics and customer base.

Example 3: SimplyBe

Prominence of search facility – Primary navigation promotes key messages (such as ‘free delivery) which falls in line with other eCommerce sites particularly in the fashion industry

Plus size clothing – SimplyBe are going through a transitional phase and making steps to incorporate social media

The added Facebook plug-in on the homepage has tripled the ‘likes’ (since they moved from a like button).

Morgan recommends some experimentation with various methods but not compromising the ‘real estate’ of the home page.

The ASOS site (as an example of another fashion eCommerce site) has stripped away a lot of choice. You either get drawn deeper into the site or you leave.

Reminder that if you change any element of your website you HAVE to test it.

Before you Begin….

Engagement is about emotion – “likeability” – what are the emotional triggers of the audience?

How can we create the experience and what techniques can we employ to get positive reactions from design/content etc..?

Customer research is a vital starting point – asking questions such as “what content do you want to see?”.

Taking heed of the “voice of the customer” and insights gleaned from research.

Website design can be too formulaic – doggedly sticking to a template without taking into consideration the customer’s needs and emotional triggers.

It is so important not to lose site of user base opinion.

Example 4: Quirk Marketing

Business message is not present on the homepage but navigation looks clear and simple.
The product has to be showcased to drive customer engagement.

Point made that this exercise (of critiquing various websites in this manner) is “terrible practice” or at the very least – an unfair assessment as we are not currently customers seeking any of the services offered on the sites.

Example 5: eConsultancy

Anyone who tells you “people don’t scroll down” they are wrong – this site works

Example 6: Contagious Magazine

So minimalist that you don’t know what it is about

Titles for news stories do not encourage you to click through – they do not tell you what the essence of the story is.

Questions and Answers:

Best Practice Techniques

You need to understand the business – its USPs and customer base.

Then you need to use the technology to bring these two elements together.
You must get clarity on both before you select the best mechanisms.

A lot of ‘best practice’ applies to shopping baskets, buying pages etc… not from the homepage design.

We should start thinking about mobile as our “primary entry for design” and then work from there (onto desktop).

Make transactions as simple as possible – “every other element is bespoke”.

Optimising for mobile is vital.

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Campaign Monitor API: PHP Wrapper, Error 400 Failed to deserialize

James Sims — Fri, 11 Mar 2011 14:21:36 +0000

Well here’s a problem that had me scratching my head for a few hours today. I integrated the Campaign Monitor API into a website for a client, by following the instructions here, only to find that it wouldn’t add a new subscriber even though the code I was using was correct.

It insited on giving me the following error:


Failed with code 400

object(stdClass)#117 (2) {

  ["Code"]=>

  int(400)

  ["Message"]=>

  string(112) "Failed to deserialize your request.

Please check the documentation and try again.

Fields in error: subscriber"

}
After trying about 15 ways of passing the data into the API, I posted on the forum and contacted the support team at Campaign monitor…and got no luck from either of these.
That means it was time to roll up my sleeves, get my hands dirty and see what makes this whole thing tick…
I found that the issue was the use of json_encode, which isn’t supported by PHP 5.1.6.
To resolve this, I added this custom json_encode function to the class/services_json.php file, and then modified the serialise function in class/serialisation.php to this:
function serialise($data) {

  if (phpversion() > "5.1.6")

    return json_encode(@CS_REST_SerialiserFactory::check_encoding($data));

  else

    //use the “compatibility mode” json_encode function instead

    return __json_encode(@CS_REST_SerialiserFactory::check_encoding($data));

}
Once this was done, everything worked as expected, so if you’re running anything less than PHP 5.2 and you’re having issues with the Campaign Monitor API you might want to give this a go.
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Google AdWords New Interface Usability

Katrina Gallagher — Wed, 20 May 2009 14:23:39 +0000

I love the new features, and it’s a great improvement on the old interface, but there’s one schoolboy usability error that I’ve just noticed:

Can you guess what I’m on about?

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What's Wrong With My Website?

Katrina Gallagher — Tue, 16 Dec 2008 18:56:12 +0000

You can do all the checking you like, but it’s quite likely that you will never find all the glitches that your users will find.

There are a number of ways you can keep up to date with issues with your site. I’ve added a list of some easy and cheap methods:

Track your error pages

Google Analytics is a free option, great for small businesses. If you modify your code on your error pages, you can check regularly for broken links and problem pages (these may even be broken links from other sites or links typed in by users).

With this knowledge, you can fix issues with your site, request that other sites linking to you update their links, or create some custom content that people seem to want to find.

Here’s a link to the instructions, Keemo has written up.

Check out your goal funnel

Here you can identify issues (not necessarily just errors), with your conversion path. This may uncover a particular problem page, which puts users off buying or signing up.

If you’re using Google Analytics, you can set this up quite easily by changing the settings and adding each url used for a purchase process. Other Analytics packages allow you to do this also.

Now, about that 10 page checkout process…

Monitor your server status

If you’ve got an advertising campaign on the go, it’s important to check for server outages. Sign up to something like Monatastic, which will send you an email every time you need to pause your advertising and kick the server.

Ask your users

You can install a couple of feedback tools which can ask your users about their experience of the site, or view what they do. Use ClickTale for videoing your users path, Google Talk Chatback to let them ask questions or talk to you, and 4Q to ask them how their experience was once they have finished.

More fantastic tips on fixing usability issues with your website here: Conversion Rate Experts.

Fresh eyes

Get someone else to look at it. Ask them to complete a set of tasks, and talk to them while they’re doing it. When you’ve designed a process, it’s obviously logical to you, but is it logical to everyone else?

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Freelance web creatives, make yourselves known!

Simon Wharton — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 14:28:48 +0000

If you are or know anyone who really understands web creative, can do really slick layout for us, or even virtuaffinity, to build rather special websites from, please make yourselves known. Contact us or drop a comment with links to your work here

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Full Blown WordPress CMS

Mark Mayne — Wed, 15 Oct 2008 08:57:01 +0000

WordPress is all to frequently viewed as a basic blogging package however the abundance of plugins and ease of use make it an ideal fully integrated CMS system. At Pushon we have recently done a rebuild and redesign for an industrial and home insulation company called Sprayseal. We found that using WordPress as a CMS was a real joy and believe its SEO friendly features will help Sprayseal perform well in the search engines.

At first we were slightly skeptical as we wanted to make use of stylish drop down menus and insert customisable video’s. Luckily we found some excellent plugins for such things. This is where WordPress really comes into its own. We used the Multi-Level Navigation plugin and also the Smart Youtube plugin. We found these gave us excellent results.

The other thing we were slightly concerned about was accessibility. We are strong believers in accessibility and wanted to ensure we could continue to deliver accessible sites. Fortunately WordPress doesn’t incorporate a lot of useless code in to a site. Although we have used WordPress as a full CMS before we found the updates in the new version to be extremely useful. The content restore feature especially. We are very pleased with the new design and if you ever need home or industrial insulation services give Sprayseal a try.

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