Top 10 Awesome Android Features that the iPhone Doesn’t Have

We love both Android and iOS, but the open nature of Android just means it can do things others just can't. Here are our favorite Android apps and features that you won't find on its Apple-clad brethren.

We didn't hold anything back in this list: rooting, jailbreaking, editing system files are all fair game. If there was some way to do it on the iPhone, we left it out. So, while there are a lot of great things about Android that don't come out of the box on the iPhone—like free turn-by-turn navigation or pull-down notifications—there are still ways to get those features on the iPhone. So here's our list of the ten features you just can't get, no way, no how, on a jailbroken or non-jailbroken device.

A note on flame wars: We love iOS, and obviously it has many of its own things going for it. This post isn't meant to flame or troll the iPhone; it's more of a "If you've decided to go Android, make sure you're taking advantage of these awesome exclusive features, since they're part of what makes Android great" post. Please keep the flame wars to a minimum in the comments.

10. Alternate Keyboards

From text predictors like Swiftkey to the innovative like Swype and the downright adventurous like 8pen, you have a lot of different keyboard choices on Android. Typing on a tiny phone keyboard isn't anyone's idea of fun, so it's great that Android provides so many options to make it as painless for people as possible, and super easy to install. The iPhone has other keyboards, but they're usually separate apps that require you to import text to another program—it's just the kind of system-level functionality that's hard to get around.

9. Automation

One of the most powerful, useful Android apps around is Tasker, the automation program that lets you turn your phone into a superphone. You can turn settings on and off for certain applications, by location, time of day, and pretty much any other condition you can think of. With the right commands in place, Tasker can access the deepest and darkest settings on your phone, which is something you just can't do on other platforms. Be sure to also check out our second list of Tasker setups, three handy Tasker profiles from our readers, and how to roll your own "Find my iPhone" for Android. Similar apps like the battery-saving JuiceDefender would also fall into this category.

8. Custom Home Launchers

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While iPhone users can customize their home screen quite a bit if they've jailbroken, they don't allow the kind of customization that you can get on Android with custom home launchers. Third party launchers can add all sorts of extra features to the home screens of your device, like gestures, different kinds of shortucts, and even low-level settings that can help speed up an older phone. Whether you're using the super-fast LauncherPro or the insanely customizable ADWLauncher, third-party launchers add a ton of configuration to your device.

7. Widgets

Sure, they take up a bit of space, but there's no substitute for the convenience of having a big weather widget right on your home screen, or a music widget to show you the currently playing track. Even more useful are the to-do list widgets, that take an "in your face" approach to productivity, which is not only effective but necessary from people, as they don't require you to actually look for your to-do list—they're always reminding you of what you need to do. If you've jailbroken, you can get widget-like apps for the iPhone, but you can only put them on your lock screen—not the actual home screens that you're always swiping through.

6. Removable Storage and Battery

It isn't part of the Android software, necessarily, but Android's open nature allows for quite a few hardware advantages too—namely the ability to take out, swap, and upgrade your battery and SD card. If you find that you've maxed out the storage on your iPhone, you're pretty much out of luck, whereas with an Android phone you can pop in a new SD card and have gigabytes more storage to play with. Similarly, you can swap out a spare battery for longer trips or even get an extended battery that'll help your phone go longer without charging. Photo by Hiroyuki Takeda.

5. Wireless App Installation

Browsing for and discovering new apps should be fun, not challenge to make it through a tiny app store with your sanity intact. The App Store and Cydia App Store aren't exactly fun to browse on your phone, but you either have to download apps on your phone or plug it into iTunes to sync them all over. With the new Android Market, or with third-party sites like AppBrain, you can find a cool app, hit the install button, and it'll be on your phone the next time you pick it up. It doesn't get much more convenient than that.

4. Custom ROMs

While there are a lot of third-party apps that give you advanced features on Android, one of the coolest parts about the entire OS being open source is that people can take it, tweak it all over, and install their version instead of the one that comes with your phone. Whether it's the feature-filled CyanogenMod or the interface-overhauling MIUI ROM, there's little limit to how much you can tweak your Android experience. As with launchers, these give you a lot of system-level tweaks that you just wouldn't be able to get this easily on other platforms—and it puts them easily within users' reach. Whether it's tweaks that speed up your phone or features like FM radio, custom ROMs are without a doubt one of the biggest advantages to Android's openness around.

3. Controlling Your Phone From Your Computer

This one's a little more out there, but we've featured quite a few apps that let you actually control your Android phone from your PC—whether you just want to send texts from Chrome or access any of its other functions right from a web browser. Yes, you can VNC into your iPhone, but it's not the same as using a separate app that accesses its baser functions.

2. Flash

Say what you want about Flash, but it's everywhere you go, and when you're forced to view the web without it, you realize how much you actually rely on it day-to-day. Whether its accessing fully Flash web sites, watching Flash videos, or playing games like the ones on Kongregate, having Flash installed on your phone and tablet let you access a lot of things you otherwise couldn't have. We may grimace when we hear its name, but it's too prevalent to go without. It just feels like you don't have the whole web at your fingertips.

1. True App Integration

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Google Voice may finally be available for the iPhone, but the experience will never be the same as it is on Android. Other iPhone apps always direct you to the default dialer and visual voicemail apps, so even if you want to use Google Voice full time, you have to manually navigate it to yourself. On Android, apps like Google Voice integrate directly with the operating system—if you want to make calls with Google Voice, every call you make from the phone's dialer goes through Google Voice. When you click on a phone number in your browser or in Google Maps, it goes through Google Voice instead of sending you to the wrong dialer. True app integration like this makes using custom phone, SMS, voicemail, and even browser apps absolutely seamless on Android, which is something you won't find on the more locked-down iPhone platform.

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Four steps to identifying and managing project risks

By Brad Egeland

Takeaway: Some IT consultants overlook risk identification and management, especially on small engagements. Brad Egeland says this oversight could cost you future business.

I've run some projects as an internal PM and others as a consultant brought in to either lead a team or perform the work myself. The way you run engagements will differ somewhat based on your incoming status (employee vs. consultant) and the size of the effort (long-term software implementation vs. short-term consulting gig to implement new processes). There can also be differences in how you put together the upfront formal planning documents, and the way you formalize and document requirements.

One variable that remains constant regardless of whether you're an internal or an external project lead is the task of risk identification and risk management. I'll address the topic of risk below from a consultant's perspective.

Step one: Identify risks

You're coming in cold and don't know the potential risks of the organizational infrastructure, procedures, and personnel. Be careful not to make assumptions before you have all of the facts; otherwise, you can wind up adding more risk.

Even if it's a one-on-one engagement with the CIO or project sponsor, it's critical that you run through a risk identification process during a detailed risk planning session. (The CIO is your best source of initial information.) The onus is on you to ask good questions, because you're the expert on consulting engagements and can warn the client about the common pitfalls they might encounter. You're coming in cold and don't know the potential risks of the organizational infrastructure, procedures, and personnel. Be careful not to make assumptions before you have all of the facts; otherwise, you can wind up adding more risk.

Step two: Talk to SMEs and users

The next step is to meet with subject matter experts and end users (if these are different people) and any other personnel who will interact with the solution to a significant degree. These individuals can be good resources when you're trying to identify potential risks.

Step three: Devise risk strategies

You need to work with the project sponsor, the SMEs, and users to determine and document the best strategy to mitigate or even avoid these risks if they arise. Even if you can't formulate a detailed risk response to each item, it will still be helpful to identify a strategy to keep in mind as you continue to track these risks.

Step four: Manage risk and provide regular status updates

I'm a proponent of managing consulting engagements on an ongoing basis like you would on a formal long-term project. I encourage you to conduct weekly status meetings with the client, during which you should provide a revised task schedule and status report. Your risk list should be part of every weekly status report during.

Conclusion

We may not always conduct smaller consulting engagements with the same formality as we would $2 million dollar projects for Fortune 500 companies, but the need to identify and manage risks is still there. It's worth the time and effort because mitigating even one risk could mean the difference between success and failure and might land you future business with the client.

10 ways to make your Web site design project go smoothly

By Justin James

Takeaway: Politics, lack of planning, overlooked details, and poor prioritizing can compromise your Web design or redesign effort. Justin James offers a simple roadmap to lead your project to a successful conclusion.

Politics, lack of planning, overlooked details, and poor prioritizing can compromise your Web design or redesign effort. Justin James offers a simple roadmap to lead your project to a successful conclusion.

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Time and time again, I have seen companies struggle with Web site design projects. Initial Web site design and redesigns of existing sites may each face a few different challenges, but overall, they are similar. My experience has been that these problems are not technical issues, but project management and cultural issues. Often, no one follows a game plan — they just blindly rush off and attempt to re/design the Web site with little forethought. On the other hand, I have also been through a number of successful Web site re/design projects (measured by, "Did we get a good-looking, usable Web site deployed in a reasonable amount of time?"). Here are some of the things I've learned to do that will help make any Web site design project go smoothly.

Note: This information is also available as a PDF download.

#1: Politely keep those who lack a clue out of the process

It is amazing, isn't it, how all you need is a rumor of a "Web site project" and the company president, CFO, VP of Facilities, and other people with zero Web design knowledge suddenly inject themselves into the process? Your job (or your project manager's job) is to get them out of the process as soon as possible.

There is a right way and a wrong way to do this. The right way is to show these other groups that you will do more than pay lip service to getting their input, while also showing them that you will come to them with a targeting group of questions driven by their areas of expertise. The wrong way is to just stop inviting them to the meetings or ignore what they have to say. When you involve them in the process in a limited "subject matter" capacity and take action upon their recommendations when sensible, everyone walks away feeling like they played a part. When you give them the cold shoulder, those who have been shunned will turn every problem with the new site into an opportunity to say, "If only they had listened to me…."

#2: Prototype on paper before coding

One of the attractive aspects of HTML is that it is relatively quick and easy to prototype designs in. One of the fatal flaws of too many Web projects is that designers start prototyping in HTML before doing anything on paper. HTML prototypes do, of course, play a valuable role in the design process, but my experience has been that it is best to not create any until the design concepts have been narrowed down to one or two (three, at the most) potential designs.

HTML prototypes take a lot more time to create than paper prototypes (particularly of the "wireframe" type). You can sketch out a few boxes on paper to represent navigation elements, logos, footers, etc., in a few moments in a meeting, and everyone can get the idea instantly. Alternatively, you can spend 30 minutes hashing together a skeleton of HTML, adding Lorem ipsum text all over the place, finding a location where the IT department will let you upload it, putting it up, testing it, tweaking out a few obvious glitches, and sending out an e-mail with the link.

After all of that, what happens? The people who look at it get confused because it is a basic prototype. They want to know where the logo is, or why they clicked on the Contact Us link and nothing happened, or why the navigation elements are in the order you put them in. In other words, HTML prototypes are deadly, precisely because to those inexperienced with the concept of a prototype, it looks like a really bad design. They get hung up on precisely the things that make it a prototype. So do your initial prototyping on paper, and with the time and energy you save, you can make sure that the few HTML prototypes you do make are more fleshed out.

#3: Build your site map before you start designing

One of the deadly sins in Web site design is trying to draw up a design without having a site map. I'm not saying that you need to know every single page before you can decide whether to put the navigation at the top or on the left. What I am saying is that the navigation hierarchy gets driven from the desired relationship of pages to each other. And since it is impossible to decide where to place navigation elements without knowing how many items will be in each one or how many elements you will need, a site map really is the prerequisite to a site design.

For example, let's say that you settle on having a navigation bar directly underneath the header, and after you've invested a lot of time in this design, you discover that your site would be better served by a list of links on the left instead. That's a lot of wasted time. Get your site map first. Once you have a decent idea of how the pages relate to each other, then you can start drafting designs.

#4: Don't worry about the home page or link names

One of the most common stumbling blocks I have seen organizations get stuck on is the home page of the site. For whatever reason, there is this tendency of any meeting about the Web site to become a shouting match over what the home page should look like. As the technical person, I try to squash these immediately. Something like this usually does the trick:

"We are wasting time worrying about the content of the home page when we need to be focused on the design of the site. The home page's design will be identical to the rest of the site, unless there is an overwhelming reason for it not to be. The only difference is that the content area will be much more free form and will showcase what is inside the site. Let's get back on track with the Web site design, and once we have that nailed down and we are in the content creation phase, we can decide what content needs to be on the home page."

Without taking a stand on the home page contents, you can spend months talking around it without ever actually designing anything for the Web site.

Like the home page, everyone loves to get together and scream about what the words on navigational links should say. Whether the link says Contact Us or Get in Touch with Us is not something a Web site design project needs to spend time and resources debating. Again, take a stand on the topic and remind the group that link wording is a content level discussion, not a technical/design level discussion.

#5: Forget about the content, too, while you're at it…

On that note, you will want to try to keep all content discussions out of the design process. The home page and the links are two areas that are especially contentious. But there is also a tendency for people involved in the process to get hung up on what any given element will actually say. My experience has been that if you stick to Lorem ipsum text throughout the process, you make it easier for people to focus on the design itself, not the content. The last thing you want is to turn every design meeting into a grammar and spelling check competition. This also applies to images. Don't put any "real" images on the site for anything that is content and not design until you are headed for production. Why? Because the head of Project X will get hung up on the fact that you used the product from Project Y on the Products page instead of concentrating on things like color and placement.

#6: …But don't let others forget about the content

Ever notice that in nearly every Web site project, the people who jump on your case about making your deadline never seem to have the content ready when you ask for it? Ironically, while it is your job to make sure that your working group doesn't get bogged down in content, you need to make sure that everyone else is staying on track with getting the content ready.

All too often, you spend months hammering out the perfect design, and then it languishes on the staging server for months, waiting for various departments to create their content. Sometimes, in the case of a redesign, someone says, "Just reuse the old content," even when it's not appropriate to the new site map. Either situation is bad. Once you have that initial site map together, you need to get a second group going (probably led by the Marketing department), devoted solely toward generating the content that the site map asks for. Of course, as this group gets its work done, the site map might change. This is normal. At the same time, if the site map changes radically and that forces a need to reconsider the design, better to have found out now rather than later.

#7: Organize the site around the users, not the organization

A common mistake when designing Web sites is to have the site map look an awful lot like the org chart. The problem with this is that unless the Web site is an org chart, users are not likely to use your map that way. For example, let's imagine that your company makes telecommunications gear and their accessories. Product X is a router made by the router division, and Product Y is the T1 module made by the module division. Users don't not want to navigate to different sections of the Web site to find the router and the related T1 module; they want to find Product X and Product Y next to each other, because to the user, they are related products. When working on your site map, ask yourself, "Is this relationship valid in the users' eyes or are we just organizing based on internal silos?"

#8: Don't overlook SEO, usability, and accessibility

Three specialized areas that are woefully ignored during Web design projects are SEO (search engine optimization), usability ("Can users use this?"), and accessibility ("Can users with disabilities access this?"). It's tempting to think the SEO "just happens" or to assume, "If I can figure out how to get around the site, it's usable," or, "Special needs users won't be interested in our site anyway." Wrong, wrong, and wrong.

SEO takes a lot of work. I try to keep up with the field, and a few years ago it was mostly, "Write clean HTML, use appropriate metadata, and make sure your content is targeted." Now, there is a lot more to it. If you want to leverage your Web site as much as possible and minimize the amount you need to spend on paid ads, you might want to bring in an outside expert (or groom one in-house, for large companies) to give you some guidance.

You don't need consultants for usability, although they can be helpful in providing an objective opinion. But you should keep usability in mind from Day 1. You don't want to invest three weeks on a special feature that everyone loves, only to find out afterward that its design is confusing. It's far better to say, "I don't think people will be able to use that" when the idea is first brought up. Likewise for the site's overall design. Better to have the usability baked in from the get-go than to try to bolt it on at the end, after committing to the design at large.

Accessibility is still mostly a technical challenge, but it is important to understand the relationship between certain design/development ideas and accessibility. For example, if you have committed to having some fancy AJAX widget, make sure that it either contains nothing that can be discarded or that users who can't use AJAX widgets have an alternative means of getting to the same information. Usability and accessibility need to be rigorously tested by "real users," too, as opposed to merely following a checklist.

#9: The details make the difference

Have you ever been trying to buy a product online and left certain sites because they seemed fly-by-night? Chances are, it was minor details that made you feel uneasy. Recently, I wanted to make a purchase and I got a "bad SSL certificate" error because the certificate was for the right domain but a different hostname. While I was willing to accept that, a lot of people won't go to check out if their browser tells them the certificate is bad. Mistakes like typos, JavaScript or other errors, and incorrect SSL certificates will ruin your chance to give the user a good impression of your company and its products. So make sure that you have the office spelling and grammar pro check out the wording, have real users batter the site looking for errors, and go over everything with a discerning eye looking for any glitches. If spending 5% of the project timeline finding these small errors can increase sales by even 5%, it's worth it. Even if you absolutely must launch the site without the final quality check performed, there is no reason you can't do it post-launch.

#10: Have a game plan!

Having a project plan in place is extremely important. Everyone involved needs to know what is expected of them, whether it be providing input into the site map, content, or graphics or selecting an SEO consultant. It's also important to properly set expectations on the goals and timelines. I have seen Web site design projects literally spend months hung up on minor points like "What goes on the home page?" while the rest of the site design was not progressing at all. I have also seen situations where the site design itself was done, but someone forgot to code up some widgets for it, or get the IT department to set up the new domain name, or have the e-mail administrator make an account for the Contact Us system, and so on. Make a game plan — and follow it.

10 common Web design mistakes to watch out for

By Chad Perrin

Takeaway: When you start designing a Web site, your options are wide open. Yet all that potential can lead to problems that may cause your Web site to fall short of your goals. The following list of design mistakes addresses the needs of commercial Web sites, but it can easily be applied to personal and hobby [...]

When you start designing a Web site, your options are wide open. Yet all that potential can lead to problems that may cause your Web site to fall short of your goals. The following list of design mistakes addresses the needs of commercial Web sites, but it can easily be applied to personal and hobby sites and to professional nonprofit sites as well.

This information, based on the article "10 ways to improve the design of your commercial Web site"by Chad Perrin, is also available as a PDF download.

#1: Failing to provide information that describes your Web site

Every Web site should be very clear and forthcoming about its purpose. Either include a brief descriptive blurb on the home page of your Web site or provide an About Us (or equivalent) page with a prominent and obvious link from the home page that describes your Web site and its value to the people visiting it.

It's even important to explain why some people may not find it useful, providing enough information so that they won't be confused about the Web site's purpose. It's better to send away someone uninterested in what you have to offer with a clear idea of why he or she isn't interested than to trick visitors into wasting time finding this out without your help. After all, a good experience with a Web site that is not useful is more likely to get you customers by word of mouth than a Web site that is obscure and difficult to understand.

#2: Skipping alt and title attributes

Always make use of the alt and title attributes for every XHTML tag on your Web site that supports them. This information is of critical importance for accessibility when the Web site is visited using browsers that don't support images and when more information than the main content might otherwise be needed.

The most common reason for this need is accessibility for the disabled, such as blind visitors who use screen readers to surf the Web. Just make sure you don't include too much text in the alt or title attribute — the text should be short, clear, and to the point. You don't want to inundate your visitors with paragraph after paragraph of useless, vague information in numerous pop-up messages. The purpose of alt and title tags is, in general, to enhance accessibility.

#3: Changing URLs for archived pages

All too often, Web sites change URLs of pages when they are outdated and move off the main page into archives. This can make it extremely difficult to build up significantly good search engine placement, as links to pages of your Web site become broken. When you first create your site, do so in a manner that allows you to move content into archives without having to change the URL. Popularity on the Web is built on word of mouth, and you won't be getting any of that publicity if your page URLs change every few days.

#4: Not dating your content

In general, you must update content if you want return visitors. People come back only if there's something new to see. This content needs to be dated, so that your Web site's visitors know what is new and in what order it appeared. Even in the rare case that Web site content does not change regularly, it will almost certainly change from time to time — if only because a page needs to be edited now and then to reflect new information.

Help your readers determine what information might be out of date by date stamping all the content on your Web site somehow, even if you only add "last modified on" fine print at the bottom of every content page. This not only helps your Web site's visitors, but it also helps you: The more readers understand that any inconsistencies between what you've said and what they read elsewhere is a result of changing information, the more likely they are to grant your words value and come back to read more.

#5: Creating busy, crowded pages

Including too much information in one location can drive visitors away. The common-sense tendency is to be as informative as possible, but you should avoid providing too much of a good thing. When excessive information is provided, readers get tired of reading it after a while and start skimming. When that gets old, they stop reading altogether.

Keep your initial points short and relevant, in bite-size chunks, with links to more in-depth information when necessary. Bulleted lists are an excellent means of breaking up information into sections that are easily digested and will not drive away visitors to your Web site. The same principles apply to lists of links — too many links in one place becomes little more than line noise and static. Keep your lists of links short and well-organized so that readers can find exactly what they need with little effort. Visitors will find more value in your Web site when you help them find what they want and make it as easily digestible as possible.

#6: Going overboard with images

With the exception of banners and other necessary branding, decorative images should be used as little as possible. Use images to illustrate content when it is helpful to the reader, and use images when they themselves are the content you want to provide. Do not strew images over the Web site just to pretty it up or you'll find yourself driving away visitors. Populate your Web site withuseful images, not decorative ones, and even those should not be too numerous. Images load slowly, get in the way of the text your readers seek, and are not visible in some browsers or with screen readers. Text, on the other hand, is universal.

#7: Implementing link indirection, interception, or redirection

Never prevent other Web sites from linking directly to your content. There are far too many major content providers who violate this rule, such as news Web sites that redirect links to specific articles so that visitors always end up at the home page. This sort of heavy-handed treatment of incoming visitors, forcing them to the home page of the Web site as if they can force visitors to be interested in the rest of the content on the site, just drives people away in frustration. When they have difficulty finding an article, your visitors may give up and go elsewhere for information. Perhaps worse, incoming links improve your search engine placement dramatically — and by making incoming links fail to work properly, you discourage others from linking to your site. Never discourage other Web sites from linking to yours.

#8: Making new content difficult to recognize or find

In #4, we mentioned keeping content fresh and dating it accordingly. Here's another consideration: Any Web site whose content changes regularly should make the changes easily available to visitors. New content today should not end up in the same archive as material from three years ago tomorrow, especially with no way to tell the difference.

New content should stay fresh and new long enough for your readers to get some value from it. This can be aided by categorizing it, if you have a Web site whose content is updated very quickly (like Slashdot). By breaking up new items into categories, you can ensure that readers will still find relatively new material easily within specific areas of interest. Effective search functionality and good Web site organization can also help readers find information they've seen before and want to find again. Help them do that as much as possible.

#9: Displaying thumbnails that are too small to be helpful

When providing image galleries with large numbers of images, linking to them from lists of thumbnails is a common tactic. Thumbnail images are intended to give the viewer an idea of what the main image looks like, so it's important to avoid making them too small.

It's also important to produce scaled-down and/or cropped versions of your main images, rather than to use XHTML and CSS to resize the images. When images are resized using markup, the larger image size is still being sent to the client system — to the visitor's browser. When loading a page full of thumbnails that are actually full-size images resized by markup and stylesheets, a browser uses a lot of processor and memory resources. This can lead to browser crashes and other problems or, at the very least, cause extremely slow load times. Slow load times cause Web site visitors to go elsewhere. Browser crashes are even more effective at driving visitors away.

#10: Forgoing Web page titles

Many Web designers don't set the title of their Web pages. This is obviously a mistake, if only because search engines identify your Web site by page titles in the results they display, and saving a Web page in your browser's bookmarks uses the page title for the bookmark name by default.

A less obvious mistake is the tendency of Web designers to use the same title for every page of the site. It would be far more advantageous to provide a title for every page that identifies not only the Web site, but the specific page. Of course, the title should still be short and succinct. A Web page title that is too long is almost as bad as no Web page title at all.

10 things you can do to improve your Web site right now

By Justin James

Takeaway: Even if you don't have the time or resources for a full-blown site redesign, you can make some small, easily implemented tweaks that will have a huge impact.

We often look at our Web sites and know that they need to be overhauled, but we just do not have the time to do it. A major Web site redesign project can takes weeks or months (depending on the size of your site and the technology underneath it) to complete. Meanwhile, your site is turning away visitors right now. Here are 10 easy things that you can do to improve your site.

1: Make your contact information more prominent

Most companies' sites need to sell products, services, and so on. By making your contact information easier to find, you raise trust and allow visitors to initiate the sales process more easily. If you have a phone number you want customers calling, it should be in large letters, at the top of every page. If you have a "Contact Us" page, it should be one of the most obvious links on every page.

2: Don't mix HTTP and HTTPS

Mixing HTTP and HTTPS elements on pages can lead to annoying security warnings and incomplete page rendering. Using relative links throughout the page's HTML, and having your AJAX calls detect what protocol to use, will ensure that all content comes through the right channel, eliminating those problems.

3: Add better analysis

It takes only a few minutes to add Google Analytics to your site, which will help you get a long-term idea of your search engine situation and what pages users have problems on and will highlight all sorts of other information. If you have a Web application, newcomer Totango (currently in a public beta) provides similar instrumentation specific to application events, and it is also easy to add to your application.

4: Create print-specific CSS styles

Don't you just hate it when you print a Web page, and the page is mostly whitespace and navigation? What looks good on a monitor in landscape orientation usually does not work so great on the printed page. Luckily, CSS allows you to define (or override) styles based on the type of device viewing it. Creating some print-specific styles is easy, I've found that just omitting the navigation, banners, footers, etc., and making it consume the full width of the page can do a lot, and it takes only a few minutes. While you are there, make another set of changes for mobile browsers that resizes and repositions elements to fit mobile devices better. It may not be as good as a mobile-specific site, but it takes a lot less time, and anything is better than nothing.

5: Make sharing better with image_src

Ever wonder how some sites get their logo or just the right image to show up automatically when you share a page on Facebook and other sites? That's done with the image_src item. This simple 30-second change gives you much better control over how your company looks on social networks and makes it easy for people to spread the word about you.

6: Ditch the dead weight

It's easy for a site to accumulate a lot of extra junk over time, especially things like references to JavaScript that is no longer being used. Audit your site and see what is being included that is not actually needed —  and get rid of it. Your page load speeds will improve and users will be happier.

7: Use alt text

This one has been mentioned so many times by others, yet Web designers and developers still fail to heed it. Putting alt text on your images does more than give a useful tooltip, it allows search engines and disabled users to make sense of your site. Adding the alt tags takes very little time, and a number of tools will even identify images without it for you.

8: Write for your audience, not your c-level execs

Take a look at the wording on a lot of sites, and they seem more like the "new employee handbook" than something designed to attract customers. The problem is usually caused by management teams who are trying to convey a corporate message (often using a lot of jargon that means something to employees but not to customers). Site visitors don't care about that message. Put yourself in the customers' shoes, and reword your content so it speaks their language, not yours, and you will see people sticking around longer. You may even get some search engine benefits too.

9: Get the content out of PDFs and into HTML

Many times, we're fed a bunch of content for the site in PDF format (or as Word documents). Whether it be through a lack of time or some mandate from someone, the content goes onto the site as-is. Unless there is a compelling reason to keep the content in those formats, you should take the time to get them into HTML pages instead. My experience has been that most visitors really dislike Acrobat or Word popping open or a file downloading unless it is absolutely necessary.

10: Remember that silence is golden

If there is one thing that will drive users off your site quickly, it's a page that makes noise without their consent. All videos should either be muted by default or should require a deliberate user action to start playing. Do spot checks of any advertisements on your site to make sure that they aren't playing videos with the sound on by default as well. Users remember which sites surprised them with a barrage of noise, especially if it happened at the workplace or some other embarrassing moment, and avoid them like the plague.