Analytics
Since we deal more with our own products like joszaki.hu besides other special projects for our clients, we deal more with following the users in the systems. The most basic tool for it is Google Analytics, which now we use for not only web-based, but for mobile environments, too. The actions can be saved even in an offline app, and be uploaded later through API. It's an obvious advantage that we and our partners can browse a well-known and professional surface.
As we had become more and more interested in this stuff, we bought the second edition of Brian Clifton's Advances Web Metrics. Nowadays the books from England arrive here in no time, without problems, but we'd still prefer an ebook reader. The author is an ex-Google employee, he knows the inside part of Analytics, and nowadays works as a web-analytics consultant. The book is really interesting, it's worth to read even those parts that deal with the basics, because it gives a lot of background information. It's clear that the author has observed and analyzed the reports for many years.
For me it was really entertaining to go deep into Analytics, because I had to think it over as a product developer, as a marketing person and as an engineer at the same time. It's a good exercise with the puzzles that are similar to programming. Many people use Analytics, but surprisingly few utilize its knowledge, although with a few clicks and a few lines of javascript, miracles can happen.
These are my favorites for now:
Intelligence
In the intelligence menu, it searches outstanding strangenesses (like the purchasing intensity of people living in Budapest has risen, or they spend more time on the site). We can also add filters manually (like the visit fell by 50%), and we can set to get an email notification when the condition comes true.
Goals - transactions
That's the first thing which everyone should set, just to force yourself to mark the goal of the homepage. It's easy if it's an e-commerce page (we sell, we're happy), but it's also useful on other sites. E.g. sending a sales lead mail, or subscribing to a mailing list can also be useful. And you can also count its value. If we stick money to these things, too, (and it's worth to), we'll see the produced value of them in each and every report, e.g. splitted to referrers.
Virtual pageviews, events
We must use virtual downloads and events because of the spreading of AJAX systems, since the visitor is not necessarily moving between the sites.
Custom variables
This is beautiful. :) With a function, we can label our visitor, and we can tell for how long the label should stay there (on page, session or visitor level). If there's any important feature that segments our visitors, we can distinguish between them very easily by this tool, and we can instantly see how the certain segments perform, and what profit they return.
I wanted to survey my knowledge after studying from the book, so I went throught the Google Analytics Individual Qualification test. It brought back the university exam fun, but it was fine. My result is 87% which is not bad, maybe if I had gone through my answers once again, it would have been better.
What was interesting for me is that these online tests give you a lot of time, and you can even stop the timer. So theoretically you could look up every answer on the Internet, and what's more, they don't even write that you shouldn't do so. Fortunatelly, I didn't need it, I just checked a few little things, mainly in the already open Analytics account. I recommend it for everyone who's curious whether they can distinguish between _trackPagevies and bounce rate. ;)
iDay 2010
Like every summer, the time came to have a cool free day named team-building day. I don't really know how other companies do it, but choosing the activity is a part of the show for us. Normally, we use some overcomplicated voting system with many rounds, having campaign speeches in between. The majority of the speeches are held about the voting system itself, not about the activities :)
After this process, which is a bit more complicated than choosing a pope, sometimes we have to recommence everything because we don't like the outcome.
This year we've chosen the village Zamárdi near lake Balaton, to try out an adventure park and a gokart track. At the adventure park we had to go on stretched cables between trees in various poses. First it's a bit scary and tricky, then it becomes really exhausting.
With gokarting we have a good choreography. We cover some rounds, then we sit and talk about the secret formula which can calculate the real results based on the participant's weight and time. We haven't succeeded yet, but we don't give up the fight :)
Mac Os X – as a Linux user sees it
I try to write down my experiences of Os X politely.
As we cannot develop softwares for iPhone on any platforms other than Mac, I have to use a Mac Mini.
What I like:
It's nice. The little tray down there, on which there's a little spot lamp lighting the running applications' icons, is really cute.
I also grew to like that I can quickly change between the desktops by clicking on the icon of the running application.
What I don't like:
Under Linux, I always set the mouse in such a way that the window, above which the mouse is currently staying, becomes active. I'm really used to it and like it, for me it helps many times that e.g. I see the full window of the browser, but I modify the source code in the window above it, which is partly covered by it. There's no such a setting under Os X. Furthermore, I noticed that sometimes one click is not enough either. Sometimes I have to click two times to be able to write where I want. The first click switches to the application, and the second one puts the cursor to the place where I want to write.
There's another function which belongs to handling windows, and I use it many times: I can move a window by grabbing it anywhere, by pressing Alt and pressing the left button of the mouse, or I can resize the window with the help of the middle button of the mouse. This is a great help, especially on a large monitor; it's good that there's no need to aim precisely but you can rearrange the windows with the help of the keyboard. I miss it really much.
I didn't manage to get used to the speeding of the mouse, and I couldn't switch it off either. As for me, I like to cover a big screen by relatively small moves. But under Mac, sometimes my mouse rushes out of the monitor, because the speed of it is increased due to the quicker moves.
I couldn't get used to the keyboard either. Apple + C / apple + V is really uncomfortable, somehow my fingers are being twisted by it. But switching the apple and control keys didn't work either, because this way I kept pressing the bad ctrl + c combination in the terminal.
It's also very annoying that when I use the computer with vnc and there's no monitor plugged in, it does not offer the certain resolution which would equal my notebook's resolution, so I have to be careful not to pull the mouse down too much, because then it would mess the whole thing up. So, I had to put the tray to the left side, which is not as beautiful as when it's down.
And of course there're a lot of other things which I haven't learned or haven't set, but apparently, those are not so important, I can still work in this way.
All in all, personally, I don't like it so much, but of course, that's a matter of taste...
iPhone as a marketing tool
On May 20, we made a presentation called iPhone as a marketing tool on the conference of the Hungarian Direct Marketing Association. The conference took place in the holiday centre of Hungarian Telecom in Balatonkenese, with the Lake Balaton, table football and bowling alleys. When I realized that I was sitting in a resort which had previously been the property of Matav, facing a commercial about Postal services, I felt a little nostalgic. :) (the successors of the old, united Hungarian Postal Services after the change of the political system in Hungary were Matav, Hungarian Postal Services and Antenna Hungary). The conference was a bit slower and more conservative than those underground IT conferences that we are accustomed to, but it was really informative and friendly.
At last, I did the presentation, since Peter preferred not to attack the poor marketing people with the mysteries of Objective-c. We tailored the message a bit, so I only talked about what we have reached by our application called BpMenetrend (BpTimetable) if we look at it as a marketing tool.
Being program developers, we have never learnt marketing, we were only loaded up with a little of it while working, so we have started to think about it by plain common sense. We wanted to see how many people we can reach for how much money, and what this reach has brought to us. This presentation was made based on this:
Some comments:
- - We were also surprised while counting, but if we put the screens of the users of the application next to each other, it would make 4.3 billboards :)
- - We haven’t found adequate smartphone user statistics from the Hungarian market. This is why it could be interesting what we have experienced.
- - For calculating the cost per user, we took the costs of the project on the basis of market prices.
- - We started the application with the aim of positioning iMind as a mobile application developer as well. We managed to, we keep getting requests to develop mobile apps.
- - The application became very successful, we are working on it to refresh timetable data and to publish the application for other platforms as well.
All in all, our conclusion was that it is really worth to buy reach with iPhone applications right now. We think that it’s an important factor that there are few good Hungarian applications, so it’s really easy to get attention by a practical and free application.
So, if you have a good idea, then contact us, we are willing to tell our opinion about it.
MMCluster HighTech Pub
MMCluster HighTech Pub
The first really informal introductory event of MMCluster took place on 26 May, in accordance with the 'high-tech pub' name on the top of the city, on Corvintető.
The spot and the evening starting time was perfect for the really informal, anti-black tie idea. The event looked like a New Tech Meetup rather than the other events of the biggest ICT Cluster.
The event started with few-minute presentations according to meetup traditions, which were followed by the inevitable beers. At first sight, the company included many well-known faces from the StartUp communities, but fortunately we managed to get to know new people as well.
In the last few years, many organizations have started to show what is done in domestic IT workshops by short presentations, in informal context. The only question - considering the continuous presentations - is whether this new milieu is able to produce so many new topics that can 'maintain' so many events. We can hardly decide about it now, but it's sure that these places are perfect for being acquainted with other professionals, drinking beer and for good conversations.
Before and after the presentations, pub fairies were supposed to help in getting acquainted with each other, in which they didn't really succeed but at least they were pretty. :)
It seemed that the event was successful and the Cluster will organize such occasions regularly.