Feelings and Data

So in an ideal world we want to both understand the users’ thought processes while gathering larger amounts of data on task completion times, success rates and general satisfaction levels with our website or interface. Quantitative and qualitative in a neat little parcel – but does such a thing exist? I am pleased to tell you that it does.

Loop11.com has launched an online user testing system that can provide ‘user experience’ feedback and statistical data on up to 1,000 participants. It is a simple 3 step process.

1. Create User Tests – you create tasks for users to perform on any website.
2. Invite Participants – you invite users to the test (matching the demographic of your real users)
3. Analyse Results – view instant online reports on the completion times, clickthroughs, satisfaction etc.

You can run user tests on any HTML interface so it is suitable for wireframes, completed websites or even iterative designs during your web project. The first test is free and subsequent tests are $350 per test.

The Verdict

If this product is as good as it looks I feel it will change the landscape for large scale user testing and make it more affordable for smaller enterprises. Personally, I’m looking forward to taking Loop11 for a test drive!

We have devised a simple but effective solution to this problem – put your website database on a fast VPS (Virtual Private Server) which is configured as a database server. You can purchase an entry level VPS from €99 per anum which is a small price to pay to retain your customers and protect your investment in your website.

Why split my website over shared hosting and a VPS?

You may be tempted to run your entire website on your VPS since you are going to the expense of purchasing one anyway. Yes if you do this you could end up with an even faster website than if you split your website. However, it is a lot more complicated to setup and manage an entire web server than it is to manage a database server (which is set-and-forget once it is running). You will need to install a web server, mail server, FTP server, anti-spam software to name a few and manage all those resources.

If you leave your website on your shared hosting control panel you let the hosting company worry about all these things for you. They deal with the mail serving and the security and all those other problematic areas. With our split solution you get the benefits of a faster website without the headache of managing an entire web server.

Who can benefit from a VPS Database?

Here are just a few examples of web systems that will get a serious speed boost from setting up a VPS  Database Server.

• Content Management Systems – WordPress, Drupal, Joomla etc.
• E-Commerce Systems – Magento, ZenCart, OSCommerce etc.
• Forums – PHPBB, bbPress, WP-Forum etc.

These systems mostly run on the LAMP architecture (Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP) which accounts for a large proportion of the applications powering the web today. However, the VPS Database solution works just as well for Windows-based hosting with SQL Server databases but it is beyond the scope of this post.

Monitoring Your Database

One added bonus of a VPS Database Server is that you can monitor your database server and if you see utilisation is too high or response times are low you can take action to resolve it. On shared hosting you have no visibility into your database performance whatsoever.  With a VPS Database you can also track your website traffic and analytics against your database utilisation to plan for when you need to upgrade your server. You are in control.

Shared Hosting and VPS with your existing hosting company

You probably want to know if you should purchase your VPS from your existing hosting provider or should you go elsewhere. It is important to have your shared hosting and your VPS with the same hosting company. There are a couple of reasons:

1. Speed - it will be faster if your website can access its database locally rather than having to go across the Internet to access it. You are setting up this solution to speed up your website so don’t add unnecessary lag times by splitting your website across two service providers.
2. Filters / firewalls – you have no control over your hosting providers’ networks. Should they decide to filter or firewall the database ports (i.e. block access to database from outside their network) your website will stop working. This is the main reason you need to keep your shared hosting and VPS with the one provider as both are on the same network and will be able to communicate.
3. Accountability - anyone who has ever dealt with multiple service providers will know there is a tendency to ‘pass the buck’ if there is a problem. If you split your website over two providers, you may find that neither wishes to take responsibility if you are having a problem. If both shared hosting and VPS are with the one provider they are entirely accountable.

Of course if you are not happy with your hosting company or they do not provide the VPS solution you require you can move your shared hosting to a new provider that meets all of your needs.

Ordering Your VPS

Here are the things to consider when purchasing your VPS.

• Traffic - with your website have an even amount of traffic or will it experience massive traffic spikes as a result of promotions or email marketing campaigns. Some providers offer a ‘burst mode’ that gives you extra resources temporarily.
• Size - most web databases tend to be relatively small but if yours is large or contains a lot of legacy data you may want to factor that in when you are ordering your VPS.
• Growth - if you have plans to radically increase your website size or traffic volumes plan for that extra capacity.
• Upgrading - check if the hosting company allows you to easily upgrade your VPS to a larger/faster one if you need to. Some providers may not let you upgrade until your contract term expires so read the small print.

What To Install on your VPS Database Server

You want your VPS Database Server to be lean, fast and responsive. That means you should install the absolute bare minimum on the server and don’t be tempted to add a web server, FTP server or any other packages that you just don’t need. It will be faster and more secure if it is left as a pure database server.

Your VPS should be presented to you with nothing installed apart from the basic Operating System you have ordered – our preferred operating system is CentOS. We recommend you install the following only:

• MySQL Server – this is your database server.
• SNMP – this is a network management protocol that will enable you to monitor your server remotely (note: do not install server monitoring software on the VPS, run it remotely!!)
• Webmin – this is the web management console for your server. That allows you to manage your server and your databases via web browser.

That’s it! Nothing else is needed. You now have a lean, mean database server reading to turbo charge your website!

What Next?

That depends on the applications you are using. If you are using a content management system all you have to do is put your website in maintenance mode, back up your database, set up your database on your Virtual Database Server and point your site to the new database. It’s generally very straightforward. Just make sure to have a good backup of your database and a plan to restore your original website in case of any unforeseen difficulties.

Assistance Setting Up Your VPS Database Server

We can work with you to set up your VPS Database Server. We can advise you on what to buy, we can set up the server for you, assist you with your website database migration and provide ongoing support for your database server. Call Jason Mulreany on 087-6692719 or email jason@mulreany.ie to find out more.

The Evolution of the Web

1. Broadband – a sizable proportion of the population now has access to high-speed Internet access either at home or at work. This means that slow websites can no longer be blamed on that *bleeping* modem. This is great BUT if a website is slow to load users now know it’s the website to blame and not their Internet connection.

2. Web 2.0 – static websites are dead and the Internet is now heaving with e-commerce systems, blogs, forums,  knowledge-bases and dynamic websites with live interactive content. Any website worth its salt now has a content management system that allows the website owner to easily and quickly update their content. This means that the majority of websites are now using databases instead of static pages.

3. Cheap web hosting – Web hosting has become ridiculously cheap over the past few years. You can now buy a shared hosting plan from most Irish hosting companies for about €50 per annum and you can put perhaps 30 websites on that package. You often get unlimited databases, lots of disk space and a huge traffic allowance. So you could theoretically have a database-driven website (blog, CMS, ecommerce) hosted and supported for under €2 per annum. How could they possibly provide decent hosting for that price, you may ask. Well as the saying goes, if something looks to be too good to be true it probably is…

The Problem

So here’s the problem. Web hosting companies are supplying extremely cheap hosting and the majority of websites that are running on their servers are using databases. These databases don’t respond fast enough causing the website to run too slowly. (To find out why databases have problems on shared hosting packages see our post Is Shared Hosting killing your website?). This frustrates users and many of them will leave the website.

Website Load Times

Web Usability guru Jakob Nielsen has this to say in an interview with eConsultancy.com about website load times:

“The rules are; if it is faster than one tenth of a second, you don’t feel like you are waiting at all. If it is more than one tenth of a second, you can tell you are waiting, but up to one second, it still feels like smooth navigation. Between one and ten seconds is the limit for your attention. If you go the best websites, like Google, that’s what they do – they give you the page like that [clicks fingers].”

Everyone Is Judged Against Google

It may seem grossly unfair but now every other website is judged against Google or Amazon and the other ‘big’ websites. If your site is slow to load a page of content and Google can return a web search of the entire Internet in a fraction of a second then it looks bad for you. Google and other such sites are setting the bar very high for the rest of us.

So when your website is slow to respond, the user starts to get impatient. They know it is your website causing the delay because Google loads for them almost instantly. If every page on your website is slow to load because of the poor database responses then the cumulative annoyance will more than likely cause the user to leave. Those users casually browsing will be first to leave followed quickly by those who are genuinely interested in your website but can’t be bothered waiting for every page to load. That may not leave many users to ‘convert’ into paying customers. This would obviously be a disaster for your business and needs to be resolved.

Back to Web 1.0?

Am I suggesting that we abandon interactive websites and we all go back to the ‘good old days’ of Web 1.0 with static websites updated once a century? Definitely not. What we need to do is adapt to the current realities of the web – we need to find technical answers to these problems that are impacting our websites. We may not have the resources Google has but we can all use smarter technology to speed up our websites and improve our users’ experiences online.

One such solution we at Mulreany Consulting have devised is the use of VPS (virtual private servers) as dedicated database servers. Keep all your hosting on your nice and affordable web hosting package and locate your database on a faster database server which should fix your slow website. It’s a simple idea and if you want to find out more check out our post Turbo-Charge Your Website With A VPS Database.

This can result in users leaving your website and never converting into paying customers – obviously you don’t want that! Here are some reasons why your database-driven website may be crawling and suggestions on how to resolve it and retain your customers.

Shared Hosting Explained

Websites are hosted on the Internet on large web servers and the costs for hosting these websites can be just a few euro per year. For these web hosting companies to make any money they must share these web servers among thousands of websites. This allows them to sell hosting at extremely cheap prices (this is a good thing) but there can also be trade-offs such as slow database response times (this is a bad thing).

As I discussed in a previous post [Why Everyone Is Judged Against Google] most websites now rely heavily on databases to power them. Here are some of the reasons why database-driven websites may run slowly in a shared hosting environment.

1. Limited Connections

The hosting companies set limits on the numbers of concurrent connections each database can accept. The idea is to ensure every website gets a fair share of the database server resources. The cheaper the hosting package, the fewer connections the databases will accept. One large hosting company we spoke to cited 50 connections for their basic shared hosting package.

2. Multiple Connections Per User

Ok, that doesn’t sound too bad. 50 users can simultaneously connect to your website and that’s fine if you only have a small or low-traffic website. Sorry guys, that’s not quite how it works. One users does NOT necessarily equal one connection. A single user loading a dynamically generated webpage (and most are now dynamic) can initiate several connections to the database. So suddenly those 50 simultaneous users can shrink down to about 10 – 15 users. The website will appear really slow to anyone else hitting the website until some of the database connections are ‘freed up’. Not good!
So you may decide it’s worth paying a little more and going for the more advanced shared hosting plan that allows a much greater number of concurrent connections. Even if your users can successfully connect to your database the response times can still be quite poor because of contention.

3. Contention

On shared hosting your files sit on one web server and your databases sit on another dedicated database server. This is perfectly normal. The problem is that there are typically hundreds, or more likely thousands, of other databases sitting on the same database server. To be fair to the hosting companies, they do invest heavily in their server infrastructure and their database servers tend to be high quality with high availability. However, any database server trying to service thousands of databases simultaneously is going to run into difficulty – you will have bottlenecks at the network level, machine I/O, CPU cycles, even disk accesses. The end result is an over-subscribed database server is going to have issues with latency i.e. slow response times.

4. Bad Applications

Other websites bad application design is yet another problem for your website to deal with. You may have a lean and nifty database that’s properly indexed and very efficient. Other websites using the same database server may have badly-written, inefficient and bloated databases. One example is a certain motoring website that pulls the ENTIRE database of cars every time anyone hits their site and this is then filtered down on the clients side. (Imagine your Tesco home delivery arriving with the entire store in a container lorry when all you wanted was a loaf of bread – that’s about the best comparison I can make.) This can cause BIG problems for you and everyone else on that database server. A poorly written application can ‘hog’ server resources tying up the processor, the disk read/writes and the network which are all finite resources. In a nutshell other websites’ badly written applications can cause slow load times for your website.

5. No Control Over Database Upgrades

Hosting companies will argue that they monitor database servers and will bring on extra capacity – maybe more SQL servers or ‘beef up’ the hardware – to accommodate this. But who decides what is ‘acceptable’ service from a database server? When users start experiencing time-out errors then any hosting company worth its salt will address the issue. So problem solved – once the database servers get busy they upgrade them and all is well? Sorry to be the bearer of bad news again but no.

The Need for (Database) Speed
Websites experiencing database time-outs are clearly going to cause users to leave that website in their droves. But what about when the website is slow but …eventually…the pages load. Well, in this age of super-fast broadband and impatient web users that is just not going to cut it. According to Web Usability guru Jakob Nielsen, one second is now the acceptable time to wait for any webpage to load and beyond that you lose the user’s attention and run the risk they will simply leave the site. He also notes that “If you go the best websites, like Google … they give you the page like that [clicks fingers].”

The Bad News

So the bad news is that your website in a shared hosting environment will probably experience slow database responses at times and as a result you will lose website visitors. Lost visitors are lost customers and that means money out of your pocket.

The Good News

We have devised a very cost-effective and very simple solution to this problem. Order your own Virtual Private Server from your hosting company and run it as a dedicated database server. If you want to know more about how to do this check out our post [ Turbo Charge your Website with a VPS Database ]

In Defence Of Hosting Companies

I just want to wrap up this article by pointing out this is not an attack on hosting companies. Most hosting companies provide an excellent level of service and support and get paid, let’s face it, very little for it. It’s just a numbers game – you can’t provide hosting that cheaply and still provide the kinds of database speeds you can expect on a private server. So if you are happy with your website’s performance then you don’t need to worry. If you are not happy and are losing customers simply because of database lag you now have a simple and effective fix and the hosting company gets paid a little more by you each year. It’s what you call a win-win scenario…

Want Some Assistance Setting Up Your VPS Database Server?

You can contact Jason Mulreany directly on 087-6692719 or email jason@mulreany.ie for more information about our virtualised private database solution.

.IE Domain

If your target market is primarily Irish then definitely use a .IE domain. Web users will scan the search engine results on Google and often skip past those domains ending in .COM assuming they are based in another country, typically the USA. Also .IE domains will rank better in search engine results for Irish users.

Include Keywords

If your domain contains words relating to your business sector then users are more likely to click on your domain on a list of search results. For example if users are searching for ‘widgets’ then AcmeWidgets.ie is more likely to get clicked than simply Acme.ie.

Buy two domains

Users like nice easy to remember domains like AcmeWidgets.ie but search engines will find you more easily if you have Acme-Widgets.ie (it sees Acme and Widget as two separate words that way). Domains are really cheap now so register both. One to keep the users happy, the other to help with the search engines and point them both to your website.

Individuals

If you are an individual and you want to start blogging for personal interest then a free blog from Blogger or WordPress.com is perfect. They are easy to use, they provide a community of other bloggers to interact with and best of all they are free! I would recommend a free blog to anyone starting out in the blogosphere and if you decide to ‘up your game’ later you can move your free blog onto a self-hosted blog.

Businesses

It is a very different story for business blogs. Under no circumstances should you run a business blog on a free blogging site such as Blogger. Here are some reasons why:

1. Free blogs look unprofessional and in the business world, and even moreso online, image is extremely important. A free blog is the equivalent of using Hotmail for your business email address.
2. Limited functionality -  you are restricted to whatever functionality the free blogging website provides and mostly these ‘widgets’ are for personal use and entertainment rather than business.
3. No guarantee of service - when you’re using a free blog there is nobody to call if you have difficulty with your blog or if your blog is down. You get what you pay for!
4. No insights into analytics - you won’t have access to Google Analytics or other traffic analysis to review the vital traffic statistics that you need to refine and improve your website.
5. Brand identity – free blogs are very limited in terms of customisation and designing your blog to fit in with the rest of your business website. A self-hosted blog can be fully integrated and custom designed to match your branding.

I’m sure there are plenty more reasons but why flog a dead horse? If you want to use a blog for business blogging then you should stay away from the freebie offerings out there and use a professional solution.

That’s where we can help
We can setup, configure and design your business blog, provide ongoing support and maintenance and advise you on the most effective use of your business blog. Contact Fiona on 087-6380841 or fiona@mulreany.ie for more information.

For more about the iSaw check out UsbChainsaw.com

Blogs and websites – not so different
Blogs are webpages that are displayed in chronological order, like an online diary. If that’s all blog software could do then it would not be much use as software to run your company website. But it’s not. Our favourite blog software WordPress allows you to create pages and well as blog post. Those pages are always present – just like the webpages on any other website. So a blog with some static pages is basically the same as a website with a live news section.

Why use WordPress as a CMS?
There are lots of CMSs (content management systems) out there and many are free so why use blog software as the CMS instead of another product? The simple answer is ease-of-use. Blog software is designed to be extremely easy-to-use by even novice computer users. It’s what Jakob Nielsen calls “survival of the easiest” – whatever is the easiest to use will be the most popular and will beat the competition every time. WordPress is really easy to use and there are other reasons too.

• Easy to use - we’ve covered that one already
• Free - did I mention that as open source software WordPress is completely FREE!
• Useful extras – there are a multitude of fantastic plugins that can extend the functionality of your WordPress website e.g. calendars, youtube videos, photo galleries, contact forms, surveys, banner ad management, social bookmarking etc. The list is endless.
• Integrates easily with other applications – it is simple to integrate Google Analytics, Mail Chimp e-mail marketing and other useful web software.
• Instant blog - obviously adding a Business Blog to your company site is pretty easy when you’re using blog software to power the entire website.
• Community of support – the fact that millions of people are using this software globally means that there is a vast amount of documentation, support and information out there about WordPress. You won’t get that with less popular or custom written CMS systems.

Still not convinced? Check out a couple of sites we have developed using WordPress as the CMS.

Usability website www.userexperience.ie

SchoolSites.ie ‘Websites for Schools’ project www.schoolsites.ie

And of course this site, although more ‘blog-like’ than the others is still clearly a website and not an online journal.

What is a Business Blog?
A business blog is effectively an online journal for your business. You publish short and frequent updates to your blog and your readership, who are your customers, can interact with you and discuss your blog entry or posts.

5 Reasons to Business Blog

1. Search Engine Rankings - this may surprise you but adding a Business Blog to your website will both increase the traffic to your site and your rankings with search engines such as Google. Blogs add a tremendous amount of keyword-rich content and this will help to draw visitors to your site. Also if you are writing about topical issues to do with your products or services, your website is far more likely to be found by customers seeking that specific information.
2. Low Cost – blogs are relatively inexpensive to setup and run and as such provide a very good return-of-investment. You can sign up for a free blog on a website such as Blogger but I strongly urge you not to use a freebie blog and instead have a ‘self-hosted’ blog on your website.
3. Build Relationships - there is very little consumer loyalty especially in these times of economic hardship. By interacting with your customers and prospective customers through your blog, you reinforce the personal service your company offers and presents a more ‘human’ side to your business.
4. Strut Your Stuff! – there is no better way to show your customers that you are an expert in field than by blogging about it. Your competitors may claim to be experts in the field but you can prove it with your blog.
5. Market Research – think of the opportunities a blog can give you when looking for customer feedback on a business idea or new product offering! You can write a post outlining your suggestion and get immediate feedback from your actual users. Not only that, but you can discuss the feedback through the blog and refine your ideas into a viable product or service your customers want.

We can help you setup a professional Business Blog. We will setup your blog, design it to match your company branding and help you start business blogging. Contact Fiona Mulreany on 087-6692719 or fiona@mulreany.ie for more information.

Usability ROI
The latest research from Nielsen Norman Group (top US usability consultancy) shows that spending just 10% of your website development budget on usability will result in 83% increase in your business metrics, including your website conversions.

The Visitors x Conversions Formula
Let’s say 1000 visitors hit your website each day but only 10 of those visitors become customers then your conversion rate is 1%. The visitors to your website are typically drawn in through expensive paid programmes such as Google Adwords or other marketing initiatives. To double the number of visitors to your website means doubling your advertising budget! Not an attractive proposition during touch economic times.

But what if you could get 1000 visitors to your website and 20 of them proceeded to do business with you instead of just 10? Well you would instantly double your sales. Even small improvements to the usability and user experience of your website can achieve this for you.

Start with a Website Evaluation
Before you can improve the usability and overall user experience on your website you must first figure out the areas for improvement. You need to evaluate your website. This can be done very inexpensively – see our post Website Evaluation on a Budget. Resolving any major usability issues with your site helps retain customers as well as increase sales – customer retention is undoubtedly the best way to sustain your business through these tough times.

Make More Services Available Online
Another smart strategy is to use your website to reduce your administration costs and save you both time and money. Online banking is a great example of an online service that works well for the users and for the business. Users get the convenience of 24/7 secure banking while the banks get to reduce their staffing costs and make their services more efficient. It’s a win-win. Banks who do not provide this service are now at a major competitive disadvantage.

In your business area, look at the most time-consuming and manual interactions with your customers. Perhaps your company spends a lot of time answer phone calls about their products / services or managing the staff calendar and scheduling appointments. Perhaps you have to manually generate quotations for house alarm installations or check stock levels and reserve items in your shop for customers. These can all potentially be done online and often prove even more useful than the ‘human’ version e.g. the appointment system that texts/emails you a reminder of your dentist visit.

Word of warning – I can’t stress enough how important it is that you get user input on all new features you intend to add to your website. Figure out what the users want (user surveys) and when developing the features get user feedback (user testing). Otherwise, you may invest in website features that users don’t actually want or that don’t work so the users won’t use them and will resort to the old way of doing things. That would be a disaster but it is avoidable!

If you need more advice…
I hope this post has given you a few ideas on how to use your website more effectively during these times of Recession. Just remember, UserExperience.ie is ready to work with you on your website evaluation or with advice on your web strategy. Contact us or email info@userexperience.ie to find out more.