400 Bad request

Support is one of the most important parts of our service. The objective of the Help Center is to help customers as much as we can up front before they have to contact our support team.

How we approached the project

This was a great team effort utilising various expertise within the company.

• Identified problems with the existing Help Center by talking to customers and support.
• User tests on the existing Help Center.
• Looked at metrics behind the existing Help Center to see what pages users were using and looking for.
• Restructured the sitemap, user flows and information architecture.
• Put together a high fidelity prototype and ran customers through user tests to identify key issues.
• Ran a number of usability tests internally and externally.
• Reworded a lot of the copy and content to make it more readable and user friendly.
• Redesigned the UI with a fresh, modern look and feel.
• Marked up the HTML/CSS from scratch making use of SCSS, responsive design, HTML5 and CSS3.
• Better optimized the pages for search and included Google Site Search.
• Made lots of back end changes to help improve performance and user flows.
• Added more tracking for better metrics on how customers use the help center and what they search for so we can continue to iterate.

You can see the new Help Center in action here.

Old Help Center

New Help Center

I hope that by writing them down there’s more chance of me actually doing them.

Things I learned and put into practice in 2011

• Learned Haml and Sass for a couple of Rails projects
• Started using HTML5 Boilerplate
• Started making websites responsive
• Am now using HTML5 and CSS3 for every web project
• Learned how to deploy web apps with Capistrano
• Redesigned TweetNI
• Redesigned WebDesignire

Books read in 2011

• The Lean Startup
• Undercover UX Design
• Pro CSS for High Traffic Websites
• Inspired: How to Create Products Customers Love
• Prototyping
• Responsive Web Design

New software/apps for 2011

Some of these apps I had used before, but in 2011 I found myself becoming more reliant on them and working them into my daily routine.

• Axure for prototyping
• Evernote for taking notes (and sharing across multiple devices)
• OnePassword for remembering usernames/passwords
• Omnigraffle for wireframing and sitemaps
• Tripit for keeping track of travel plans

Goals for 2011

A look back at the goals I set this time last year.

1. Read more books
Success: I read a good few books.

2. Talk at more events
Fail: There were a few Barcamp and Bizcamp opportunities, but I struggled to find the time to commit to any.

3. Develop an iPhone app
Fail: Purchased “Beginning iPhone 4 Development” but struggled to get past the first chapter. Started looking at Appcelorator instead.

4. More side projects
Fail: Started off the year well by redesigning a couple of older projects, but didn’t get around to working on anything new.

5. Blog more
Success: Blogged more this year than I did last year.

Goals for 2012

1. Be more mobile focused
Kind of broad but comes down to designing/developing for mobile. Whether that’s native apps, html5 apps, responsive websites – who knows.

2. Release an iPhone app
Related to the first goal, I want the experience of developing an app from scratch, submitting it to the app store and seeing it go live.

3. Compete in a triathlon
I don’t own a race bike yet and can’t swim very far, but I figure I might have a go at it.

4. Snowboard
Just something I’ve always wanted to try.

5. Release at least 3 side projects
There are 46 items on my “Someday” list so at least 3 of them should be achievable.

What do you think, decent list?

A look at the 2010 list

These are the goals I set myself last year.

1. Bungee jump
Success: Jumped off the Goldeneye Dam in May (watch the video)

2. Be a yes man
Kinda: Think this just ended up in more trips to the pub. Maybe not such a good resolution.

3. Learn something new
Fail: Did some martial arts classes but didn’t keep at it. And my guitar just gathered more dust.

4. Attend an international conference
Success: Had the pleasure of attending SXSW in Austin, Texas.

5. Redesign this site
Success: Simplified it and it’s been a work in progress ever since.

6. Launch/design an iPhone app
Success: Designed and launched the Lookaly iPhone app (Ecliptic Labs did the hardcore development)

7. Review at least 1 book per month
Fail: Stopped reviewing books after a while, although I did listen to quite a lot of audio books.

8. Work with some really cool clients
Success: Of course I did.

Goals for 2011

I’m going to try and keep it simple and stick to some basic goals that are achievable. Most of them are sharpening things up. I spent too much time on the Xbox in 2010 and let a few things slip.

1. Read more books
I listen to audio books while at the gym but have too many unfinished or unopened books. Need to get back in the habit of reading. Would love to say I’ll read 12 books but I think 6 is more realistic.

2. Talk at more events
I shied away from a couple of barcamp/bizcamp talks this year mainly due to not being prepared. Would like to get better and more confident at public speaking so no excuses this year.

3. Develop an iPhone app
I want to have a stab at this, at least so I understand how Xcode and Interface Builder works. If I’m able to develop something that gets into the App Store then I’ll count that as a success. I opened Xcode over Christmas so that’s a start ;-)

4. More side projects
Didn’t do too many of these in 2010. They’re a great way to keep up the learning and to keep ‘shipping’ stuff. I’m thinking 3 side projects in 2011, or maybe a tidy up of some of the ones I have out there.

5. Blog more
I don’t blog as much as I used to, mainly due to lack of time. Blog posts start off as 30minute tasks but end up taking hours. Will try for shorter manageable/consistent blog posts.

Nothing too adventurous or extreme in there this year. I’ve got a wedding in 2012 to plan for so that will take up some time (and money :-?).

Work wise I’ve been doing a lot of work with Sharethrough over the past year, who are really kicking ass in the field of social video advertising, and two other projects/businesses I’m heavily involved with Lookaly and Referalot, all which will continue into the year ahead.

Conferences I’m definitely attending this year are #naconf, #sxsw, #buildconf and a few more I’m sure.

Any other suggestions?

Am willing to take on other goals to accomplish in 2011 if you have any suggestions. Serious and/or random welcome.

I thought it was about time I updated this list with any new apps I’ve started using but turns out I’ve been using pretty much the same lot since then.

Here are 5 new apps I’ve been introduced to during that time and now use daily.

1. Google Chrome

Firefox was once my choice but for some reason it started running very slow for me. I’d especially find YouTube videos very jumpy. So one day I tried out Chrome and absolutely loved it. It’s light weight, fast and trim.

After I sourced a few extensions I use often (namely Delicious and EyeDropper) I fully switched over my default browser.

Chrome also renders with the WebKit engine so you get all the nice CSS3 and HTML5 goodies (that also come with Safari).

I still tend to keep Firefox open though. It’s hard to beat that Developer Toolbar and Firebug. I also prefer the autocomplete that comes with the Firefox web address bar.

If you’re asking “What about Safari?” I never really got using it – an earlier version used to crash on me quite a lot which put me off it.

2. Mailplane

Only started using this recently for managing emails. I have 4 different GMail accounts for different domains that I was continually checking and had tabs open in the browser for (I wanted to keep them separate).

Mailplane is a desktop app but with the same look and feel and interaction as GMail has in the browser. It has some niceties like a top toolbar and ‘neater’ switching between accounts.

3. TweetDeck

This is my Twitter client of choice. Some people really dislike it, and to be honest it doesn’t scream of the typical nice UI you get with Mac apps, but I find it really handy for keeping track of multiple accounts and groups of people.

Also nice integration with other social networks like Facebook, LinkedIn, even FourSquare.

4. MacJournal

MacJournal actually came part of a MacHeist bundle and I find it really useful for taking daily notes. I now use it to keep track of:

• Meetings (what was discussed)
• Events (what was talked about)
• Books (overviews and key notes)
• Workshops (what I learned)

Great for referring back to. In the past I would have recorded these things in a notebook, which would eventually be lost, forgot about or binned.

5. LittleSnapper

LittleSnapper was also part of a MacHeist bundle. Useful for taking screenshots of web pages and nice graphics then keeping them to hand for inspiration.

I wish I could say I had a really neat and nicely configured LittleSnapper for all areas of inspiration but I never get around to organising it (except once when I did it on a plane).

What would you recommend?

I’m sure there are tonnes of apps out there that I haven’t tried and should be using.

If you were to recommend one really good app that I haven’t mentioned, what would it be?

There’s no use case

I have no use for the iPad. So many times I’ve “tried to fit it into my life” but it never really caught on.

A £400/£500 gadget shouldn’t be something you try to fit into your life. It should just fit. When I bought my first MacBook Pro a couple years back, it fitted perfectly. When I purchased an iPhone, it fitted perfectly. These things allowed me to be more efficient and productive. The iPad doesn’t do that.

I’ve struggled to find a use case for it. The best I’ve found is reading the Sun in bed when I wake up in the morning. That’s a damn expensive newspaper, considering you still have to pay a monthly subscription for the newspaper on top of the initial app purchase.

I’ve also tried browsing the web while in front of the TV, but again I rely to much on my “work environment”. As a web designer I’m never just browsing, I’m usually doing some sort of work on the computer that involves a host of other apps.

iPad apps suck

I have yet to discover an iPad app that ‘wows’ me. Yes there are lots of beautifully designed apps from a lot of talented developers but nothing has stuck out as a ‘must have’.

If you ask someone with an iPad to recommend some apps, you’ll generally get a response that includes the following.

File sharing apps

What’s the deal with file sharing apps? Haven’t we been sharing files easily for years? Why do we need an app to do this? I can just use my laptop to produce the files I need and remove the need to ‘share’ them or sync them from the iPad.

Reading apps

I tried to read books on the iPad. I have to admit it is a lot better than I thought it would be, but you still can’t beat a physical book.

I prefer lifting a book, highlighting key lines with a highlighter, bending a page corner and setting that beside my bed as a reminder to read it. A digital book doesn’t replace that.

RSS readers

When it comes to reading RSS feeds, if I come across a useful article I’ll tag in on delicious. If it’s really useful, I’ll share it on Twitter, or I’ll open up TextMate or Photoshop to make something. I can do these things no problem on the MacBook Pro but on the iPad it can’t be done or in the case of sharing on Twitter, it involves opening and closing apps.

Why is it so successful?

The iPad failed for me but it certainly hasn’t seemed to have failed Apple.

Apple indicates that it has sold 3.27 million iPads as of June 26. That translates to more than $2 billion in revenue for the company in a product category that didn’t even exist one year ago.

The above is a recent extract from Mashable.

A few good use cases or suitable personas I can think of include:

• People who travel a lot – it’s lighter than a laptop, has longer battery life, so is useful for email management and web browsing if traveling regularly
• Sales people – if you go out to pitch to potential customers regularly or give one to one presentations on a regular basis it is quite useful

Is it a fail in the long run?

Apple have introduced this new product to the market, and being the first company to do so has contributed to its success. It’s a new toy, a new era, so people are jumping on board and trying to justify its existence.

One year from now we’ll surely see a certain ‘type’ of person who relies heavily on the iPad, but right now I’m not sure who that will be.

For me, I’d prefer to sell the iPad (which I have done) and upgrade to an iPhone 4 (which I plan on doing).

Have you got an iPad? Do you want one? What do you really think of it?

Very excited. Love it in the States and have wanted to go to SXSW for years now. Austin looks like a great place.

The South by Southwest® (SXSW®) Conferences & Festivals offer the unique convergence of original music, independent films, and emerging technologies. Fostering creative and professional growth alike, SXSW® is the premier destination for discovery.

Northern Ireland attendees

Thanks to Invest NI they’re supporting the trip along with several other creative businesses from Northern Ireland:

• AirPOS
• Andy Good
• Bodyguard
• Digital Robot Software
• Film Trip
• No More Art
• Origin Partners
• Sonic Academy
• Frank

There have been a couple of sites setup so you can check our progress while we’re out there:

• NI @ SXSW (thanks to Quadriga)
• SXNI (thanks to Andy)

And of course keep an eye out for tweets tagged with #sxsw #nisxsw #sxni (yep, 3 tags for you).

Useful apps

TripIt – just forward on your travel confirmation emails and it puts together your itinerary. Magic!

SitBy.us – tidy little app listing the interactive schedule. Decide what you’re interested in and then check your schedule. You sign in with Twitter so you can also see where your friends are going.

Sched – another useful scheduling app. Haven’t played around with it much but seems to have everything covered.

Happening App – a useful iPhone app showing you all the events happening around your current location.

See you there?

Would love to know if you’re heading or if you know anyone heading. Looking to meet up with lots of new people, especially other designers, and get chatting over a beer at one of the many parties.

Planning to do a bit of blogging while I’m out there so will be sharing all that I learn and observe.

Old site

New site

I wanted a minimal, light-weight site that was more blog focused, while also experimenting with some CSS3 niceness.

I’ll follow up next week with a few notes on design decisions and techniques I’ve used.

Feel free to let me know what you think.

A look at the 2009 list

This time last year I set myself some goals. Take a look at 2009′s post.

Run another marathon
Success: Ran the London Marathon although failed to beat last years time

Read more
Success: Have read a good few books this year and started listening to audio books

Bungee jump
Fail: Haven’t seen any about and didn’t try hard enough to find one

Learn to play the guitar
Fail: Haven’t even touched it and it continues to gather dust

Go surfing
Success: Surfed in Santa Cruz over summer

Spend less time on the computer
Fail: Probably not

Blog more
Success: Blogged quite a bit and did a load of guest posts

Speak at an event
Success: Spoke at FOWD Belfast Tour and Barcamp Belfast

Launch a successful web application
Pending: Launched Lookaly (and a few other side projects) which has grown and formed a super community around it but still a bit to go

Do something for charity
Success: Thanks to some really generous and supportive people I raised over £2,000 for Action for Kids

Be an extra in a movie
Success: Was an extra in a Mo Mowlam movie starring Julie Walters (to be on channel 4 in 2010)

Climb Kilimanjaro
Fail: Never even got around to thinking about it

Secret resolution
Success: Got engaged to Miss Suzy Smith

Also managed to tick off another objective from 2008, which was live away from home for at least 1 month, which I did by staying in San Francisco over the summer.

Goals for 2010

1. Bungee jump
Find a bungee and jump

2. Be a yes man
Be more like Danny Wallace (or Jim Carrey) and say yes more

3. Learn something new
Take a class on something that doesn’t include programming or designing

4. Go to an international (i.e. outside of UK/Ireland) conference
SXSW, Web 2.0, Le Web – something like that

5. Redesign this site
Getting a bit outdated now and could do with a fresh coat of paint

6. Launch/design an iPhone app
iPhone app design/dev is something I’ve still to look into

7. Review at least 1 book per month
Hopefully this will encourage me to read more and take notes while doing so

8. Work with some really cool clients
Fortunately I already do work with some really cool clients and I want to find and work with more who are working on exciting things

What are your goals?

There isn’t really anything too serious or extreme in there, everything is very doable.

What are your plans for 2010 and what did you accomplish in 2009?

Happy new year!

After checking my Google Analytics account recently, I thought it might be of interest to publicise some of my findings. So I selected 1 month, April 1st – April 30th 2009, and here are the findings.

Dashboard

Areas of interest

• The most daily visits was on Monday April 20th (3,840)
• The least daily visits was on Sunday April 5th (548)
• Monday is the most popular day (usually the day I publish blog posts)
• Sunday is the least popular day

Visitors

Areas of interest

• The most popular browser was Firefox (65.64%) followed by Safari (12.42%) and Internet Explorer (12.17%)
• Out of the 12.17% IE users, 17.82% used IE6 (1,037)
• 3 users were using IE5.5
• The most popular OS was Windows (64.38%) followed by Mac (31.10%)
• 595 people visited my site on the iPhone, 124 on the iPod and 3 on the PS3
• The most popular resolution was 1280×800 (19.09%)
• 9.77% had a resolution of 1024×768 and 0.3% had a resolution of 800×600

Traffic sources

Areas of interest

• The top 10 keywords were:
  1. twitter themes
  2. lee munroe
  3. twitter theme
  4. twitter backgrounds
  5. twitter page design
  6. freelance web designer
  7. web design trends
  8. get more twitter followers
  9. twitter profile background
  10. call to action buttons
• 2 people arrived by searching for ‘the spank machine‘
• 1 person arrived by searching for ‘excited hot female‘
• Stumbleupon referred 3,676 people, closely followed with 3,564 from Twitter
• The top 10 referrers were:
  1. stumbleupon.com
  2. twitter.com
  3. smashingmagazine.com
  4. ajaxrain.com
  5. wordpress.org
  6. smashingapps.com
  7. google.com
  8. delicious.com
  9. sixrevisions.com
  10. daily.creattica.com
• 6,979 visits came from Google, while only 58 from yahoo and 38 from msn

Content

Areas of interest

• The top 10 pages were:
  1. Homepage
  2. Designing out of the box
  3. 15 beautiful typography inspired websites
  4. 25 hot female web designers part 2
  5. Portfolio
  6. Call to action buttons
  7. 30 creative twitter theme backgrounds
  8. 5 quick and easy ways to optimise your website
  9. 25 hot female web designers
  10. Blog
• Generally, the top 10 landing pages were the same as the top 10 exit pages, which were the same as the top 10 visited pages (therefore my bounce rate isn’t very good)

Conclusion

So what does all this mean?

• Constantly writing useful blog posts on your site is a good idea
• Writing guest posts for other sites can be useful
• Being active on Twitter matters
• Posting blog posts on the weekend isn’t as effective as during the week
• There are people who still use IE6
• You can pretty much forget about having to design for 800×600 anymore. Most users have at least 1024×768 and higher resolutions
• Remember people will access your site on different platforms, including mobile/iPhone
• Submit your site & posts to social sites like Delicious and Stumbleupon
• Twitter is a hot search topic at the minute

Of course these conclusions are only drawn from my readers. Things may be different for your site depending on your target market.

What are your stats like? What’s the oddest thing someone has searched for to find your site? How many people use IE6? Please share below.

Follow this surefire guide and you’ll have hundreds (or even thousands) of more followers on Twitter in no time.

Sponsored link: If you can’t be bothered with the effort involved you could always buy Twitter followers here.

1. Follow everyone

How do you get noticed on Twitter? Follow everyone else. Literally go through as many Twitter profiles as possible and click follow. Do this 1,000 times and you’ll get around 900 follows back.

2. Retweet like mad

Retweet every link that comes from your friends. First of all your friend will be thankful for the retweet and secondly your followers will be thankful for the shared link.

Be sure to retweet in the format “RT @friend:” and keep any other RT @friend references in so they get the credit they deserve.

3. Constantly tweet about what you’re doing

Nobody will follow you if your Twitter stream is lying static so make sure you constantly update it, every 15 minutes if possible.

If you’re not doing anything interesting, talk about the food you’re eating, what you’re watching on TV or who you’re talking to and meeting e.g. “Eating sushi with @myfriend while watching Family Guy”.

4. Auto DM new followers to welcome them

You want your new followers to feel welcome so setup an auto welcome message via DM to say “Thanks for following me”. This is also the perfect time to list your sites that you want them to visit.

5. Link to your MySpace, Facebook or Bebo page

Twitter is a social networking site so when listing your website it’s a good idea to link to another social networking site that you’re on so friends can connect with you on that site also. Enter your MySpace, Facebook or Bebo site here, not your website or blog.

6. Ask people to Digg, Retweet, Bookmark, Float etc.

This is the true value of Twitter. You can use it to gain significant advantages like asking people to digg your posts. If you have 500 followers and you ask them all to help you digg a post, you’ll more than likely get at least 400 diggs and be featured on the Digg homepage.

7. Ask people to follow you

Milestones are important on Twitter. There’s a big difference between someone who only has 99 followers and someone who has 101 followers. You want and need to hit these follower milestones.

If you’re at 90 followers, tweet “nearly at 100 followers” and before you know it you’ll reach the 100 mark because your friends will retweet it. Likewise when nearing 1,000, 2,000 etc.

8. Use all 140 characters

Don’t waste your tweets. There are 140 characters up for grabs so make sure you use as many as possible. The more information provided for your friends the better.

9. Don’t give away your secrets

If you find a good link that helps you achieve something extraordinary in your field, it would be silly to share it on Twitter. Don’t forget, your friends on Twitter are also your competitors so don’t be giving your secrets away.

10. Don’t reply to nobodies

You want people to think that you’re really big and popular so only @reply to people who are famous or have thousands of followers. This will make you look like a Twitter big gun and people will feel the need to follow you.

What do you think?

Are these effective ways to use Twitter? Do you have any other recommendations?