Results Are In

I would like to thank everyone who used their time to provide their thoughts on yesterday's post. I ask whether people thought a HitsConnect tracking link, software for tracking advertising results, should work in CTP's Gauntlet, a feature designed to provide feedback on web page design, should work or not. Well, the results are in and I want to share them with everyone.

I didn't have to spend much time analyzing the results. The were unanimous. 100% of the responses thought that a HitsConnect tracking link did not have to work in the Gauntlet since the Gauntlet is not suppose to be an advertising platform. I yield to the unanimous opinion. I will never bring it up again.

The other question that occurred several times in the responses was, "Why would anyone use a HitsConnect tracking link in a non-advertising environment?"

My answer to that question is, "I consider the Gauntlet as part of my testing of a new page and I want test my page exactly as it will run live." I am sure I can attribute that philosophy to my 40+ years of delivering software to clients who expect perfect results. And, believe me, no matter how much we thought every scenario had been tested, the client would find one we never imagined.

My favorite example of this is a system where the user entered the quantity of a product to be shipped to a store. There was a limited number of stores on a page and the user expected to complete 1 page at a time. We delivered the software after extensive testing. In less than 4 hours I get a call that says it doesn't work. I talked with the user and the problem was that they could enter data past the end of the page. We test more and could not produce the result the user was describing. I went back to the user and ask them to show me. I watched and they were right and I saw the problem. They knew how to type and were not looking at the screen while entering data. None of the programmers knew how to type so they watched the screen as they entered data. The programmers saw they were ate the end of the screen and the users didn't. We made a very small change that stopped the user after the last store and made a noise to let them know. Problem solved.

Enough said, I am moving on in search of my next windmill. Thank you all again for your input.

I look forward to your feedback to help me improve,
Bob Caine

PS - I switched pictures because It dawned on me that a real photo is probably more credible than a caricature.