TomDoepker.com » Development

How to Track the Success of a QR Code

Tom — Wed, 11 Jan 2012 12:00:31 +0000

As someone who’s had to type a long web address into a smart phone, I’m a big fan of using a QR code as a short cut. So if you’re the business owner, how do you track the usage of the QR codes you generate? By creating specific “dummy” URLs that can specify the source, medium and advertising campaign. You then use Google Analytics (or another web traffic tool) to see how traffic was driven to each URL.

Create a “dummy address” for your campaign

Notice that you can be pretty specific when creating the new URL.

Use the Google URL Builder – http://support.google.com/googleanalytics/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=55578
Fill in each of the required (*) fields, for a unique web address
Click “Generate URL”
This gives you something like
“http://www.YourWebSite.com/?utm_source=QR&utm_medium=MarchNewsletter&utm_campaign=NewCampaign”
(Notice that your “source” is a QR code, “medium” is the March newsletter and the “campaign” is “NewCampaign”)
Highlight and copy your new link

Create Your QR Code

Shorten the link using either http://goo.gl/ or https://bitly.com/
Copy your new, shortened link
Use http://createqrcode.appspot.com/ or your favorite QR code generator to create your code.

Monitor in Your Web Tracking Software

I’m a big fan of Google Analytics, but whatever tool you use, look into your page visits to see which pages got the most hits and which did not. From there, it’s a matter of tweaking your marketing campaign.

Sheriff Survey

Tom — Mon, 20 Dec 2010 12:00:41 +0000

Working with the Sheriff’s Office’s software development team, I developed an online survey. Officers enter their report into the system and then reports are randomly flagged to request feedback from the complainant. The complainant receives an email with a custom-generated link, which takes them to this page, where I collect the report information as well as their feedback and submit that to the sheriff’s office. The survey can also be filled out by any complainant, so long as they have a valid report number.

Another example of working to move paper processes online.

Test as You Go

Tom — Tue, 03 Aug 2010 12:00:25 +0000

When working on a really big project, it is very easy to run into trouble with unanticipated issues or for team members to lose sight of the overall goal. To combat this, we take some time during the project planning phase to identify some “mini projects” that we will run along the way.

For example, my team and I developed a Content Management System from the ground up. The time line for the main functionality took us out over two years and there were a countless amount of small details that we had to keep in order.

We identified a small group of our users who offered to help us test things in exchange for becoming the first ones to get to use the system. With our user group in place, we determined the smallest possible amount of these mini projects that would still get us the results we wanted. We had two types of projects, both were focused on generating quick results:

Testing individual tools
Creating different types of web pages

It is important to note that the projects are not designed to conform to a preconceived notion of “how I think this will work”, but instead to achieving a small part of the final result with a focus on identifying potential problems, giving the team real success they can see along the way and generating excitement among the future users.

We began with the tool testing. One project had six people try out an uploading tool that became the basis for how our users add and edit PDFs and images. Not only we able to customize the interface to what they felt would be the easiest way to use it, we also were able to then set realistic limits for file types and sizes based on actual user need.

Once we had a solid amount of the development done and could start tying pieces together, we began the second type of mini projects in which we asked our users to create different types of web pages. A page of downloadable forms in bulleted-list format or a page with multiple text boxes in which the user changes the template.

That last one brought up the question of what happens to the content of a third text box when the user switches to a template that only uses two text boxes? In hindsight, we should have identified the issue from the beginning, but we managed to save ourselves and catch it here. We were also able to poll our users to find out what would be the most helpful for them.

The management system is now successfully running 98 web applications, all of which continue to do a wider variety of tasks than we originally conceived. Our mini projects allowed us to rapidly test as we developed, gave us real time feedback from actual users and gave us some great success stories along the way to share with upper management. The additional major benefit for me was that it helped to create training documentation along the way, which proved invaluable during the final large roll out.

Dublin Core Metadata File

Tom — Fri, 23 Jul 2010 12:00:27 +0000

What is it?

The “Dublin.rdf” file gives you an opportunity to define your site’s metadata using prescribed specifications managed by the Dublin Core Metadata Initiative. (http://dublincore.org/)

Why is it useful?

Search engine optimization (SEO) and clean, well-defined mark up have long been important and will continue to be so. This file is an easy addition to your site that provides the great benefit of allowing you to help shape how the search engines define the content.

How to create one

The W3 School specifications are here.

Example

Six Revisions has the example (and a great write up) that I refer to:

Your Name
2008-07-26
This is my website.
EN
Company
http://www.yoursite.com/

Redesigning SharePoint

Tom — Wed, 26 Aug 2009 12:00:25 +0000

I’ve never been a big fan of SharePoint, but it had become obvious that installing WSS 3.0 would allow me to get a very functional document library and knowledge base online for internal users in a very short time frame. I recently heard that the second rule of the Army is, “If it’s stupid but it works, it isn’t stupid.” It rung very true.

So now I have it and I needed to redesign it. There were two main suggestions I found online about redesigning SharePoint:

Surrender to SharePoint Designer
Do not edit “core.css”

First, SharePoint Designer is a descendant of FrontPage. That’s enough to convince a seasoned web developer not to use it. Second, I was careful and backed up files before changing them. I could easily revert back. Third, all changes were made in a development environment and thoroughly tested before being released to the wild.

User-testing helped me to design the version of a SharePoint installation that we both want and need in Photoshop, but changes to a Cascading Style Sheet weren’t going to do it.

To get the results I needed, I edited several of the master pages and user control pages, the “core.css”, two images as well as adding a theme-specific style sheet and images.

Lessons Learned and Best Practices

Set up a test environment and restore a recent copy of the SharePoint back up. Test your design changes here. Obvious and worth it.
Create your own theme, but choose the one that looks the most similar to copy. There are plenty of places that will tell you how to create your own theme by copying an existing one, renaming it and then making your edits so I’ll skip that. By choosing one with a similar color scheme to your goal, you can save yourself a lot of time searching through tons of code.
Don’t be afraid to make changes, just make sure that you have a back up. Some of the design changes I made forced me to edit the master and user control files. What really surprised me was that some design changes could ONLY be made by editing the “core.css”.
Import a Style Sheet. Use it as much as possible. (It’s worth noting that many sources online recommend this. They also say not to edit the master pages, but then say you have to add the code to import this new CSS file to the default.master. Confusing.)
Use GIFs over PNGs for images. PNGs looked great in everything but Internet Explorer. Only GIFs survived cross-browser testing.

Where Are All The Files You Will Need?

Images: Local Drive\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\web server extensions\12\TEMPLATE\IMAGES
Cascading Style Sheets: Local Drive\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\web server extensions\12\TEMPLATE\LAYOUTS\1033\STYLES
Default.Master: Local Drive\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\web server extensions\12\TEMPLATE\GLOBAL
Other Helpful Code Files (Notably Application.Master): Local Drive\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\web server extensions\12\TEMPLATE\LAYOUTS
The Themes: Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\web server extensions\12\TEMPLATE\THEMES
SPTHEMES.XML (Defines the themes available): Local Drive\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Web Server Extensions\12\TEMPLATE\LAYOUTS\1033