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In fact, upgrading from 5Mbps to 10Mbps results in a mere 5% improvement in page loading times! In other words, an average consumer in the US would not benefit much from upgrading their connection when it comes to browsing the web.


However, the latency graph tells an entirely different story. For every 20ms improvement in latency, we have a linear improvement in page loading times.

Our good friends over at Intercom have posted a great writeup on how to be strategic about collecting customer feedback.

This whitepaper from Box UK combines psychological research with years of experience consulting on website usability to provide valuable insight into the online activities and decision-making of users. Focusing on six key areas, they reveal how wider behavioural trends affect our online interactions and offers clear and concise recommendations on how to use this information to improve user experience.

This short treatise explains how the human element both contributes to and protects the failure of complex systems.

“A significant majority of companies that had invested in social media marketing campaigns reported a positive shift in their bottom line. Companies that had developed an extensive social media presence reported a return on investment that was more than four times that of companies that had pursued little or no social networking activity.”

Does this suggest that social media campaigns are effective, or that the kind of companies that invest in social media are more likely to improve their bottom line, or both?

Nothing sinks a project faster than a poor estimate, or rather, an estimate that sets the wrong expectation. Part of the problem with setting expectations is finding the right words to paint an idea of the development effort.

Our hosting partners, Blue Box, up to the north of us¹ have recently published a series of articles about managing larger Ruby on Rails applications titled, Managing Real World Rails Apps at Massive Scale (also see parts 1, 2, and 3). These posts came out of a few interviews at RailsConf 2012. Definitely worth reading through to get a few ideas on how best to monitor and evaluate application performance.

¹ We’ll forgive them for being fans of the Seattle Flounders (Sounders). ;-)

In a controversial move, online travel agency Orbitz has started driving Mac computer users toward more expensive hotels. This bold strategy is based on the website’s tracking research, which indicated that its Mac customers spend up to 30 percent more on travel than its Windows clientele.

A user’s platform is just one metric that is being utilized to present the most effective marketing experience to browsers.

Media queries, the cornerstone of responsive design, have now earned an official W3C recommendation. That means all browsers will be expected to support them from here on out. This brings responsive design from an interesting technique to a working web standard. Go forth and make your site responsive.

MDG present the pros and the cons of mobile apps vs. mobile websites in a handy infographic.

Infographic by MDG Advertising