How to Make an Angry User Happy

I received this comment on MacTips today:

I hate to say it, but thats not a tip. Everyone knows that. You havent been posting REALLY intresting tips lately and you dont post at least one tip a day. Mactips and the Mactips Widget are getting very boring. I used to look forward to getting a new tip for my Mac everyday after school, but now I dont. Instead, I’d rather go to Macworld.com for tips and news about Apple and Macs.

Ouch. He has point, but he was angry so his tone reflected that.

I replied with the following e-mail:

XXX,
Thanks for taking the time to post a comment on MacTips.

I welcome all criticism along with suggestions–and I definitely deserve yours.

I would disagree on your first assessment that the entry I posted is not a tip. Many users never use the right-click menu and even fewer know that holding Option changes certain preferences.

While you may think this is fairly obvious–this is brand new to other users.
Your second piece of criticism is valid, however–and I tried to acknowledge this in the post.

Some big changes are happening behind the scenes–and I promise regular (quality) content is coming soon.

May I suggest taking a look through our archives or popular posts to hold you over for the next week or so?

http://www.mactips.org/popular/

http://www.mactips.org/archives/

Thanks,Brad

Easy and to the point. This was his response:

Oh, please excuse me if I was rude. I mean that in the most sincere way posible, now that I really read what I said, it didnt sound all that nice :-/

Definitely a lot better response.

The point is I care what he thinks. I’ve written about this before in Building Your Website One User at a Time.

This is something I feel will not only help the site improve, but also help establish a sense of community.

The bottom line, listen to your users.

Pitfalls of Scaling a Web Site

Scaling involves growing your infrastructure to keep up with the needs of your website.

Lately this has become an issue over at MacTips. You can see in the graph below bandwidth has tripled since February.

Now MacTips is pushing nearly 200GB per month.

This jump in traffic is largely caused by the MacTips Widget in the top 50, but other media like images and videos have contributed as well.

I think scaling is always a good problem to have. It means your growing.

But if not done properly, scaling can cause serious problems. Let’s look at some common pitfalls.

Not enough resources and service goes down

The first pitfall is not allocating enough resources. This leads to servers that are down and an inaccessible Web site.

Visitors become frustrated when your service can’t stay online and they forget about you.

Too many resources and waste lots of money

You over-compensate and purchase too much too quickly. This leaves you with resources that you waste for months and months.

While your visitors aren’t effected by this–this puts a serious strain on the wallet.

Going with the cheapest solution

Never go with the cheapest host. Likewise, don’t go with the most expensive unless your hosting mission critical data.

Somewhere in the 50-75 percentile should be perfect for most Web sites. The hosts in this range offer quality services with actual customer service.

This may not be important to you–but when your site is down it is the only thing that matters.

Keep it Simple Stupid

A decent simple solution is better than a complex good solution. By this I mean don’t introduce complexity where it’s not required.

Do you need replicated master/server DB servers? No? Then don’t do it.

Do you need memcached? No? Then don’t .

When looking at solutions for MacTips, I considered Amazon S3 and Joyent.

Amazon S3: Amazon S3 is great, but because it’s not based on a filesystem, syncing files becomes a big pain. This point alone made me ditch S3.

Joyent: Joyent offers virtualized servers at good rates. Planned on rysnc’ing static files (images/videos) to Joyent server because bandwidth was so cheap. After doing some research I saw some not-so-great reviews of Joyent.

Thanks but no thanks. The $50 I save now will come back to bite me when I can’t access my server and support takes 4 days to get back to me. I’m not a sys-admin, I don’t want an unmanaged server.

My Ideal Solution

So, what is my solution? Upgrading to my own server at my current host Idologic.

I think this is the best and easiest solution. It keeps everything on one server without the need for syncing.

It also keeps me with a hosting company I absolute love (Idologic rocks!).

This method is slightly more expensive, but the stress and aggravation I’m saved makes up for it.

I’ve chosen a server that should allow me to grow for the next 6 months. At that point I can reconsider my options.

Scaling is generally straight forward, however it can get quite complex. Consider your needs for the near-future and choose the easiest solution.

Often the easiest solution is best when it comes to scaling.

Increase Pageviews By Lowering Your Bounce Rate

I’ve talked about bounce rate before when I released my Attention Span plugin for Mint. Bounce rate is one of the best ways to gauge the effectiveness of your site. In one month I’ve improved the bounce rate on MacTips from 37% to 26%–let me explain how.

What is Bounce Rate?

Bounce Rate: The percentage of users who visited only 1 page on your site and then left.

This is the most basic definition of bounce rate. So if your bounce rate is 30%, 30% of your visitors left without visiting any other pages.

The other 70% visited 2 or more pages. The lower your bounce rate the better.

I know you’re begging for an analogy, so here’s one. Imagine a cup with a hole in the bottom. Our goal is to fill the cup with water as quickly as possible.

In this scenario, the cup is your website, the water your visitors and the hole your bounce rate.

There is always going to be a hole in the cup, it’s the nature of this cup (some users will always leave after only 1 visit). However, the smaller the hole (lower bounce rate), the quicker our cup fills and the faster we reach our goal.

Ignoring your bounce rate is like trying to fill a cup with no bottom. No matter how many visitors you pour into your website, none stick around. You have a tough time building a following of any measurable size. There is an easier way.

Why is a Low Bounce Rate Important?

A low bounce rate can:

• Increase ad revenue, more page views usually means more $$$ (not always)
• Increase return visits, when a user begins surfing your site they remember you and are more likely to revisit
• Increased attention, attention is our ultimate goal building a website. Bounce rate is a shortcut to retaining that attention
• Momentum, user activity breeds more activity. Users don’t like contributing to a ghost-town Web site. The quicker you build users, the more momentum you gain
• Increase subscriptions to RSS and E-mail, A user who navigates multiple pages is more likely to want more information in the form of subscriptions

How Do I Lower My Bounce Rate?

Many individual factors contribute to a poor bounce rate. Overall, I’d say 50% is content and 50% is page design. I’ve tweaked both heavily and both have a huge impact. Let’s break down some factors:

Remove Ads: Crazy right? Let me explain. Users don’t like ads, they tolerate them. Overload your users and they’ll flee. Don’t remove all ads, but the low-paying ones you crammed in for an extra penny at your users expense–consider ditching those.

Keep It Simple Stupid (KISS): Simple beats trendy any day of the week. Your users will thank you with their attention. Adding superfluous effects, transitions and moving objects will confuse your users and make them give up. You don’t want them to give up, you want them to dig in and get their feet wet. Keep it as simple and intuitive as possible.

Clutter is another problem. Don’t try to cram as much information as possible into one area. Whitespace can be visually appealing. Keep the important stuff and move everything else out of the way.

Accessibility: Is your website accessible? This touches on keeping things simple as mentioned above. An accessible website works on all browsers (mobile too). It can be used by people with disabilities and non-savvy Internet users. Also, for goodness sake leave your damn links underlined.

Relevant Links: This was the single most important factor while improving the bounce rate on MacTips. Relevant links to similar or popular content are fine. But cross-linking inside content will do more for your bounce rate than many of the previous techniques combined.

Consider cross-linking like this: Quality content is important when building your Web site, but its also important to have a plan for success.

Linking to previous (relevant!) content will send users deep into the nooks and crannies of your site and help new users catch up on content they missed.

When I started doing this on MacTips, the bounce rate plummeted. This makes sense because your users eyes are fixated on your content. Not your sidebar, footer or header (though the header holds a lot of attention)–the vast majority if your users are focusing on your content.

By putting relevant links in front of their eyes, you grab and hold their attention. This is the way to build readership.

In Conclusion

Bounce rate is not a cure-all solution to building a successful Web site. However, by paying attention to it–you can test different versions of your site and measure the effect on your users.

This enables you to create a following much easier than just hoping users liked the one article they happened to stumble across.

My Plan Succeeded! So Far…

Your achievement can be no greater than your plans are sound.
-Napoleon Hill

How is my plan unfolding?

Last week I talked about creating a plan for success. I described two plans I had to increase subscribers and pageviews on MacTips. The first part of the plan was:

If I can build a Dashboard widget that enough people use, I can keep it in Apple’s Top 50 Widgets. This is a huge source of traffic, but the key is keeping it in the top 50. I’ve been building this widget all weekend–but I’ve still got lots more to do until it’s ready.

I said in my post I would report back with my results. Its been a week since I released the Widget–and so far its been a huge success.

The number of subscribers on MacTips jumped from 3,757 to 4,788. That’s a 20% increase in one week. Not bad for a little planning.

Creating a widget is easy. Creating a widget that stays in the top 50 is a little more difficult. Currently it’s settled at spot #17, but it jumps around quite a bit. Yesterday it was at #27.

I just made the realization if the widget gets into the top 10 it gets bumped to the Apple Downloads page. I’m willing to bet the traffic difference in #17 and #10 is worth the extra effort.

So What’s Next?

Well, the second part of my plan is working on an iTunes podcast. I’m not sure this will be as successful as the Widget has been–but it’s worth a try.

If the MacTips widget drops out of the top 50 (entirely possible), I’ll make some changes users have been asking for and try again.

By keeping a widget in the top 50 I’m adding 1,000 new subscribers to MacTips every week. That’s worth the effort.

Attention Span: Bounce Rate & Pages Per Visit Plugin For Mint

Download Attention Span 0.1b

Why Use Mint For Analytics

I use Mint to track stats on MacTips. Mint in itself is not that amazing. It provides pretty good stats, but nothing above and beyond what anybody else is offering.

What did draw me to Mint is the ability to create plug-ins. This is the deal maker for me and many others. There’s tons of standard and 3rd party plug-ins available that take Mint to the next level.

I needed a plugin for Bounce Rates and Pages Per Visit but one didn’t exist–so I made one and I’m releasing it here (and on the Mint site once I test more).

Introducing Attention Span

Attention Span shows you how “sticky” your content is by displaying the Bounce Rate and Pages Per Visit.

Bounce Rate: The percentage of users who left your site after 1 pageview. The lower this number is the better.

Pages Per Visit: The average number of pages a user visits in 1 session. The higher this number is the better.

This is very useful for determining trends and content/design effectiveness.

What Did I Learn?

So, what have I learned from this plug-in so far?

I’ve learned MacTips is in a downward trend for effectiveness.

In the past month the Bounce Rate has gone up and Pages Per Visit has gone down.

As you can see the bounce rate has gone up to 40% in the past month. This isn’t great news, but at least I know now and can do something about it.

I’d guess the reason for this is either me placing more ads on the site or me cramming more information into the pages.

Either way, I realize there’s a problem now and I can actually do something about it. This is what Bounce Rates and Pages Per Visit stats tell me.

Without this information I may have never realized my effectiveness was going down, especially considering my visitors were going up.

Download Attention Span 0.1b

Innovative Content Brings the Best Visitor

Origional and innovative content brings the best kind of reader, the innovative early adopters.

I wrote that in a journal I keep way back on October 28th, 2007. MacTips had just broken 2,000 visitors for the first time and it was due to original content that we published before anyone else.

Yesterday, Leopard 10.5.2 was released. With it brought some new changes to the way stacks work in the dock. Michael (one of my writers) jumped on this and had a great post up explaining the news stack features.

I let him know last night how great of a post this was not only because it was well written, but because he had written it before anyone else. This is the type of content I’ve been striving for.

I woke this morning to find we were linked by LifeHacker. This is not the first time this has happened, but I always love traffic from LifeHacker. Their Mac users are some of the smartest (and friendliest) around.

Not to mention LifeHacker Mac users relate well to MacTips because the nature of the two sites (tips, tricks, hacks).

So, what was the result of this? We’ve had nearly 10,000 visitors today. Last night, I wrote out a goal to hit the same number by July 31st, 2008. Of course in my goal I’d like to sustain this daily traffic, but this is a great start.

Gina Trapani From LifeHacker

Gina is the editor for LifeHacker. I mention her because she is the one who posted the entry.

I’ve spoken to Gina on a few occasions and she seems like one of the smartest most down to earth people I’ve ever talked to. I asked her for thoughts on turning a blog into a book since she had recently written one, and she was very helpful and always nice.

Come to find out Gina is also a programmer and web developer–talk about a talent.

Content is King

This goes back to my Content is King post. All the other marketing, design, programming, SEO and newsletter stuff is fine–but without content you’ve got nothing.

If you’re just starting out, forget about everything else and focus on building quality content. Maybe I’ll write a post or two on what I think quality content is. Yes, I think I’ll do that.

It’s been a good day, I love when my site grows.

Building Your Website One User at a Time

One User Does Make a Difference

I would rather have 1 passionate user than 10 regular users. That 1 passionate user will give more constructive feedback, become more active and tell more people than the 10 regular users ever would.

This seems contrary to popular belief. Building a website one user at a time seems like it would take forever to build momentum.

There’s truths to this, but the overall problem isn’t the time it takes–it’s your attitude.

When you treat your users as a whole instead of individuals they feel unimportant. When they feel unimportant your site lacks feedback from the people you need it from most.

What does this actually mean?

This means when a user takes the time to e-mail you, respond. Thank them for taking the time to contact you and let them know they’re important to you.

When a user makes a suggestion, actually consider it. Not every suggestion is a gold mine, but often users suggest things you will never consider.

When a user complains, listen and listen well. This is your chance to really win over a user. Instead of blowing them off–consider it from their point of view. Do they have a valid point? If so, let them know. If not, try to resolve the situation the best you can. If you put your best foot forward the user will notice.

User Complaints Hurt my Ego

A while back I was designing a new front page for MacTips. I wanted new users to be able to find popular content easily.

Right after launching the new page I got this e-mail:

I just went to your site and I absolutely despise your new setup. It makes me want to stop looking at the site, which is exactly what I (and probably countless others) am going to do. The format is so complicated that I can’t find the actual tips without reading about a thousand different links that all look the same. You over-structured to the point that the site is rendered useless and defunct. I hope you realize you immense mistake and how inviting simplicity can be. People looking for the kinds of tips that your site offers are now especially disinclined to view your site. Good luck!

Re-reading this still makes me cringe–but it shouldn’t. I worked very hard on the new front page and I thought it was great. But after considering it from his point of view–he was exactly right.

I tried to fit so much information on the page, I made it all useless. Not only did I change it back, but I started removing unnecessary information from the rest of the site. As a result the site is much easier to navigate and looks a lot cleaner. I still have some things to change, but I’m headed in the right direction now.

That user did me a huge favor. Dozens of users were probably thinking the exact same thing, and would have never returned without telling me. He took the time to e-mail me. Not only was I able to improve the site for the whole community, but I gained a loyal user in the process

Why Did You Unsubscribe?

You can also be more proactive in communicating with your users. The e-mail list does fairly well at MacTips with over 500 subscribers. This number is growing by about 15 users every day.

Of these 500 subscribers, only 1 has unsubscribed. That’s not a bad ratio–but I wanted to know why, so I e-mailed him:

Hi “rew”,

I’m the webmaster of MacTips.org. Recently you subscribed to MacTips and then unsubscribed.

I was curious why? This is in no way an e-mail to try and get you to re-subscribe.

You are my first and only unsubscriber and I was just curious why? If there’s something I can do to keep users I’d like to do it, hopefully you shedding some light can help that.

If you don’t want to answer, then please don’t. You’ll never hear from me again–I was just curious if it was something specific that I could address.

Thanks,
Brad

I was very careful to let the user know he wouldn’t hear from me again if he didn’t want to. Because he unsubscribed I assumed he didn’t want to hear from MacTips again.

I was surprised by his reply:

I didn’t mean to unsubscribe I was wondering why I hadn’t received any tips. Please go ahead and subscribe me again. Thanks.

Had he not accidentally unsubscribed, I would have listened to what he had to say to prevent future users from unsubscribing.

Instead I was able to gain another subscriber and maintain my 500/0 record.

Hard Work Pays Off

Building a successful website is not easy, but it’s not rocket science either. Knowing that your users are your livelihood should always keep things in check for you. Treat them with respect and as individuals and you will be surprised by their response.

Content is King–Long Live Content!

You hear it time after time when building a website. Content is King

Why?

Why Unique Content?

Having unique content is key to building a successful website.

• Unique content builds links from trusted sources as an afterthought.
• Unique content makes you the authority source. You’re not regurgitating information.
• Unique content establishes credibility amongst your readers and builds a following.

Why Frequent Content?

• Search engines love frequent content–blogs are preferred often because they’re up-to-date.
• Users love frequent content. When your site is updated on a regular basis, users know when to expect an update–visiting more frequently.
• Frequent content establishes momentum. Momentum is an extremely powerful tool for developing a website.

So what does all this mean?

This means stop focusing on SEO. It’s a small fraction of the big picture. Yes it’s important.

Content is more important. Way more important. 100x more important.

You can have the best SEO’d site in the world–without content it’s useless.

Contrary, you can have the worst SEO’d site in the world, and you’ll probably still rank well if you have golden content.

Obviously there’s exceptions to this. Don’t design in Flash, search engines are still learning how to read this.

Search engines don’t read Javascript very well if at all. Any Javascript is for your users only.

Practical advice

Focus on making your site readable to search engines. This means:

• What your content is about in your title.
• What your content is about again in your header tag.
• Important content up top.

This is more for web accessibility than for SEO, but applies to both.

Then, forget about SEO and focus on content. Content content content content. Unique content. Cutting edge content. Focus on content for users, not search engines. Search engines will follow the users.

Are you sure?

Yes I’m sure. Here’s an example from my current site MacTips.

MacTips has been established for over 2 years now. Just recently it’s begun getting regular content again. I’ve been getting decent search engine traffic for a while, but today the floodgates opened and traffic started pouring in.

This is a direct result of frequent and unique content.

I’ve hit my goal of 5,000 visitors per day 4 months ahead of schedule.

Regular and unique content has brought links from popular sites such as Gizmodo, LifeHacker and TUAW.

Also, a community is starting to develop–which is my #1 goal for MacTips.

This is where building a site gets very exciting. Large enough to make a difference but small enough to grow exponentially.

Conclusion

Focus on your users and you won’t go wrong. Your users give your site life. Without them you have a bunch of pages on a webserver.

With them, you have a vibrant and active community with ideas, expressions and most importantly momentum.

Note: The stats for MacTips are publicly available at http://www.mactips.org/mint/.