Website Optimization Measures, PartĀ V
Post from November 3, 2008 (ā» July 27, 2022), filed under Web DevelopmentĀ (feed).
This and many other posts are also available as a pretty, well-behaved ebook: On Web Development. And speaking of which, hereās a short treatise just about managing the quality of websites: The Little Book of Website Quality Control (updated).
Almost half a year since my last article itās about time to present version 5 of random website optimization measures, hopefully of use for your site as well. Short and crispy, to use a random German saying.
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Migrating to HTML 5. Well, we can use HTML 5, and whatās better than going ahead and doing so. Shortly after ālaunchā of example.ms I decided to revise UITest.com and the Worldās Highest Website to use HTML 5 too, to then continuously use it for some other projects, including the all new Code Responsibly. And while I understand from direct feedback as well as through sites like W3C Sites that knowledge of the new HTML is not too common yet, itās still good for every developer to play with. Of course, HTML 5 pages should be valid, too.
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Refactoring and removing
abbr
elements. It took me some time to go for that change, however considering relatively and unnecessarily big maintenance issues, a slight performance impact, as well as plans to make@title
required in HTML 5 (which got dropped after people, including me, raised concerns) I decided to abandon the habit to useabbr
for every abbreviation. I did so for all my sites. -
Switching to Google Analytics. Having been a happy Mint user for two and a half years I reached the point where I wanted one, ideally free analytics solution for all projects that at the same time allowed for more insight into the data. I decided to add Google Analytics (GA) code to all my projects [I later pedaled back]. I miss some things I had with Mint, above all real-time data, but I certainly donāt regret the change. After all I used GA on other sites ever since Google acquired Urchin, and so I knew what I would get.
Another topic, and one that Iāll write about in more detail soon, however try to do A/B or multivariate tests of your site and its elements. I guess itās fine to say that Website Optimizer allows exactly that, but there are probably other good tools, too.
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Adding Google Analytics privacy notes. Some of you may have already heard about that, but apparently thereās some sort of requirement in Germany to have a privacy note āin some wayā saying that youāre using GA and what GAās doing. Neither am I a lawyer nor am I living in Germany anymore, but I figured it might not hurt to add that note to my sitesā pagesāeven in the legal notice of this part of my website. āLearn the rules so you know how to break them properly,ā the Dalai Lama is quoted, but Iām not too familiar with all the rules here so Iām just playing it safe.
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Revising and improving headings use in posts. Thatās a boring one: You know this semantics quiz where itās about using headings and paragraphs or lists and either headings or stronger emphasis or whatever, which would perfectly apply to this post, too? Well, I checked most if not all posts and articles for āsemantics potentialā and adjusted in some cases. A trivial thing; apparently I had too much time on my hands.
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Proofreading and editing all posts and comments. History kind of repeats itself here, because I once again decided to review (or started reviewing, to be precise) all contents of this weblog. Iām aware that some people have reservations about this, but that doesnāt mean that the measure is not good for quality. In fact, I could improve some posts, deleted at least two rather stupid ones, and I touched comments that I felt were spammy or nonsensical. No worries, please see this measure as one that helps making better and more useful archives, well, websites.
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Testing font alternatives. Not boring, just short: I tested additional fonts and found that sans serif fonts work better for this siteās headlines (interestingly, resulting in
corbel, optima, arial, sans-serif
), and I tweaked the main font to support that change (cambria, palatino, georgia, serif
).
This is a part of an open article series. Check out some of the other posts!
About Me

Iām Jens, and Iām an engineering lead and author. Iāve worked as a technical lead for Google, Iām close to W3C and WHATWG, and I write and review books for OāReilly. I love trying things, sometimes including philosophy, art, and adventure. Here on meiert.com I share some of my views andĀ experiences.
If you have a question or suggestion about what I write, please leave a comment (if available) or a message. ThankĀ you!
Comments (Closed)
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On November 3, 2008, 18:25 CET, Louis said:
Thatās why I gave you the best score on Quality when answering your survey š
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On November 3, 2008, 20:08 CET, Dave said:
Oh, that everyone did this. Your new headline font is hot.
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On November 5, 2008, 10:33 CET, Jens Oliver Meiert said:
Louis, Dave, thank you!
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