Difference behaviour in different browsers

Below is a screenshot from the new version (Released 23/01/12) of Mayday, using my existing data within Google Analytics. With a few targeted queries, Mayday has identified some interesting user behaviour patterns.

The most surprising fact is that IE has received the most visits (72% of traffic) however is 3rd in terms of conversions. This is a signifiant problem as we could be losing out on potential users.  By comparing different aspects of users behaviour you can identify potential problems users are having.

Given the data above there are two initial assumptions:
1) There is a bug in the product.
2) IE users are a different market sector which respond differently to Firefox / Chrome users.

Give those assumptions, we have two actionable insights to try and improve the conversion rate.
1) Perform additional testing in IE around that area of the product to ensure no bugs exist.
2) Run A/B tests around language and pitch to the IE users segment.

After exploring a little more I found two interesting facts.
1) The homepage layout in IE was indeed broken. Since fixed it also doesn’t render as nicely due to the lack of HTML5 and CSS3 support which could also harm the conversions. I’ll be monitoring this closely.
2) There was a sharp rise in IE users followed by a quick drop-off, more than likely a bot.

Understanding technology use and browser support

Your metrics can help you make informed technical decisions about your product and website. While this doesn’t related to the current Mayday homepage, most websites do use Flash in particular ways. While most developers assume that everyone has Flash installed, we can see from the data below they would be correct – prove points are always better than assumptions. However, if we take mobile users into account then we can see 17% of users do not. This is a large percentage of missed opportunity and could justify a simple mobile-focused website.

This type of data allows you to understand which version to target. From this data set, you could assume that it would be best to target 10.3. Looking at a more narrow and recent slice shows 11.1 is rising and is the most common version. Informed decisions which could make a huge impact on how you create your website.

As Mayday continues to release additional functionality we’ll continue to look at how other metrics and user behaviour can indicate a problem.

Sign up for a free trial of Mayday at http://app.maydayhq.com/login

The product is SaaS-based, enabling clients to improve their website by alerting them when and where users experience problems. Combining lightweight integration with ‘Big Data’ technologies, we monitor users engagement, interaction and client details allowing us to identity why they’re having problems.

Our concept is still evolving, and you’ll be in a position to make your mark. Mayday has the potential to have a huge impact on development, testing and production systems and impact how we handle modern software issues and their related testing concerns.

Mayday recently graduated from the Springboard Accelerator Programme in Cambridge and has been covered by sites including TechCrunch and TheNextWeb. The next stages for the company involve a funding round, building an amazing team to allow us to change the world and then achieving profit. The product is currently an early alpha, with a small number of users providing valuable feedback before opening it up to the private invite list. A demo is available at http://app.maydayhq.com/demo

Key characteristics for the role include:
- Passionate about startups. Building a company is amazing and extremely rewarding, but it takes a certain type of person.
- Passionate about building amazing products and changing the world.
- Capable of producing amazing visual design.
- Capable of turning an amazing visual design into reality via HTML, CSS, Javascript and any other cool tools you fancy.
- Understands the importance of UX, workflows and the key metrics required to monitor and improve.
- Self motivated, proactive while taking pride in their work and looking for ways to learn / improve.

Remuneration: Variable; let’s discuss. As a co-founder you’ll be a key part of the business with significant founder share options available.

Location: Old Street, London (open minded to other locations.)

Interested?
Email workwithus {at} Maydayhq.com and tell us about yourself. It would be great to hear about recent projects you’ve been excited about, examples of your work and links to github, Twitter, LinkedIn, blog etc.

Why not add something different to the mix by telling us what features you would love to see in Mayday and how you see it growing over the next few years? What other startups currently excite you and why?

If you don’t fit the role of front-end developer, but feel you could make a difference to the company and add value in a different role, please email and tell us – we’d love to hear from you!

The session is titled “How Lean Testing removes waste and software bugs” where I’ll discuss how to take a lean approach to testing and how it can enable you to remove the waste causing delays to releasing and delays to customer feedback among other things. Over the next few months I’ll be blogging related items here and on the Mayday blog.

As such, I have a request. SXSW receive a huge amount of sessions every year. To help, they ask for the community to vote. If you could take a moment to vote for my session proposal then I would be most grateful!! http://bit.ly/leantestingsxsw2012

Every vote helps! Thank you!

With the help of MercuryApp, I tracked some of my emotions and thoughts on different days during Springboard. I hope this provides an insight to anyone currently on a startup accelerator and suffering low points or anyone hoping to start their journey. Keep in mind, 1 is “OMG, this is never going to work” while 5 would be “OMG, this will be huge!”

As you can see, a bumpy ride! It’s great to be able to look back at my comments and see how I can improve going forward. To provide some context, I’ve highlighted a number of points on the chart containing interesting lessons that hopefully others can relate to.

1) It’s the start of the programme and we’ve already engaged with some amazing mentors. At this point we were Meerkatalyst and focusing on .Net deployments. Some cracks had already appeared with the idea.

2) Like all great startups, we spoke with potential customers and received positive feedback. Looking back, we should have done more of this and pushed harder around customer discovery.

3) After a great few days you can see how emotions can quickly drop. Comments such as “Felt like crap, continued to attempt to work. Couldn’t work out a pitch, can’t work out how to install Azure stuff. Wifi slow.” shows how my body was reacting to the intense 15 day start. This ended with the first one and the comment “Ripped apart. Idea not sexy enough. Not big enough. Not solving interesting problems.”.

4) At this point we picked ourselves up and pushed on. After the initial feedback, we changed our direction slightly to become more of a ‘cloud management’ play.

5) This change of direction raised an interesting problem. We knew we had to change and attempted to predict market trends in order to find a focus and a gap in the market. Instead, we should have been on speaking with external people and asking very broad questions to try and identify existing pain points. A few remarks included: “I can’t pitch. Not sure about idea any more.”, “No idea about what product to develop. Too much scope.”, “Still haven’t got an idea”.

6) After continuing discussions and meeting people, we had a much clearer understanding about what we could create and the space we could play in. Just goes to show, customer development and speaking with people is important.

7) High points don’t last long, and this day led with the remark “Just about to give up.”. With more data and more knowledge about the problem space, sometimes you hear things you don’t want to.

8 ) One of the most important lessons I learnt was never give up. Keep pushing, keep trying different things and eventually you’ll get there. For us, this marked the start of the second phase of Springboard and a move away from both deployments and cloud management.

9) During the next couple of days, I spoke at the NDC2011 conference in Oslo, Norway. This was a great break, a time to recharge batteries and speak with some amazing people about what problems they were really experiencing. During this time it was decided to completely drop deployments and cloud management and instead focus on the current approach around user monitoring, error detection and application health.

10) Between NDC, the decision to move and here everything was going well. We had gone back to some of our original mentors and had skype conversations about the change of direction. Everyone was more than happy to help and while it gave us a lot to think about we become confident that it was an interesting space to be playing in.

11) Low emotions reappeared with the comment “Pitch to Cambridge angels was awful!!! Really bad design of slides. No examples, no solution.”. As a group we had practiced and while I’ve spoken at conferences before, I found standing in front of the Cambridge Angels and pitching a product idea to be a very different experience. As you can tell, I was not impressive with my own performance; however, I found it to be one of the most valuable lessons.

12) Not connected in any way to our performances at Cambridge Angels, we had a professional speaking coach attend which basically reaffirmed all the mistakes I had made during the pitch at Cambridge Angels. Personally, this was one of my lowest moments during Springboard. It was also a great motivator to improve.

13) “WE HAVE A NEW NAME!” with a move away from Meerkatalyst complete. Landing page and an initial demo all came together and after having dinner with Robbie from Red Gate a few days before, everything was moving in the right direction.

14) 1, 3, 5 all in the same day. Looking back, these happened a lot more than I recorded via MercuryApp.

15) Leading up to investor day was stressful. There was lots happening, lots changing and lots to do. However, the day proved the entire three months, the entire journey and all the emotions had been worth it.

For me, having this data proves one thing – never give up. No matter how bad things seem, great things could be just a day away. Likewise, even when you’re on top of the world, be prepared for something to catch you off guard. Looking back, one of the main problems was not acting quickly enough after speaking with potential customers and mentors who gave warning signs. The experience has put me in a much better position to evaluate ideas and know what problems to look out for – a valuable lesson indeed.

tl;dr For anyone thinking about a startup accelerator, go for it! It’s an amazing experience. Just be prepared for heartache, stress but most importantly never assume anything. Don’t go in thinking you have the greatest idea in the world. Listen to mentors, listen to customers and be critical, push yourself to always improve and produce something amazing!

I would really recommend everyone keeps track of their emotions, it’s a great way to reflect and improve. While MercuryApp has a free plan for individuals, their also providing the team functionality for free to startups https://www.mercuryapp.com/startups

I would love to hear the emotions of what others have felt while launching.

Springboard has now finished and the investor day caused some buzz around the web which I wanted to summarise.

http://springboard.com/day-88-part-1-investor-day-on-top-of-the-world/

http://blogs.wsj.com/tech-europe/2011/08/05/big-brother-for-tech-entrepreneurs-comes-to-cambridge

http://eu.techcrunch.com/2011/07/29/mayday-alerts-about-problems-across-all-browsers-and-tells-you-why-springboard/

http://thenextweb.com/uk/2011/08/04/ten-startups-spring-up-at-springboard-investor-day

http://www.businessweekly.co.uk/hi-tech/12456-springboard-cambridge-teams-emerge-from-stealth-mode

The buzz was also being generated before the final day. The following posts provide an insight into the creation of Mayday and Meerkatalyst.

http://springboard.com/day-44-the-power-of-the-eleventh-team/

http://springboard.com/day-41-guest-post-what-jenson-button-winning-means-for-startups-ben-hall/

http://springboard.com/day-57-guest-post-finding-a-new-direction-james-hollingworth/

If I’ve missed any links then please add them in the comments section.

It’s something we’re concerned about and feel that a users experience is being overlooked far to often. With applications constantly pushing the boundaries, being accessed on multiple devices with companies trying to create compelling and engaging experiences – why do users still encounter bugs and problems stopping them?

This is why we created Mayday. Imagine a world where you can automatically detect when users have problems without having to wait (potentially forever) for them to contact customer support. What if you had context and the actions performed by the user when the problem occurred allowing you to focus on fixing the bug instead of spending hours reproducing the problem? Why do we think monitoring servers will tell us everything when it’s users and their browsers having the problem?

These are just some of the questions we are creating answers for. With the shift in development practices, the powerful nature of javascript and the flexibility of HTML5, we believe we need a new way to monitor the health of an application and ensure that users are always having the best experience possible. This new way is Mayday.

Want to sign up? Visit the homepage.