Key headlines

• We are not gathering any more information – we are changing the way we gather and apply this information
• We are synchronising and unifying how we use information across all the data platforms including our core platforms as well as third-party
• The revised policy is being implemented on May the 1st
• We’ll never sell or pass-on your information without your permission

Privacy policies are updated on myBookingWizard.com and on Connected-uk.com

Since the last privacy ruling in 2003 the key change is:

• OLD : You must provide the option for users to opt out of cookies being stored on their device, changes to
• NEW : You must obtain consent for cookies to be stored on a users’ of subscribers device

It is interesting to note that the original ruling has been in place for over 8 years yet almost no site actually complied with this ruling. The ICO and EU have not provided specific processes for companies to follow, nor have they really provided much in the way of solid guidance.

What areas are going to be affected?

Most web assets make extensive use of cookies for a number of key functions.

• Analytics, conversion and performance reporting
• Function of the web-site
• Split testing

Exceptions

Not all cookies will require explicit consent.

• A cookie to remember goods and services for the purposes of “checking out”, ala e-commerce.
• A cookie that is used as part of the 7th Data Protection principle which states “Appropriate technical and organisational measures shall be taken against unauthorised or unlawful processing of personal data and against accidental loss or destruction of, or damage to, personal data.”
• Cookies that speed the loading of the page up by distributing the workload amongst a number of web-servers.

It should be noted that there is very specific reference to “Cookies used to recognise a user and give them tailored content”. This is NOT a permitted exception.

Timeline

The initial position is that everyone must be 100% compliant by May 25th 2012. This has, however, softened over time with the recent statement “There will not be a wave of knee-jerk formal enforcement action taken against people who are not yet compliant but trying to get there” coming out of the ICO

Misinformation

A whole industry is springing up around this date and most (all?) are using a fear/uncertainty/doubt close that entails a lot of scaremongering. Ignore most of it. With 4 months to go some are scaremongering with headlines like “Websites face £500k fine for breaching ‘cookie’ law“.

It is worth noting that there are larger fines available to the ICO, but this applies to all outbound marketing activities covered by the revised Privacy and Electronic Communications Regulations and that definitely effects other activities covered by most organisations in such areas as unwanted emails and text.

Be also aware that some sites who initially (over)reacted to the new privacy rules have now softened their stance, presumably as it was having such an adverse affect on business.

It is also worth noting that hosting and operating outside of the EU won’t get round the problem if you want to supply goods and services into the UK (wow, that sounds like a minefield!). And finally, there are some differences in how this will apply in different EU states but the difference are far less than the similarities.

Effect on third-party systems (reporting and analytics, mostly)

It is also to be noted that the only site (of note) using the explicit system is the ICO site and they have seen a dramatic drop in the number of recorded visitors to the site. This drop has come about as less than 9% of visitors agree to the policy.

This is not to say that the overall traffic has fallen, far from it. Some reports suggest that the traffic to the ICO has tripled since the announcement.

This is, I believe, an issue that the various analytics and reporting providers should be providing a solution to now. We are already starting to see the effects of privacy as Google now scrambles around 30% of search terms, making them invisible to the web-site and therefore analytics and reporting.

The simplest answer is to adopt a cookie free tracking system with some hybrid cookie solution to sample user information. It’s pretty easy to do and provides, in most cases, a lot information. This can be done via Javascript or Apache log analysis.

However, for some, the user journey, mapping and conversion requires a way to recognise visitors and this is mostly provided via a cookie. It doesn’t have to but many folks are seduced by the allure of recording every (?) customer journey. Not really sure why they need to record every person’s journey, a 10% sample should probably do the trick nicely.

Effect on first-party systems

I would suggest the following should not directly be affected:

• Any system that can conclusively show it need cookies to provide data security, this should include login systems and services that store personal information.
• Transaction-based applications that require the use of a cookie to store data in between stages, much like e-commerce or online booking. A system that would be rendered inoperable by the absence of cookies.

Cookies are typically bad:

• in profiles to recognise different users
• in testing different content to different users
• to pre-popolute fields on the site based on previously entered information
• in remembering logins into secure systems (including forums)
• in taster-type applications that show user-journey specific content
• in sales stages display applications
• country selectors

So what now?

So there is not a threat of legal action if you are following the advice to achieve compliance. Interpreting the guidance, this suggests that by May you should have:

• Audited your current use of cookies.
• Updated privacy messages on your site to reference use of cookies.
• Implemented or be working on implementing a method of offering opt-in to cookies.

The first two items are pretty straightforward but the last one is more troublesome.

This also gives you the opportunity to test some of the solutions in a conventional A/B test environment, whilst you can. This is different to normal testing where we are looking for a (confidence probable) winner but a test to explicitly measure the drop in conversion rates.

However, if the press reaction to the EU Policy is good then there is an argument that overt cookie compliance or overly public displays of privacy (sound odd, I know) could actually increase the effectiveness of the web-site – but that a subject for another day.

• 57% of visitors will abandon a website if the waiting time reaches 3 seconds
• Between 1995 and 2010, the average web page grew from 14k with 2.3 objects to 484k with 75 objects
• In 2009, Shopzilla became the poster child for web performance when it shaved almost 5 seconds from its page load times and increased revenue by 7-12%
• Amazon reported that 100ms improvement in speed gave a 1% increase in performance
• In 2008, Yahoo! reported that making pages just 400 milliseconds slower resulted in a traffic drop of up to 9%.

That’s pretty staggering and, in most cases, is an easy fix by cutting down files sizes, optimising code and reducing the amount or superfluous imagery. There are competing pressures coming from our “better connected” web. For example the Google +1 button and the Facebook Like button add over one second of load time to your page, according to a recent research study by TagMan, a tag management and acceleration company.

To complicate things further, Google for years has been telling anyone who will listen that website speed is as an important factor in determining rankings. “One of the 10 things we hold to be true here at Google is that fast is better than slow. We keep speed in mind in all things that we do, and the +1 button is no exception,” according to a post published this week on Google’s Webmaster Central Blog.

It is widely preached that page load speed should be under the magic 2-second mark and Google will normally reward this speed with a better ranking. It is then a little surprising that almost half of the top 500 online retailers exceed THREE seconds. Mad.

Almost all of the approaches to speeding the site up will involve a technical understanding of what’s going on to deliver your web-site so it’s a subject to raise with your web development agency.

If you have any questions about supporting older browsers in the future then please contact Andy Holland.

All the major software players have been cutting down on old browser support and we are joining them in an attempt to rid the world of crappy old and insecure browsers.

Many people mistakenly believe that contracts are only useful in the event of a dispute, but this is not true. A good contract can save you time, money, stress, and even improve your sales opportunities and your brand image.

Oftentimes, employers are branded as “unreasonable” because the employee felt obliged to spend unplanned time on the job that they could not bill for.

Some common reasons for this extra unscoped work are:

• The client changed her mind about the project requirements
• The client extended the scope of the project beyond the brief
• The client asked for a “tweak” without understanding the ramifications
• The client expected services that the freelancer had not originally intended to provide
• The client has not provided the required information needed to complete something
• The client has been slow in approving drafts despite impending deadlines
• The client asked for something to be finished earlier than the original deadline
• Disputes and spending unplanned (and, thus, unbillable) time working for “unreasonable clients” result in lost profit, having less time to spend on getting new work (e.g., opportunity costs), and stress.

Amazingly, even when you have bent over backwards to avoid a dispute — and despite all that extra effort — your business and reputation can also be damaged because, in the minds of the client, you’re the one being unreasonable!

In these circumstances — from a commercial perspective, at least — it makes sense to view both disputes and unreasonable clients in the same way: do our best to avoid them.

So, how do we do that?

Managing the expectations of our clients up-front and giving the client clear options to extend the scope of the work — by agreement and subject to appropriate changes in the price and agreed timelines — are the keys to avoiding disputes and doing unpaid work.

This can be done most easily with a bespoke and well-written set of contract documents. Accordingly, a contract is not something which is only useful in the event of a dispute. Rather, it is an invaluable weapon in your fight to eliminate (or at least minimize) time-and-profit-stealers such as unscoped work.

To reduce the risk of misunderstandings and to reduce the opportunity for the client to develop unrealistic expectations, your contact must clearly state:

• What you will do for a client
• What they must do for you
• What is included and excluded from the project
• How much additional work outside of the scope will cost
• Many web designers already produce detailed price quotes and yet still spend a great deal of time doing large amounts of unpaid work for unreasonable clients.

Why?

Firstly, because they know their company inside out and upside down, it sometimes simply doesn’t occur to them that a client might have a different viewpoint.

Indeed, our view of what it is reasonable for us to be expected to provide and what falls outside the scope of the original agreement may be significantly different from that of the client’s.

For example, a web designer may be expecting to produce a couple of design mockups for his client to choose from. The designer may expect the client to register the domain name, provide a suitable logo for the web design, and submit all copy and photos to be used for the final product.

However, the client’s expectations may be far removed from that, and may think the project will include copywriting, marketing, SEO, and so forth.

This conflict of expectations between both parties is what leads to problematic projects.

Many employers have no comprehension of the time it takes to create a good website. A simple “tweak” in their mind might seriously put the project’s budget and timelines in jeopardy.

Secondly, whilst many price quotes state what is included in the project’s fees, they often fail to indicate how changes to the original brief will be dealt with, or how delays caused by the client (e.g., failing to approve drafts or provide information) will impact timelines and costs.

And thirdly, documentation is often written in a technical, convoluted and confusing style which may not be understood by the client. The contract may sometimes even be “borrowed” from another organization, and, as a result, may not even reflect the actual working practices of the business using it.

When the expectations of both parties have not been properly managed, they begin to drift apart. And when the client demands more of the designer than she expected to give, there are only two likely outcomes: Either the designer accommodates the client — and makes much less profit than originally planned — or the parties fall out and the client tells everyone he knows how “difficult” his web designer was.

Wouldn’t it be better, therefore, for the web designer to be in a position where he could say to his client, “Of course, I’m more than happy to do that additional work for you, and the charge for that will be [insert fee here], as set out in our contract”?

We all want to provide a good service to our clients, and there are times when we will be happy to do additional work without charge. However, clients and web designers benefit from thoroughly understanding the process they are embarking on, and setting clear ground rules for situations requiring a deviation from the original plan.

As well as providing additional sales opportunities, planning for these things up front also gives you the security and confidence you need to be assertive where appropriate.

The extra precautions at the start of a project means fewer “unreasonable” clients, more profit and less stress. What’s not to like?

Originally taken from Margaret Burrell’s excellent article on Six Revisions.

Forms

For the last 8 years, forms in their many shapes and sizes have been the thorn in my paw. Lack of native error handling has meant getting a form to check it has the right data before carrying visitors to the next stage required Javascript or back-end solutions, which is highly inefficient requiring more hours from a project budget to implement. HTML5 now allows us front-end folks to build this functionality right in at the same time as applying the design. So when a form is built, it’s going to validate first time right from the outset. Brilliant!

Better for accessibility

HTML5 features some new semantic coding practices which help us to maintain clean and fast HTML code but also builds in functionality which can help people using assistive technologies to view websites. When coding up a content section of a site, it would usually be marked with an id which helps identify it. The problem here is the id can be anything and with thousands of people coding HTML across the globe, there’s a whole range of varying possibilities. With HTML5, there’s now a way to appropriately name a content section using WAI-ARIA, effectively a set of rules which define certain areas on a site (header, nav, content etc) allowing for more consistent coding practices.

Set up for mobile

Mobile browsing is continuously gathering pace and smartphones are leading the way. Phones with no built in keyboards have the ability to taylor the keyboard depending on what it is being used for. HTML5 embraces this ability and allows us to define our forms for the visitors. An email form input will show the email keyboard with quick access to common symbols like ‘@’, telephone form inputs show the telephone keypad etc. This simple yet powerful functionality makes forms on smartphones much easier to fill out, which could well be the difference between a visitor filling a CTA out while on the move and leaving your site, never to return.

These are three very brief examples of how HTML5 can help improve websites and there’s a lot more to be had. The web is moving towards exciting times……

Only Guinness is (officially) allowed so it might get quite messy and we all have to wear some item of green. Starting promptly at 5pm.

Green food dye is allowed, nay encouraged, to make it a more colourful day. No doubt some embarrassing photos will make it onto here in due course.

*Note: the management of Connected in no way condones the excessive drinking of alcohol and would direct the staff to a specific clause in our office lease which prohibits the consumption of alcohol on the premises or the playing of loud music. No specific mention is made of  Irish dancing but I suspect that might come under the title of “immoral activities”.

This is what it’s web-site says about the approach.

“Our members play the most important role developing and shaping giffgaff into what it is and where it’s going. Not only do our members do a great job of running the forums, inspiring the community, and generally spreading the good word of giffgaff far and wide, they’ve also given us our best ideas, from how they want their mobile network run, to what they want in the future.

Have you got an idea? Share it with our community here”

It’s a fascinating experiment and if you dig a little deeper you will find it’s 100% funded by O2 and although they have been accused of being a little less than entirely open and transparent, the basic premise is right. Why do you need a marketing department chocked full of expensive people making sweeping decisions about products, services and price-points when you can gather together a real community of real people and let them tell you what they want (you will note that I didn’t say “ask them what they want”) and how much they are prepared to pay for it. Better still, the community should come up with good ideas, for free(ish).

Run very much along the lines of local government in the US, Giffgaff have a manifesto which they adhere to and is unique. By sharing the profit via a pretty good rewards programme they encourage the word to be spread and also get regular people in the street to help with technical, community and service problems.

I predict we’ll see a lot of this style of organisations starting up in the next few years. Critically, this gives lots of space to move in; different versions of the GiffGaff model would work in the same mobile phone space as each community has differing needs so naturally evolves to meet he needs of the majority.

Better still would be the introduction of portability inbetween these (non)competitors. The mobile phone needs of people as they change over time; students needs are different to mature adults, families and grand-parents so either the model follows it’s community as they change as stays put and hands off smoothly consumers as their need change.

The answer, it seems, was to selectively test different covers so regular subscribers got the in-depth Haiti image on the front whilst the regular versions on the newstands got the Weedmart version.

Online readership jumped 60%, probably drawn by the easy-to-read cannabis article. The testing story soon got picked up and that in it’s own right has no doubt generated traffic and sales for the magazine. Which just goes to show that sometimes HOW you do something can generate it’s own buzz.

1. Managing the build and delivery process might be new to you but is a well worn path for many others. Using a simple and low-cost collaborative project management tool such as Basecamp with some standard templates will make sure you have covered all your bases and ease the whole deployment process. I’m quite surprised when I see clients kicking-off new web projects with a blank Microsoft Project page; that is just about the most expensive and complicated way to run a web project.

2. Unless you are a tightly controlled international brand then consider buying a standard design template for a few hundred quid and then paying a good designer to evolve it to fit your needs. This can save tens of thousands of pounds in design costs and, typically, also has the benefit that the designs are usually turned into web-ready code.

3. Don’t design and build your own search. Add Google’s rather good site search engine to your site, it costs less than £200 for 50,000 searches. The results tend to be rather good and you have the additional benefit of some halo branding as Google allow the use of their logo. If you are being pikey, or just different then use Microsoft’s Bing Box which is free for the moment.

4. Use an off-the-shelf e-commerce system. Unless your entire business model is built around a different approach to e-commerce then use one of the myriads of solutions that just work. Costs start from free and go up to £1m+ so you’ll need to choose carefully and do aim for an application that has a combination of ease of use for visitors and ease of maintenance.

5. Finally, remember to test your new design against the old one – I assume you are looking for an improvement in performance so set a target, say a 10% increase in sales/enquiries/registrations and be harshly critical of the new design if it doesn’t match up.

If you want any pointers and ideas about how to speed up development, improve performance and reduce costs then drop us a line.