Mattie Landenberg (@mattienodj) discusses the latest features on Charles Proxy
In February, the Chicago HTML5 Meetup presented a mix of web development tools in a gathering called Show and Tell: Tools for UX, Design, and Development. Each presenter offered a brief overview featuring tools such as Charles, Table XI, and Autoprefixer.
Chicago HTML5 has fast become a popular group with web developers in the Chicago area. The group shares information on new platforms and coding techniques, with guest speakers covering a range of HTML5 related topics.
Here are a few highlights from the presentations.
Charles
Charles is probably the most web analytics related solution, given its frequent mention alongside Fiddler as diagnostic tools. Mattie Landenberg (@mattienodj), the meet up organizer and director of technology at Hy Connect, shared a terrific overview on Charles features that can make web development easier.
Charles has a feature called Blacklist, which ignores certain calls to the server. This feature can be useful for testing a page performance while ignoring server calls.
Charles also permits throttling, manipulating the speed of your simulation. So at say 700KB, developer can see how a page loads a few files at a time. This is particularly useful for mobile development and focusing on
There is a map local and remote feature, meant for testing code rewrite URL on a remote server. Another feature is Mirror, designed to grab local copies of assets as well as l record website assets into folders and files.
Mobile Prototyping - Alternaties to Balsamiq
Balsamiq has long been a serviceable choice for a wireframe. Mark Rickmeier of Table XI notes that its status as one of the earlier sketch tools overlooks the experience bases of users. Thus Mark gave the most interesting highlight, demonstrating how there is not one good tool for every user.
He provided an overview of alternatives based on the persona of professionals who need to condor user experience in their digital assets planning. He came up with three personas of users and matched a tool with each persona.
Annie, the business professional who pitches app ideas (design side over build side). For this persona, Mark recommended Proto.io (mimic interactions and a mobile experience) and Flint
Rachel the entrepreneur who has funding but is not from a tech environment. An example to demonstrate a wire framing alternative Balsamiq / POP (prototyping on paper)
Finally, there is Ed, the mobile developer. For him, Xcode is a comfort. Thus Testflight is a useful wireframe solution.
Other highlights
Mike Gibson, also from Table XI, reviewed Autoprefixer, a parse for CSS file. Other solutions noted in the presentations shown include Screenhero for screen sharing and Slack, a chatroom platform. For those with a hankering for data, a Github link to Divvy bicycle data was also provided.
What are the management challenges that can occur with analytics? Much of it stems from human error and assumptions that cumulatively can hinder valuable results and decisions.
1. Misalignment of goals
Go back over the original purpose for a site and review why it exists. The site should reflect the core reasons for what your business provides. It also serves as an anchor for what augments the products and services – apps, content information, and the social media that compliments it. So given all that is in the site, does the web analytics goals selected support a key strategy for the business? If not, make an adjustment to the tags.
2. Poor understanding of what is needed
This is reflected in poor metrics selection. One metric is sometimes not enough to describe an objective. Considered how an objective can be described in a combination of other metrics or as a rate over relevant time periods. Try to develop questions around two or more metrics to gain a story about what behavior is happening on a site. Examine reports like multichannel and traffic flow to see what could be influencing site decisions.
3. Poor tool usage
This can stem from misunderstanding metrics, as well as misunderstanding a tool's capability and underinvesting in the analyst. Silo a department without interaction with business operations can lead to misuse of a tool. Spreadsheets can be nortious for this. Individual spreadsheets contained errors and multiple versions of the truth.
4. Politics
Are you truly implementing steps to improve a website? Managers must make time to review and be proactive with implementing solutions, otherwise value is lost because the information is left in a "silo" with no action behind the data. Businesses can not silo analytic reporting and expect success.
In Competing on Analytics, business intelligence and analytics expert Thomas Davenport noted four characteristics that are within any company competing on analytics:
Analytics must be applied judiciously, with an eye to be continually renewed. Davenport stated it best - "Without a distinctive capability (what you do to set your business apart), it becomes impossible to compete and distinguish what data is important."
The video below was created for UBM Tech's site Business Agility (sponsored by IBM). The site, a perspective on business technology that analysts and managers face, went dark about a year ago, but much of the material remains relevant.
This video examines the importance of analytics, but from a perspective of business structure. Analytics impacts how your business operates. The iterative nature of analytics creates an opportunity to manage resources and tools. These operations can then be optimized for growing a business vs. mere acquiring a business. Looking at the leaders in retail and technology give evidence that analytics, when launched properly, can provide the right boost for a business.
What do think managers should focus upon to strengthen their tool set? Share your thoughts here on Zimana blog.
For years, specialty Nike basketball shoes, such as Air Jordans, are introduced during the NBA All-Star break weekend. "Sneakerheads" - show enthusiasts - line up at local athletic retailers, creating a high demand. But in the age of social media, is this tradition really necessary? There have been instances where customers have been too violent in acquiring a limited edition shoe. While this means attention for Nike, one has to ask if this is the right attention given that social media provides a means to have a conversation with a specific audience.
Watch this video, recorded in 2012 just after the All Star break, and share your comments on the site below.
This All Analytics video, recorded in Brooklyn during 2011, covers how hashtags influence analytic strategy. There are also other tips available for hashtag ideas. Check out this Zimana blog post for researching hashtags and for ideas on how hashtags influence your social media strategy.
In the meantime, feel free to comment at the All Analytics YouTube account, where you'll find other posts on advanced analytics topics.
This Audi Chicago Auto Show display reflects the growing importance of hashtags. Audi used this display to guide attendees to comment on its vehicles. Here you see an enthusiastic attendee commenting on the R8, Audi's exclusive high-powered sports car.
Hashtags are becoming the "black" for social media - a desirable feature used to enhance a social media message. Though recently introduced in Pinterest, Instagram, and Facebook, hashtags have been around a while. Sometimes they are used blatantly - witness the flashing tags in the Robin Thicke's controversial Blurred Lines video - and other times they are subtle, like appearing in the corner of a television show.
Most importantly, from a business perspective, hashtags are becoming the means in which customers research products and services. Buffer noted in a collection of surprising Twitter facts that tweets with hashtags gain twice the amount of engagement.
If your small business is looking to use hashtags more consistently, the first step is understanding the conversation surrounding a desired hashtag topic. To learn what is being said and shared, give the tools listed below a try and see how they reveal hashtag usage to your communication plans.
Topsy provides a breakdown of results by media and time period - handy for refining the understanding of a hashtag usage
A site to certainly check out is Topsy.com. The excellence of this tool is its ability to divide results by links, tweets, photos, videos and influencers. It can detail results according to past time period, so recency can be included as a factor in the results.
Twubs permit users to follow a hashtag in real time. Enter the desired hashtag in the search bar and a live feed of all tweets using that hashtag will appear. You can also select the feed speed that you want and post messaged with that hashtag directly from the feed page on the hashtag chat.
BackTweets is a very basic search engine site meant to display historical mentions of a word, hashtag, TwitterID, or URL mention. Backtweet results can compliment search results in Twitter, Hootsuite, Sprout Social, and other Twitter-related applications.
This Hshtags page displays how search results can be incorporated into a list. This capability allows the user to track multiple responses and discover followers of a given hashtag phrase.
This hashtag-dedicated social media engine is in its initial beta as of this writing, but it does offer surprising and outstanding functionality. First, it can aggregate hashtag usage across the major social media platforms, so a comparison of Instagram usage can be alongside Twitter. You can also create lists according to interest. You can then use that comparison to tailor a “to do” list of text to use in your hashtags, tweets, and shared content.
This real-time hashtag intelligence tool provides charts and graphics, as well as numbers of tweets and retweets, reach, impressions and other details that will help you get more insight into the success of your hashtag.
Hashtags.org also provides some hashtag tracking, although for more in-depth analytics you’ll need to be a paid member.
Bottlenose is more akin to Hootsuite, Tweetdeck, and Postling as a social media dashboard than a search engine like Hashtracking. It gives users data that reflects an overview of an owned social media channel. But it does have a unique sonar feature that permits users to discover other hashtags associated to the ones already used in a Twitter account.
Combining Bottlenose with any of the aforementioned tools should provide a thorough review of what related hashtags are worth your time.
