Much has been written about the Cookie Law, and many people have different opinions of how it should be implemented. But one thing that’s clear is that the ICO wants all websites to “obtain consent” before setting any cookies. This means creating some sort of mechanism to allow users to “opt-in” to set cookies on our websites.

Our solution

According to this article, the Cookie Law will cost the UK £10 billion for companies to comply with the law. Seems a bit steep, so we created a solution that we’re encouraging other companies to download and use for free.

Introducing Cookie Consent

We call our solution Cookie Consent, which is a JavaScript plugin you can use by adding just a few lines of code to your site. Users will be shown a message which drops down from the top of the screen asking them if they want to allow cookies.

Click "see details" to see which types of cookies are used

Here’s some of the other features:

Global settings

Not only can your users click to approve the cookies on your site, they can also set global settings which applies to all websites using our plugin. This means if they consent to all cookies on all websites, they won’t be bothered by a consent message on the next website they visit.

Open source

We liked our plugin so much that we want all websites to use it! We’ve released it under the GNU General Public licence, meaning you can redistribute it and modify it if you want to.

Customisable

We’ve added a lot of ways to customise the Cookie Consent plugin. You can choose for it to popup from the top or the bottom of your website, and you can use your own CSS to completely change how it looks.

Like many we’ve been astounded at the breathtaking stupidity of the new EU Cookie Law, which makes over 90% of UK websites illegal in exactly one month.

We also couldn’t believe that no-one would organise any protest against it. So we’ve just started one.

Launching today, we present No Cookie Law. We made this website to raise awareness about the ridiculous law, and – maybe – to have some chance at changing it.

To be honest there’s no way of knowing how this will be received. We’ve put a lot of effort into putting it together, but now we’re in your hands. Without the support of others this is just another website – collectively we can make a difference.

If you support us in this campaign please take a moment to sign our petition. You can also follow our dedicated No Cookie Law Twitter and Facebook accounts for updates.

Wish us luck!

One of the questions we’ve often been asked about SEO is this:

“Does the wording we put in image Alt text get used in Google’s rankings?”

The answer to this question seems to have changed over the years, where first it seemed to be a really popular place for web developers to sneak in a few additional SEO keywords into their page. The text would be hidden from view but Google would read it inline as actual content of the page. Was this good practise? Absolutely not! It’s a form of keyword stuffing and isn’t advised.

The reason for this being a bad thing to do on your website was that it made absolutely no sense to blind people who use a screen reader to have the page content read out to them. When they encounter an image on a page, they’ll expect to hear the image alternative text, but instead they get a list of your company keywords – that’s not very nice is it?

So Google realised this, and started ignoring Alt text used in images. Quite simply, Alt text is not supposed to be used for SEO, and that’s fair enough – don’t you think?

But the thing is, lately it’s been proven that Google does use it in ranking, and treats it just like it treats your page content. So in terms of SEO, it’s not as important as text in your <title> tag, or your <h1> tag, but it is still used nonetheless.

In fact, to prove this I did a test in Google using an example website we used in an SEO experiment a while ago, frictionless-owls.com (you can see our written reports on the experiment here). I added some unique words into the Alt text of some images (it’s harder than you think to come up with a unique word that doesn’t bring up results in Google!) and waited hesitantly for Google to index the page and find my new words.

I used the frictionless-owls website for testing

I checked by googling for these keywords every week, and by the third week both keywords brought up the frictionless owls website. I assume it took a while for Google to re-spider the site because it’d been static for so long, so didn’t hurry back to check for new content (something we reported on in the original SEO challenge article).

So back to my original question, does the wording we put in an image Alt text get used in Google’s rankings, yes, yes it does. But it shouldn’t, so don’t go keyword stuffing!

Remember the big kerfuffle about the Cookie Law at around about this time last year? I remember it being a big confusing mess. We created a video doing our best to explain the law which actually became very popular, I guess because it resonated with so many web developers and website owners.

So panic ensued. The panic mostly was because the ICO threatened to charge up to £500,000 for websites that don’t comply.

The amendment to the ePrivacy Directive became law in the UK on the 26th May 2011, a day that almost nobody was ready for. Many people didn’t know exactly what they had to do, and some website owners hadn’t even heard of the law. Because of this, the ICO decided to give all website owners a year’s grace period before enforcing the law (see the article on the BBC website). This was supposed to give us all plenty of time to work out a solution and update our sites accordingly. But the time is ticking away, and I still haven’t seen a decent solution. So is it time to start getting worried again?

I actually expected this to be a hot topic with website owners, who’d be frantically making changes to their websites, and also expected much chatter throughout the web design community about interesting new methods and solutions – like there is at the minute with HTML5 and responsive design. But to be honest I haven’t heard anything but confusion and apathy. Many people I’ve spoken to are still ignoring it, or assume all that’s required is a simple change to your footer to add a link to a page about your cookies (like this).

But this option above still doesn’t address the fundamental part of the cookie law: we have to get permission before installing cookies on a person’s computer.

Some horrible suggestions

There have been some absolutely horrible recommendations suggested as a way to request permission before setting cookies.

ICO website’s solution

The ICO website implemented a solution which showed a box at the top of their page asking if you want to accept cookies (we wrote more about this in-depth here). It looks pretty hideous in my opinion and more importantly it distracts from your genuine page content. If this is really what they’re recommending as the ideal solution, I doubt anyone would want to put it on their site. Secondly it had a massive impact on the amount of analytics data they collected, according to Google Analytics expert Vicky Brock. 90% of visitors to their site didn’t opt in – see the graph below.

Graph from http://blog.eloqua.com/chart-tracking-drop-off/

Cookielaw.org’s solution

If you browse to www.cookielaw.org you’ll see a bar animate down from the top of the website, slightly obscuring their own page. Very similar to the ICO’s solution, this one looks slightly better designed and at least fits in with their site. A friendly green “allow” button is what you have to click. They’re selling this solution for a fee so that you can put something similar on your own website. I’m not sure if this comes with an option to rebrand the bar yourself, as it’s clearly been designed to match the style of the cookielaw.org website. If it doesn’t,it might stick out like a sore thumb.

Cookie control’s solution

Cookie control is a free download created by a web agency. It looks elegant, and doesn’t distract from your website’s content. Adding the code to your website adds a tidy triangle in the corner of your site. Click this and you’ll be asked if you’re happy for this website to set cookies on your computer. This is the least invasive option I’ve seen, and to be honest I think that’s the problem. It isn’t obvious enough for someone to even notice it and will be ignored. The ICO’s click rate was 10%, but with this solution it’ll likely be even lower.

I think we need to strike a balance. Obviously we want people to set cookies (otherwise why would we set them?) so we want to encourage users to allow them, whilst not distracting them from valuable website content. So far I haven’t seen a solution for asking permission that isn’t distracting or the opposite: unnoticeable.

Establish what cookies you use

Despite the confusion of what we actually have to do, the one thing that was clear is that we have to explain which cookies we set on our websites. That’s not actually a bad idea, and many website owners aren’t even aware of what cookies their website sets and why. You can do this in a few ways and we actually have a specific test in SiteBeam for this, which lists all cookies on your website – really handy!

If you’re just using analytics cookies it might not be that difficult

We wrote an article last year which asked whether we could use analytics with the new cookie law and finally we have some clarification from the ICO, who released this PDF in December.

The final section addresses analytics, and states that they’re unlikely to take action on websites that use cookies for analytical purposes, although we should still provide clear information about which cookies are used and why. We’ve written a more in-depth article about this here.

Want to know more?

The cookie law documents prepared by the ICO are quite confusing, so we’ve tried to make sense of them here: www.silktide.com/cookielaw

Urgent news flash – An earthquake has affected the servers where Nibbler is hosted. Some users will notice today (April 1st) that the Nibbler website has experienced some slight subsidence. Those affected are users with modern browsers (Firefox, Opera and Chrome). The website is totally usable, but due to the earthquake has been left at an unfortunate angle.

Recommended solutions

While Nibbler is still totally functional, users might have to tilt their head slightly to use the site, or if this is too much of an inconvenience we recommend tilting your monitor like the photo below:

We’ve been assured by the Seismic Hazard Information Team (S.H.I.T) that this will only affect Nibbler on Sunday the 1st of April. The earthquake affecting Nibbler measured 4.5 on the Richter scale, as measured by the Bureau of Underground Movement (B.U.M). To check if this subsidence will affect Nibbler in the near future, we had a seismic reports performed by the Tremor Watch Action Team (T.W.A.T), who assured us that all would be fine and our servers aren’t in any great danger.

On Monday Nibbler will return back to normal after we’ve ran special software diagnostics provided by Application Repairs for Seismic Events (A.R.S.E).

Obviously this is an April fool’s day joke and there’s nothing actually wrong with Nibbler except for a CSS3 rotate transformation. The organisations we’ve mentioned in this article don’t actually exist, although if we did have a problem we’d consult the Consortium for Underground Natural Tremors.

As a small software startup we were excited to be exhibiting for the first time at SXSW Interactive 2012. But was it worth it? Here I’m going to detail our costs, sales and lessons from the big event.

Our background

We make a web app – Sitebeam – that tests websites automatically, and alerts you to what’s good and bad about them.

For 10 years we were a successful web design company, but last year we gave that up to focus on Sitebeam full time. After 9 months Sitebeam is making us more than our old company did in 10 years. We doubled our customers in the last 4 months. Generally things are going pretty well.

All our marketing up until now has been via word of mouth and a tiny bit of PPC advertising. So we thought SXSW would be a great place to start experimenting with exhibitions.

What we spent

We’re self funded so we didn’t have $350k to drop on a bling trailer and lavish parties. My aim was to test the water and not spend anything we hadn’t already earned (controversial, I know). Here’s our rough costs:

• $4,000 – flights & accommodation for 2 (from the UK)
• $4,000 – giveaway badges (artwork & production)
• $2,500 – SXSW presence
• $1,600 – stand graphics
• $1,425 – monitor, stand, electricity
• $385 – lead capture device
• $1,700 – other: brochures, free trial cards, food etc.
• Total: $15,610 (excluding salaries)

So our budget was small, but I knew we could lose every cent of that $15k and not have to worry about it. And given how little we knew, that was probably wise…

What we did

We bought one small stand space and flew two people (myself and David Ball) to man it. As you can see, it’s modest:

Our main innovation was giving away custom-made pin badges. We asked Reform Creative to design these for us, and they went down exceptionally well:

Our thinking was that each badge would appeal to a segment of our audience:

• The Next Zuck – entrepreneurs
• HTML5 Black Belt – web techies
• Pixel Pusher – graphic designers
• #trending – marketers
• Death to IE6 – everyone

All the badges were in high demand but the IE6 was the most popular. Our logo and URL are printed on the back, but they’re mostly intended as a gambit to attract people to our stand.

The rest of our setup was simple: a laptop connected to a large screen, on which we would manually give a 30-90 second demo of Sitebeam on. We gave away badges to attract people to our stand, cards which contained a pre-paid signup worth $120, and brochures with more detailed information. We ran our web application on-site because we predicted that the wi-fi would be an unreliable disaster, and it was.

How did it go?

For the first two days we were flooded with people. Dave and I skipped lunch for 2 days as we were talking to people non-stop. Had we had more staff, we could have spoken to many more.

For the final 2 days, we spoke to almost no-one. Once the SXSW Interactive event finished, we were still required to exhibit; early departure meant a $1,500 fine and being banned from SXSW in future. Because our tech audience had gone, we had a fraction of the attention – it was a total waste of time for us and most companies there. (We measured this: we had over a 90% drop in enquiries from Day 1 to Day 3).

Badges were very successful. Without these, we had virtually nothing to attract people to our stand. As it was, they were widely lauded, and we often saw people wearing them days later. They gave us some personality too, which helped warm people to us.

Brochures proved a total waste of time. We printed thousands and got through a couple hundred at most. We soon learnt people don’t want to carry that much dead paper around with them – they were full sized, 4pp – if we did this again, we’d hand out small flyers instead. Flyers also have the advantage you can leave them on dining tables around the event.

‘Free access’ cards were a surprising disaster. We gave out over 500 and in total we had just 10 people use them (under 2%). We reckon people just had too much physical stuff to care, but we’re seriously glad we didn’t rely on them.

The lead capture device was essential. We asked interested visitors if we could scan their SXSW badge with this ($385 rental, above) and email them free access. We got 440 leads this way, and within a week 41 of them – almost 10% – signed up for a trial. We also gained premium leads for some FORTUNE 100 companies and household brands.

Our stand was poorly designed. It just said our product name, and not what we did, or why anyone should care. Almost every single passer-by guessed that we did ‘analytics’ or ‘consulting’ (both wrong). It doesn’t help that we do something new and unfamiliar, but some description would have been better than none. And our name is much less important than that explanation.

What did we sell?

In total, we had 51 potential customers engaging with us after the event for a cost of $15,610, or $306 / lead.

It’s too early to know how those will develop, but that’s staggeringly high compared to our other channels. An average customer spends about $1,600 with us, so we’d need a conversion rate of 19% just to break even. That’s possible, and of course one large sale could easily pay for it all, but our average is generally much lower.

This infographic by Mashable mirrors our own experience:

Of course that isn’t entirely the fault of SXSW. We probably gave away too much (100 website reports per person), and we probably didn’t reach enough people. It’s not cheap to scale though.

So from a purely sales versus cost standpoint, we’d say it was a failure.

Publicity and networking

What about intangible benefits, like publicity and networking?

We were filmed a couple of times, but there was a distinct lack of press that we could see. We understand they were focused on a mix of (a) big companies with lavish spends and (b) small companies who had been pre-selected due to buzz beforehand (e.g. Highlight). They certainly weren’t trawling the aisles, looking for The Next Big Thing.

I don’t believe we were alone. For our last two days I walked around the stands with a camera, researching my last article on the best stands at SXSW. I was treated like royalty by most. Companies were hungry for publicity but there wasn’t that much to go around. Most of it was snapped up by a few that already had their press before SXSW had started.

To confirm this, we Googled for press received by the best smaller companies we met at SXSW. We couldn’t find any written after the event had begun.

Our networking opportunities were of limited value; we rarely met people of interest to us, although there were plenty trying to sell us their wares. We weren’t able to attend any of the talks as we were busy exhibiting so we can’t comment on those.

Was it worth it?

As a learning experience, perhaps. Selling face-to-face reveals a lot of truths about your own product, and forces you to hone your message. We don’t need to do that every year though.

Financially, it’s doubtful. However with a larger stand, more staff, clearer message and a finely honed offer, I suspect we could give away promotions to 3,000 people in 2 days, resulting in maybe 100 long term sales (approx. $160k revenue for us). That would start to be worth it, but it’s quite a gamble.

As a promotional tool, it’s winner takes all. I think if you’ve got the right buzz going into SXSW, it could be a way to capitalise on that. But I didn’t see any companies generating fresh buzz at the event – they were just cashing in what they’d already earned.

Let’s put all of this in perspective. We run a free website testing tool called Nibbler to promote Sitebeam – it provides free website reports in a similar way and attracts leads for us. We get an average of 180 leads per week from that at virtually no cost. So in the time we were at SXSW, we got 3x more leads from doing nothing. We got a lot more tweets, Facebook Likes and online buzz too.

In conclusion: SXSW is worth it if you can storm the event, but the chances are you won’t. It’s an expensive way to fail, but I suspect we’ll be there again. Next month we’re launching a big new inbound marketing campaign which we’ll be revealing the costs and sales from in much the same way as this one. Subscribe on Facebook or Twitter if you’d like to follow our adventures.

This was our first year exhibiting at SXSW, and we took some time out to see how everyone else was doing. Here are the exhibitors who most impressed us, and what we learnt from them.

Glomper

Glomper is a social network for sharing events. We were hugely impressed with their marketing, which we think outshone companies spending far more.

The two biggest things they did right: they got outside of their stands, and their brand was ultra-clear and consistent.

Most companies, including ourselves, thought in terms of ‘what do we do with our stand’. Glomper realised that this was just a tiny part of what a passer-by would experience, and did their best to reach you multiple times throughout a day. This made you far more likely to care when you did see their stand, or just to remember them afterwards.

For one, they had giant glomper mascots roaming the area. People would stop to pose for photos (this is our own Dave, hard at work as you can see):

It was an approach that worked, precisely because their mascot was a core part of the brand and because it was so consistently employed elsewhere.

A low cost trick we wish we’d known was putting up flyers and stickers. There’s no restrictions on these, so for the cost of some colour prints you can get your brand in front of thousands of queuing and eating punters:

Again, this mostly worked to aid recognition / recall of their brand, and it only worked because their brand was so simple and consistent (compare with the messy red posters below it). They even sponsored the local rickshaws/pedicabs.

Finally: they created a custom area on their website for SXSW, made it relevant to what they did (it was an event, after all) and promoted it heavily.

We don’t envy their task of getting people to use a new social network – that’s phenomenally hard, and perhaps beyond what SXSW can even achieve by itself. But we think they did a really good job of their marketing and put a lot of bigger companies to shame.

Filmaster

Filmaster is a film review and recommendation service that did a lot with a small space. A popcorn machine provided a fitting and unique gift for passers by, and the free-standing Angelina Jolie Leg proved popular at attracting photo ops. For demos there were free-standing iPads and a sit-down sofa with their app running on Google TV.

The consistency in message (from the popcorn to the t-shirts worn to the free bottle openers) made it easy to see just enough of what Filmaster did to provoke curiosity with passers by. A sense of humour and original ideas go a long way –  we suspect they didn’t have to spend a lot to achieve this either.

Cricket

Cricket had perhaps the single most impressive and unique giveaway of the whole exhibition – custom pieces of art made from old LPs. You could make your own or ask their staff to make one for you:

These were so impressive that we saw people stop to ask others where they came from, to take photos of them, and to ask for directions to their stand. They pull off the rare feat of being strongly branded (their logo is smack in the middle) and yet hugely appealing:

DasKeyboard

DasKeyboard sell high quality mechanical keyboards. Their stand had a typing game where you compete to be the fastest typist each day, to win one of their own keyboards.

This was brilliant for several reasons: firstly, they’re making a game out of using their own products. I probably wouldn’t have stopped to just use a keyboard, but to compete in a typing contest – well – now I’m interested. Secondly the people who would be most attracted to this are their perfect customers. Thirdly they created a reason to return and try again.

TuneUp

TuneUp is a service for cleaning up your iTunes music library. They had an authentic and eye-catching stand, thanks to one VW bus:

In addition to making you stop and stare, this bus is a mascot for their brand. I learned how they have another one in their offices, which they use for private meetings. There’s even a fireplace with party lights inside!

It’s a rare pleasure to find a brand that can make you smile like this!

Dell

Dell managed a surprisingly charming stand for a large corporate (they actually had two – this is the one outside of the exhibition hall):

Firstly it was adorned with scrappy handwritten messages, and most importantly it offered something impossibly cool: they filmed people for 4 seconds at 1,000 fps and slowed that down into a minute of video footage. Here’s our own attempt at a horror movie:

(See more videos like this)

As a brand building exercise it was quite something – we also liked the way they made you sign up for the shoot using a Dell laptop; they were pretty nice to use, but they didn’t need to shout that at you.

Freelancer.com

Freelancer really got into their gamification at SXSW. You could sign up to win their 80” TV (pictured) by competing for points from various challenges.

For example, these ‘hot spots’ were hidden throughout SXSW. Find one and tweet a photo to gain points:

Other challenges ranged from answering questions to checking in on Foursquare at their stand.

We don’t know how many people really got into this – we wanted to try, but there wasn’t enough time for us – but there were over 6,200 people playing in total. The concept certainly made their stand – ahem – stand out. It didn’t hurt that their layout was open and inviting too.

Getty & iStockPhoto

The stand for the photo giants was simple but we think played to their obvious strengths: great images and video. With a large stand they could afford the luxury of open space; like most of the best, their layout encouraged people to walk up to an iMac and try their service out.

For promotions they gave away gorgeous posters and t-shirts featuring photos from their library; there was also a 10% discount code so visitors had something to hold onto and remind them to buy on their return. Mostly though, we think this stand was just intended to gently remind you they exist.

Austin

The official stand for the city of SXSW, Austin employed a beautiful and unique aesthetic that mirrored their own quirkiness.

Comfortable sofas didn’t hurt either. We found time and time again that open plan stands attracted far higher footfall and encouraged people to interact once they’d been ‘softened up’ by walking into your space.

Sliderocket / Socialcast

Simple but highly functional – this stand may not be the most exciting, but it got all the fundamentals right.

There’s a direct proposition for each of their products (“Get sh*t done”) that is actually clearer than their product name. This actually makes much more sense for relatively unknown brands – emphasise what you do first, then your own name (we made this mistake).

It’s combined with a screenshot that pretty much tells you what each product does, and that it’s web software – without needing to state either.

Finally their stand is open and encourages people to walk up and try the products without any pressure – from here it’s easy for someone to walk up to them and help talk them through it.

Dishonourable mention: Norton

We felt Norton managed to spend a lot of money without accomplishing much.

Right now they’re branded with the forthcoming Avengers movie, and we’re guessing that having Samuel .L. Jackson and Robert Downey Jr. decorate your custom fitted truck wasn’t cheap. Whilst the result was certainly eye-catching, at an event like SXSW it seemed a little out of touch for a tech-savvy audience. I may be wrong.

To enter their truck you had to tag yourself in Foursquare at their location. For me, wi-fi was down all day, so they just ushered me in anyway. Once inside you are given a swipe card and asked to choose an identity. I can’t recall all the options, but as I chose “Java Droid” you can only imagine what the others were like:

From here you move from screen to screen, swiping your card, attempting a series of interactive challenges. The biggest problem here was despite the incredible show of technology on display, the games were unplayable crap. The best was a “remember the cards and pair them”  affair, but the more action-orientated ones suffered from unresponsive touch screens and bugs; for the final game I was told I had won, and then that I had failed 2 seconds later. It somewhat undermined the concept.

Finally your photo is taken twice and you can go online to download or share it with your swipe card. It’s a cute idea, but they branded it pretty heavily if they want people to really share these (here’s mine, don’t laugh):

Compare with the far more genuine photos taken on other stands that didn’t require visitors go through a contrived series of games first, like this:

If Norton had only given people appropriate props to pose with (masks? capes? shields?) and let anyone walk straight in, I suspect they’d have been swamped with people who couldn’t share their images enough. Likewise if their games received a fraction of the attention of their sponsorship deals, we might have engaged more. As it is, I left the stand with a profound sense of wasted time.

So what did we learn?

• Open stands are best. Don’t wall off more than you need to. People want to see you from afar and walk in without being pressured, and they really don’t want to queue.
• End & corner stands are best. You simply reach more people.
• Put a clear message first, not your logo. Unless you’re a household name, people want to know what you do first, not what you’re called.
• Keep your branding ultra-simple and distinctive. A strong colour scheme and unique element helps – e.g. the TuneUp bus, or the Glomper mascot.
• Look at your product afresh. We quickly realised that people didn’t automatically realise we even made a software product, or that it ran on the web.  Don’t assume any such thing: make it clear. Do so without text – consider a self-explanatory screenshot.
• Get outside of your stand. Put up posters (they’re almost free, bar the time). Flyer desks. Sponsor bars, taxis and pedicabs. Consider walking around stands in a costume if that’s appropriate. Do whatever you can to repeat your message throughout the show.
• Let people use your products themselves. At certain times, you won’t have enough staff to talk to all your visitors anyway, and this helps stem your losses. But regardless, a lot of people like to explore what you do without having a sales pitch in their face. Let them by having tablets or computers which they can use freely.
• Gamify. Challenges give people a reason to re-visit, and to brag (and therefore share) about you. Make these games about your product – make them use your product and have fun doing so.
• Be unique. Each visitor will see hundreds of companies. You have to work hard to stand out.
• Have clear actions for visitors. E.g. try the product, take a photo, sign up now, leave your email address. Measure their success.
• Wear your brand. For SXSW you want to be casual (unless you’re being ironic, a suit would look ridiculous). A strongly branded t-shirt makes your staff stand out from the crowds, and helps people approach you.
• Make handouts worth keeping and carry-friendly. We made the mistake of giving out full size brochures. They’re far too big for most people to carry. Most handouts end up in the bin before the recipient gets home.
• Assume wi-fi is non-existent. Don’t count on visitors Foursquaring, or tweeting about you on-site, because there’s a high chance they can’t. Never count on your product demo running over wi-fi.
• Build a SXSW webpage. Or special offer, or product feature – whatever is appropriate. Tie to the SXSW experience to what you do for maximum relevance (like Glomper’s SXSW page).
• Get pre-event and post-event coverage. We don’t know how Highlight did it exactly, but everyone was talking about a company without a physical stand. If you can pull of this feat, people will queue to meet you.
• Assume your audience has the memory of a goldfish and the attention span of a gnat. We spoke to hundreds of companies, and were genuinely impressed by many. But we’re human, and we’ll fail to follow up with many. We’ll lose their cards and flyers, we’ll ignore their emails. We might even lie and say “oh yeah, we’ll totally check this out” just to escape your sales pitch. You need to be as prepared for all of this as possible.

It’s a tough world out there, and out of the hundreds of companies at SXSW only a fraction are likely to get the press, plaudits and customers that they seek. Even great marketing doesn’t necessarily convert into business success.

Update 27th March: We’ve followed up this article with a review of whether SXSW was worth it, including our costs and sales figures.

—

With thanks to all the lovely people at SXSW who let us photograph them, and apologies to all those other stands which we so very nearly included but couldn’t. We hope to see you all next year.

I used to add my codes manually to the templates. Whenever I changed the template I had to remember to also update the verification code. This became a tedious task and I thought that there should be an easier way to do this. So I looked for a WordPress plugin thinking that someone should have already written one. When I didn’t find one I decided to write my own. This is actually the first plugin I have published. I am planning on creating some updates in the future and am more than happy to hear about suggestions.

Stephan has been a user of Nibbler since we launched the latest version back in October and is currently the 41st highest user.

What I like most about Nibbler is that it simply gives you hints and tips on how to improve your website across a number of areas. When I make changes I can easily track my progress. And when all suggestions and errors are fixed I come out at the top (see one of my websites http://www.ldstoolbar.com)

You can download the wordpress plugin here or search the plugins directory inside your WordPress install for the word “nibbler”. The installed plugin will look like this:

Simply add your verification code and press save. Your verification code is the long string of numbers inside the meta tag we give you when you select to claim a website.

A few weeks ago we announced a competition for Nibbler users to upload a cool background to their profile, and here we’re showcasing our favourites!

Jonghdesign

Stephan Gerlach

Scott Mokler

Theodor Daniel

Man Ma

And here’s a special mention to Clint Creation who I presume has drawn a self portrait for his background image!

Clint Creation

We got an interesting question on our feedback community last week about how Nibbler ranks websites by popularity. I thought the answer might be interesting to anyone else who’s been wondering how we calculate the popularity score.

So I just checked www.google.com and for Popularity it scored 8.1. Looking at the details it says it’s the most popular website. So shouldn’t it get a 10 for this then??
Stephan Gerlach

The popularity score in Nibbler is made up of a few different factors.

A large percentage of the score is determined by the Alexa rank. In this case we can see that www.google.com ranks as the #1 most popular website in the world.

This is great for Google of course, but most websites aren’t this popular. Even if a website is the 1 millionth popular in the world, it might actually be the world’s #1 best pet shop website, although obviously it’s not as popular as Facebook although it doesn’t need to be. So getting a higher rank isn’t everything. Another proportion of the score is decided by the growth over the last 3 months. This is to reward websites that might currently be the 1 millionth in the world, but have actually made a huge improvement recently.

Nibbler says “This website recently saw a slight increase in popularity” this means popularity has increased, but only slightly. For example, this might only be an increase of 10%.

The Alexa rank only gives us a popularity rank for the TLD (google.com). Unfortunately it’s not possible to distinguish popularity for each subdomain (for example mail.google.com or docs.google.com). Nibbler tells us that the main site www.google.com accounts for 69.9% of this traffic, so it could be that it’s lost some points because of its subdomains.

I hope you agree that this actually makes sense and can understand why we do it this way. We’re not scoring websites purely based on their ranked position, it’s more involved than that. We happen to think that this makes it fairer for other websites, but let us know what you think.

And thanks for the question Stephan!