Competition for customers time and money is high and growing, especially in local and regional markets. Developers need to do more than just deliver functionality and good code. They must work with others on their teams to develop sites and apps with an eye on actual user data from Analytics, SEO research, and usability. We will talk about how a developer or a team can get into such a mindset.

1. Holistic
Web Development
Looking at the Entire Picture

2. Boutique Outsourcing

5. WE ARE HIRING!
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6. Serge Yurovsky
➔ Code Engine Studio 2016 – Present
➔ Principal @ The Left Lane Consulting 2011-2016
➔ Director of Data Services @ McCallie School
2005-2011
➔ 21 Years Industry Experience

7. Using analytics, focusing on SEO and
usability – keys to developing for
long term success

8. 1. Understanding Audience
2. Content (see #1)
3. Usability (see #1)
4. Site Visuals (see #1)
5. SEO (see #1)
6. …
7. Good Code
What should
we care about
when thinking about
a web site?

9. Are you saying code does not matter?
NO, of course not. It matters, but not JUST code.
The best coded web sites with amazing features are useless without content or an
audience!
Development has to be part of the process,
It is a means not an end.
Developers need to work with other stakeholders to understand project specific
metrics in relation to audience, expectations, tasks, and even pace of development

10. We have to ask ourselves WHY we
do _____ (anything).
Who will use it?
Where will they come from?
How often will they use this product
(site, app, etc)?
What ability does the audience have?
What technical and content
expectations does the audience
have?
Step 1
Think Audience
and Analytics

11. Analytics are not new - even offline
Practical Example: Your corner store
Products match customer needs - most
purchased, most requested items are
featured and marketed.
Adjusts to audience with new products
Build new audience based on existing
models

12. Analytics offer directions and accountability
We can better plan phases of development by first considering audience
and audience needs
Even at the expense of what makes sense from the Dev perspective.
If users find the features they need, they will potentially tolerate imperfections or
lack of “extra” features
Building an audience will give you data on what works and what is needed
Marketing will bring people to the site - Analytics will make sense of it
Many traditional marketing means (paper, TV, radio, word of mouth) offer no
accountability.
Digital marketing connected to analytics allow for tracking
and planning for best practices

13. Deeper into the “why and how”
Is your product meant for a particular audience group?
If so, does your design and development match that?
Do your early adopter (or general users if not new) analytics match your goal
audience group?
Practical Example
Client: Luxury Hotel, starting price of rooms is $150/night, average $300/night
Analytics show: Top visitor age group is 18-30 years old.
Question: Does that match realistic goals? Does that audience group “convert”?

14. Specific Steps to Plan
Research Offline
Product owner must do market research to understand audience
Develop ideal customer profile/s
Design and Develop to match
Whether it is age, gender, nationality, these have to be considerations for design
Audience question: What could be specific things to consider here?
Measure and Review
Build in analytics capturing specific metrics for tracking audience
- from social, from referrals, from demographics
Track and evaluate regularly. Data will change. Sites will need to
change as well.

15. Track behaviour on site - what works and what doesn’t
User studies are great, especially in early stages
Set up user studies, based on your audience profiles, ask questions
Take input seriously, do not explain issues away.
- This is where technical experience is a major factor
Set up Analytics tracking (touchpoints) throughout the site.
Track data from site entrance to exit, specifically seeking to understand why users
leave site, especially if NOT completing goals
Create clear goals for conversions.
Find out what hinders users from converting
- Is it usability (too many steps, too slow, not clear)?
- Is it content (high cost, information too confusing or scary)?
Review and rebuild (if needed)

16. - Marketing and exposure only
work when product is good
- SEO is not magic
- It is about understanding your
audience
- It is about understanding the market
- It is about having a good site
- It is about having quality content
- Ultimately the goal is NOT more
users, but more of the RIGHT
users
- Users that connect with your
content/message
- Users that convert
Step 2
Get users
to your products

17. How Search Engines operate
What is a search engine’s purpose?
Providing users with a ranked list of the websites they've determined are the most
relevant and useful.
How do search engines make money?
By selling user data and ads based on user and keyword data.
If search engines do not provide best quality results,
users will go elsewhere and take data and $ with them.

18. How Search Engines operate
How do search engines rank web sites?
- Content, Content, Content
- Developers generally do not think about content
- But Developers SHOULD think about making content accessible to users and search engines
- Site Authority (based on links to site, history, etc)
Why does SEO matter?
SEO guides a search engine to content that site owners want to prioritize.

19. 1.2 How Search Engines operate
Crawling and building an index
- Internet is like a network of stops in subway
system
- Search engines use “links” and sitemaps to
crawl the network to find documents on the
web
- Data gathered through crawling is indexed and
stored in a database to be recalled later in
search query
- While search engine do decipher non-compiled
code (js, html, php) they look for specific
markup to identify key data elements
How Search Engines operate

20. 1.2 How Search Engines operate
Search Engine Results
- Returned based on user queries
- Relevant advertising can be returned based
on same query
- Commonly personalized based on collected
user data and browsing history
- Ranked based in quality of data in listed
documents as well as authority of
documents
- Can have custom displays (e.g. maps, local
business, images) based on data markup
How Search Engines operate

21. 1.2 How Search Engines operateHow Search Engines operate
How many
types of
markup driven
content can
you see here?

22. Who Likes Cake?
SEO is like a layered
cake...
Search Engine friendly Development

23. 1. Content planning
a. Understand what your primary content points will be
b. Prepare your text content and then adjust it based on
keyword research
c. Prepare your media content
2. Make sure your code meets SEO Standards
3. Make sure your site has high usability
a. Responsive
b. Fast
4. Make sure your site can index well
a. No “ghosts”
b. Good use of Schema.org
5. Test, check, and adapt - standards will
change!
SEO Layers - On Site SEO

24. Every page that is meant to be indexed should have a link to them
Use standard HTML links instead of JavaScript (or
accompany it) on any page you’d like crawlers to crawl
Avoid embedding links in Flash, Java, and other plugins
Don’t hide navigation - e.g. display only in footer
No page on the site should be further than three clicks
away from any other page.
Search Engine friendly Development - Specifics

25. a. Better to be static than dynamic e.g. should not
contain characters such as ($ A ! * % = ?)
b. Better to be shorter than longer
c. Use hyphens to separate words
d. Sub directories can rank better than sub domains
e. The website should be hosted only on one version of
the domain. Either its WWW or NON-WWW version
Search Engine friendly Development - Specifics

26. Use H1, H2, H3, H4, and so on, with H1 starting the page as the main heading.
The remaining heading codes descend to lower level headings on the site.
One H1 tag for each page
Headings contain keywords and are relevant to the content of website
Example:
<h1>How to Optimize Your Business for Search Engines</h1>
<h2>The ABCs of SEO</h2>
<h3>Research</h3>
Search Engine friendly Development - Specifics

27. 1. Optimize size of images
E.g. if images only need to be 800px in width, upload
them at that size instead of their original size at
2400px.
2. Proper file name
E.g. salt-water-pool.jpg instead of image123.jpg
Search Engine friendly Development - Specifics

28. ● Provide alt text for images
● Supplement search boxes with navigation &
crawlable links
● Supplement Flash, Java or other
plug-ins/embedded items with text
● Provide transcript for video and audio
content
● Add Meta Data to pages for descriptions,
keywords (partially outdated), and social
sharing
Search Engine friendly Development - Specifics

29. Increase speed and improve site performance by:
● Optimizing code (e.g. removing spaces, returns, extra
characters in .min version of a file)
● Minimize number of requests, dns lookups, and sources of
code/scripts
● Defer parsing of scripts (e.g. by placing them in a footer)
● Use browser and server caching
● Enable compression
● Reduce redirects
● Optimize images and videos systematically and defer loading
(e.g. lazy load)
Test your site on GTMetrix or Google PageSpeed Insights to check
for issues
Pages with faster load time are better for user experience and are more likely to rank higher
Search Engine friendly Development - Specifics

30. Schema markup is code snippets that you add to your website to help the search engines return more
informative results for visitors. This helps to specify and display all the rich content the site contain, which
benefits Search Engines and real users alike
Example:
<div>
SEO Conference<br/>
Learn about SEO from experts
in the field.<br/>
Event date:<br/>
May 8, 7:30pm
</div>
<div itemscope
itemtype="http://schema.org/Event">
<div itemprop="name">SEO
Conference</div>
<span itemprop="description">Learn about
SEO from experts in the field.</span>
Event date:
<time itemprop="startDate"
datetime="2012-05-08T19:30">May 8,
7:30pm</time>
</div>
Search Engine friendly Development - Specifics

31. Because ultimately search engines care about their audience, not the paying customers, there are external
factors to SEO
SEO - On Site is a starting point!
● Industry rankings
● External Links
○ From Quality Sources
● Site Authority and Longevity
● Site “freshness” (how often is site updated - make it easy for content to be
added)

32. ● Usability trumps “Pretty”
● Content is “King”
○ If you have a usable site with good
content (think Craigslist?) - users will
come
● Not all sites need to be the same, so
while standards should apply, think
about your audience and your
product
● Best coding practices mean better
usability, better speed, responsive
sites = More users, more
conversions
● Plan, test, implement, check,
repeat!
Final Thoughts

33. Got any questions?
If you have more questions, come
and talk to me later!
Q&A

34. THANK YOU!