Test Your Website Usability in 10 Seconds

Don’t have a lot of time to test your website usability? How about do it in 10 seconds or less?

Website usability

I originally named this post Test Your Website Usability in 60 Seconds (influenced by title of the movie Gone in 60 Seconds). However, after thinking twice, I realized web users today (in the age of Google) no longer have that kind of patience when surfing the web. They often give a website less chance and less time; in fact, users only spend 10 seconds or less trying to search for information. If your website fails to present them what they need during this short window of time, they can just leave and click on the next result on the search result page.


Web Analytics Methods

An overview of the two methodologies used in web analytics: page tagging and web log file

Web analytics method

As mentioned in my other post about What Google Analytics Can’t Do, one of the key factors of getting your site a visible ranking is to know how well it performs with search engines and how well it meets your site visitors’ needs. To know about this, you must use one or more web analytics tools, whose function is to provide collection, measurement and reporting of web traffic data. There are different tools and most if not all of them are based on either one of the two methodologies: page tagging or web server log files.


PowerPoint 2010 Printing Issue and Workaround

PowerPoint 2010 won’t print with comments. Any possible workaround?

PPT 2010 printing issue

Microsoft Office is not my favorite subject, but since switching to MS 2010, I’ve written several posts about it as many issues have arisen. The latest issue I encountered was that I couldn’t print some PowerPoint 2010 slide decks no matter what I tried. After hours of looking into the problem, here’s what I found.

You can’t print PowerPoint 2010 slides with comment(s)

It’s like a bug in PPT 2010 as I saw many people posting the same complaint about the issue, but there was no clear solutions. You can’t print PowerPoint 2010 slides while there’s or are comments inside the file; even if it’s the only one comment located on the last slide.


What Google Analytics Can’t Do

An overview about what Google Analytics can’t tell you in its reports

Google analytics

One of the key factors of getting your site a visible ranking is to know how well it performs with search engines and with your site visitors. Google Analytics (GA) is a web analytics tool that reports performance metrics of your website as well as give you insights into your web visitors’ behaviors and their activities while they are on the site. Performance metrics/indicators can vary depending on the priorities and goals of your site, but basically they include metrics like average time on site, number of page views, number of visitors and unique visitors, bounce rate, entry and exit points, goal conversion and so on. Those metrics are fundamental as they quickly let you know the overall health of your site, how it is performing against your goals. Google Analytics reports basic metrics and much more, but what can’t it tell you?


Display Excel Data On a Web Page

How to quickly display data from a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet to a webpage online

Display Excel data on website

At the company where I’m working we have a marketing calendar in MS Excel showing schedule for different marketing events and activities. The file is maintained by marketing and regularly updated with new speaking engagement opportunities or changes of venues to current events. And every time we updated it, we put a copy on a network or shared drive so that other people can access it. Later, we made it a little easier to access by putting a link to the Excel file on a web page.