December 10, 2010 at 10:38What users will not write to you in feedback
It happens that something happens on the site, the number of registrations has decreased markedly, or user activity on the site has dropped to zero, but the programmer “works everything” and he believes that everything is fine. I analyzed the problems that we encountered in two years on our project and compiled a short list of what users are unlikely to ever write to you about.
Yes, it happens that the site lies, it’s good when you see it and correct it, but if you are an early bird, and the site “lies down” at midnight from the influx of visitors, and you have a different time zone and you have been sleeping for a long time, then users won’t write because their site is simply not loaded and they will go to competitors.
How to find out:
1. put a free tracker on your site, for example host-tracker.com
2. analyze server logs and download schedules (if any)
No one is perfect and your system administrator is either. Perhaps your site (or one of its domains) has stopped resolving, or (worse), DNS servers have been out of sync and your primary DNS is working, and the secondary does not know about such a domain.
Once we had a site working on one regional site for one provider because its DNS server cached the response from the master, and on the other provider it didn’t work because it cached the response from a non-working slave.
How to find out:
1. put a free tracker on your site, for example host-tracker.com
2. write your domain checker if you have a lot of them
Perhaps once you succumbed to the temptation and set a user counter on your site. Or your friend wrote a small script to show the news and as a friend asked to put on your site and you agreed to it ... What could be bad?
1. The server giving the script can slow down and then the wrong script will slow down the loading of your entire page until the script loads.
But maybe you foresaw this trouble and wrote a small wrapper around the script, which first loads the page itself and then inserts counters into it? Naive!
2. The author of a script or counter may suddenly rewrite it, for example, to use data insertion, it will use document.write and then all your HTML will be replaced by its insertion.
How to find out:
1. disable in your browser AdBlock and other cutting tools for your site to see the site as your users see it.
PS: taking this opportunity I want to convey greetings to the developers of the Rambler Top-100 counter, with which problems regularly arise.
Have not received error messages for a long time? Think everything works perfect? Do not relax - maybe your feedback is broken :) Yes, and it happens here for a week it didn’t work, for Yandex - a couple of months - no one is perfect. So the lack of applications is a reason to think, because the user will not be written about the fact that feedback does not work, or about other errors.
How to find out:
1. Leave an alternative communication line (for example, indicate email)
2. Log errors that occur in your project and analyze them
This is the message your Internet Explorer users can meet. Also, styles can be rendered so that links to help are not visible, or the necessary javascript does not work. And in general “ money of IE users is as real as money of users of Firefox or Opera ” Sergey Chikuyonok.
How to find out:
1. Test in other browsers, look at the site through the eyes of your users
2. Log errors that occur in your project and analyze them
Perhaps something does not suit your users, but they cannot convey it to you for one reason or another. But then they can write about it in their blog, VKontakte or on the local forum in the “they are sick of it” section.
How to find out:
1. Subscribe to the mention of your project through Yandex or through google
Colleagues, I will be grateful for your ways to identify errors and for instructive stories from the life of you and your projects.
The site “lies”
Yes, it happens that the site lies, it’s good when you see it and correct it, but if you are an early bird, and the site “lies down” at midnight from the influx of visitors, and you have a different time zone and you have been sleeping for a long time, then users won’t write because their site is simply not loaded and they will go to competitors.
How to find out:
1. put a free tracker on your site, for example host-tracker.com
2. analyze server logs and download schedules (if any)
DNS issues
No one is perfect and your system administrator is either. Perhaps your site (or one of its domains) has stopped resolving, or (worse), DNS servers have been out of sync and your primary DNS is working, and the secondary does not know about such a domain.
Once we had a site working on one regional site for one provider because its DNS server cached the response from the master, and on the other provider it didn’t work because it cached the response from a non-working slave.
How to find out:
1. put a free tracker on your site, for example host-tracker.com
2. write your domain checker if you have a lot of them
Counters or third-party javascript
Perhaps once you succumbed to the temptation and set a user counter on your site. Or your friend wrote a small script to show the news and as a friend asked to put on your site and you agreed to it ... What could be bad?
1. The server giving the script can slow down and then the wrong script will slow down the loading of your entire page until the script loads.
But maybe you foresaw this trouble and wrote a small wrapper around the script, which first loads the page itself and then inserts counters into it? Naive!
2. The author of a script or counter may suddenly rewrite it, for example, to use data insertion, it will use document.write and then all your HTML will be replaced by its insertion.
How to find out:
1. disable in your browser AdBlock and other cutting tools for your site to see the site as your users see it.
PS: taking this opportunity I want to convey greetings to the developers of the Rambler Top-100 counter, with which problems regularly arise.
Feedback does not work
Have not received error messages for a long time? Think everything works perfect? Do not relax - maybe your feedback is broken :) Yes, and it happens here for a week it didn’t work, for Yandex - a couple of months - no one is perfect. So the lack of applications is a reason to think, because the user will not be written about the fact that feedback does not work, or about other errors.
How to find out:
1. Leave an alternative communication line (for example, indicate email)
2. Log errors that occur in your project and analyze them
"The instruction at 0x432942 addressed to memory at 0x400000004, the memory cannot be" read "" or an alternative environment
This is the message your Internet Explorer users can meet. Also, styles can be rendered so that links to help are not visible, or the necessary javascript does not work. And in general “ money of IE users is as real as money of users of Firefox or Opera ” Sergey Chikuyonok.
How to find out:
1. Test in other browsers, look at the site through the eyes of your users
2. Log errors that occur in your project and analyze them
Other troubles (find out what is hidden)
Perhaps something does not suit your users, but they cannot convey it to you for one reason or another. But then they can write about it in their blog, VKontakte or on the local forum in the “they are sick of it” section.
How to find out:
1. Subscribe to the mention of your project through Yandex or through google
Colleagues, I will be grateful for your ways to identify errors and for instructive stories from the life of you and your projects.