Hotjar equips product teams with Product Experience Insights, showing them how users behave and what they feel strongly about, so those teams can deliver real value. Discover product opportunities, consolidate qual and quant, and communicate user needs. Our team works on the compelling challenges that come with large-scale web traffic and analytics, on a product that has a real impact on the thousands of users we support around the world. We work in an agile environment, 100% remotely, and actively encourage both personal and professional growth; always be learning is one of our core values. Headquartered on the beautiful island of Malta, in the ‘heart’ of the Mediterranean, Hotjar is a successful start-up that operates on a fully remote basis, and with a key emphasis on personal development. Spread throughout the Americas, Europe, Africa, and Asia, our team casts a wide net across a multitude of locations, lifestyles, and backgrounds. It’s our differences that make us interesting, and our shared belief in Hotjar’s core values that bind us together. Hotjar's culture is driven by respect, transparency, collaboration, and direct feedback. We have no room on our team for disrespect, office politics, or discrimination of any kind. We're obsessed with communicating with our users as well as within the team. We hate bureaucracy and slow-moving organizations – but we're suckers for well-defined processes. We love lean, iterative improvements, and success is measured by the value we create for our users. Find out more about our product on our company site (www.hotjar.com) and product roadmap (http://htjr.io/roadmap). Learn more about our company culture and what it's like to work at Hotjar on our careers site (careers.hotjar.com) and company blog (www.hotjar.com/blog).

Hotjar

Learn how David and the Hotjar team utilized other people’s email lists to fuel their initial growth, going from $0 to $19 million ARR in just 4 years. Note from Davis Baer : This interview is a little different than most of the previous founder interviews. Rather than a text interview, David and I decided to hop on a video call. Hope you enjoy it! is a SaaS that reveals the online behavior and voice of users through tools like heatmaps and visitor recordings. Hotjar David’s recommended books: The 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing Selling the Invisible: A Field Guide to Modern Marketing Making Websites Win This interview is brought to you by , a tool to schedule and automatically repeat your posts on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Pinterest, LinkedIn, and Google My Business OneUp

Founder Interviews: David Darmanin of Hotjar

Knowing just what you want is not enough. What your customers are looking for and what attracts them the most is the game-changer for your business. You might not be able to boost your conversion rates with just any strategy. You must know how and where your customers interact with your business. Customer analytics tools could be the most helpful for the same. Let us help you out by suggesting the best customer analytics tools for your business and helping it thrive. Here is a list of 10 Customer analytics Tools for Every Business Size. But first, let us start with the basics. What Is A Customer Analytics Tool? A customer analytics tool helps you understand the interactions that visitors make with your business and what strategies are bringing the best results. Numerous online tools help you do so. It collects, analyses, and suggests any changes required in your current customer acquisition strategies. Why Do You Need Customer Analytics Tools? of customers stay loyal to brands that “get them.” You can achieve this by using customer analytics tools. 56% Through customer analytics tools, you understand your customers' needs and form better strategies if the current ones are not effective. It could help you make strategies suitable for particular groups of customers to keep them loyal to your business. Here are some more reasons that customer analytics tools are important for your business- Increase Response Rates Knowing what your customer wants can help you offer them exactly what they want. Customer analytics tools help you understand this and deliver customers what they wish for, which will increase the response rates of your business. Reduce Costs By knowing what a group of users want, you can offer that particular thing to them where it is more likely to be noticed and then purchased. Doing so will help you cut costs on users who would just ignore your offers because they are not interested. By reducing these unnecessary expenses, more can be allocated towards a more precise . marketing budget Keep Track of Your Strategy Success With customer analytics tools, you will be able to keep track of how your marketing strategies are working and what needs more effort. Through these tools, you will be able to identify market trends and determine what is helping with customer acquisition and what’s not helping. Understand Whom And When To Target Knowing what and where your visitors are losing interest and why it is happening could help you make better strategies and work as per the needs of that specific group of users. You could use to read emails and categorize customer groups as per their interests. intent detection Increase Brand Awareness With customer analytics, you can understand who and how many people are interested in your brand, and then you could offer your services to them through ads, pop-ups, etc. 10 Customer Analytics Tools & Software for Every Business By now, you know what customer analytics tools are and how they are helpful. But I had to find common ground for businesses of all sizes, so here is a list of 10 Customer analytics Tools & Software for Every Business. These will help you build customer analytics techniques. 1. Google Analytics Google Analytics helps you track and analyze your website traffic. With this tool, you can gather lots of information about your customers, such as their age, gender, residence, and where they reached your website. This helps you keep track of your target audience, whether a specific group, a gender, an age group, or a locality. You can start with this platform even as a beginner, as no coding knowledge is required. Plans $0/year Free Version: $150, 000/year Paid Version: 2. Hotjar.com Source: Hotjar.com This platform helps you collect qualitative data about your customers. Hotjar offers heatmaps to show where your users interact the most, where they come from, and where they scroll down. Also, you can get a recording of their visit to help you understand their needs. that help you understand what you are missing out on and where you need to work as you have a direct connection with your users and imply customer analytics tools. Hotjar helps you put feedback boxes Plans $0/month Basic: $31/month Plus: $79/month Business: 3. Baremetrics.com Baremetrics.com, as its name suggests, offers you metrics or, say, graphs of your websites and strategies performances. This platform helps you cut the churn rate by telling you where and why your users left the page. Through this platform, you can understand your customers' needs by asking for feedback and working on what they specifically want to keep them coming back to your business. You can also compare the growth or decline through the months and create new strategies. Plans $129/month Base Features: $198/month With Recover: $258/month With Cancellation Insights: $327/month With Everything: 4. Woorise.com Woorise.com is a platform that will help you create eye-catching and viral giveaways. This platform lets you take surveys, quizzes, feedback, landing pages, and more to keep your users interested. This platform helps you gather more customers and get more of them to subscribe to you and stay connected and hopefully buy from your business. You could begin with a conversion-optimizer, a mobile-responsive template. Plans $0/month Free: $23/month Basic: $39/month Grow: $79/month Pro: 5. Zonkafeedback.com Source: Zonkafeedback.com This platform helps you create direct contact with your customers and understand their needs so that you can work on them. With Zonkafeedback, you can run surveys, quizzes, and polls and learn about what your best product is and who wants it. This will help you categorize customers and offer them the specific services they are interested in. Here, you can measure NPS, CES, and CSAT. Plans $79/month Professional: $129/month Growth: $429/month Enterprise: 6. Outgrow.co Outgrow quiz maker is a tool that will help you make the best out of customer interactions. This platform enables you to understand your customers' interests, and all the other tasks on this platform can be done without any coding knowledge required. This platform helps you communicate through chatbots, polls, recommendations, giveaways, calculators, etc. You can create content that is more customer interactive on Outgrow. Plans $25/month Freelancer: $95/month Essentials: $600/month Business: 7. Powr.io Powr.io is a tool that will help you create maximum interactions with your customers through pop-ups, quizzes, and landing pages. You can develop applications, buttons such as Paypal, and more on this platform. This platform is suitable as it requires no coding knowledge, and you get templates for all the things you want to add to your website. Plans $0/month Free: $4.94/month Starter: $12.14/month Pro: $80.99/month Business: 8. EmailAnalytics.com Source: Emailanalytics.com If you plan to grow your business through email campaigning, Emailanalytics.com could be the tool for you. This platform helps you create email campaigns with templates and offers you email analytics. You can measure the response rate, how a specific email template is working and what changes you want to make to get better results. The visuals are pleasing and easy to understand to get the right idea of what and how to go about your emails. Plans $5/month Individual: $10/month Pro: $15/month Enterprise: 9. Systeme.io This platform saves you a lot of money, and it provides numerous services in one place. You can create websites, analyze and understand your customers and their needs and work accordingly. Most of the services required to run a successful website with customer analysis are free on this platform, and the dashboard is minimalistic to help you get the best out of it at small prices. Plans $0/month Free: $27/month Startup: $47/month Webinar: $97/month Unlimited: 10. Mixpanel Mixpanel helps you analyze your website and check where it is doing the best and worst. It also categorizes users as per their needs, residents, age, etc. You can send in only the ads they want. You can check where your users lose interest in this platform, work on that area, and increase conversion rates. Plans $0/month Free: $25/month Growth: Now You Know What Your Customers Want! With customer analytics and research, you can measure your customers' interests and where they lose them, which will help you create better content and strategies. In this article, I have included customer analytics tools that will help you best with your customer analytics tasks. I hope the article was helpful and you’re in a better position to deliver your customers what they want to meet your goals of higher sales and interaction rates.

Customer Analytics Tools for Every Business Size

Welcome to this guide on testing analytics events! In today's digital landscape, understanding user behavior is paramount for optimizing application performance and user experience. This article will explore effective approaches to testing analytics events, ensuring accurate data collection, and enhancing application functionality. Popular analytics systems for tracking user behavior: Google Analytics - for tracking website traffic and user behavior. Amplitude - for analyzing user behavior in mobile and web applications. Mixpanel - provides event analytics to track user interaction with applications. Adobe Analytics - for traffic and user behavior analysis, offers advanced marketing research features. Heap Analytics - offers user experience and behavior analysis tools for applications. Hotjar - tracks heatmaps, user session recordings, and website surveys. Segment - provides infrastructure for collecting and transferring data between analytics systems. MyTracker - tracks user activity in mobile apps, offering event tracking and funnel analysis. AppMetrica - a mobile app analytics platform by Yandex, tracks user activity and marketing campaign effectiveness. An essential aspect of our application lies in its analytics system. It would be erroneous to assume that if users don't interact with it directly, it's not vital and doesn't require testing. Through analytics, we gain insights into which features of our application resonate with users and which ones fall short. For instance, consider a scenario where we showcase a promo banner "Send a money transfer by phone number." Out of 100 users who viewed it, 60 clicked for more information, but only 5 completed the action. This data prompts us to contemplate potential improvements, such as addressing any bugs hindering user completion or refining the user flow. However, today we'll delve into testing analytics events from a QA specialist's perspective. How do we go about it? Firstly, I recommend creating a table in Excel or Google Sheets listing events and their parameters. We'll create two columns for Android and iOS (if we're testing web/desktop concurrently, we'd add those too, but I'll focus on mobile applications). Once we have our table set up, we review all events to ensure clarity on when they should be triggered. For instance, should an event be retriggered when users navigate away and return to the current screen? It's crucial to clarify these aspects with an analyst, manager, or designer—the individual responsible for analyzing our events. Now, let's delve into the technical aspect—connecting to any sniffer. I prefer using Charles. We filter by the name of the analytics system in use (for instance, in our project, we use Amplitude). Then, we execute the action that should trigger a specific event and await the POST request sent to our analytics service. Typically, libraries aggregate events before sending them. Therefore, you'll have to wait until a certain number of events accumulate or the timer expires. Alternatively, you can also minimize the application (most likely, at this moment, all accumulated events will be sent). Afterward, we inspect the request contents, ensuring the desired event is sent and no extraneous data is transmitted. Once verified, we mark it off on our table and proceed to the next event. For ease of analyzing the transmitted information, it's convenient to use any formatter, which you can find online. After formatting the JSON, search the page for the event that was supposed to be sent and examine the parameters with which it was sent, as well as the number of times. JSON After verifying events through , we access the analytics system to ensure that all events have been captured accurately and that the quantities correspond to our testing activities. Charles So, the main points we consider during testing are as follows: The event is triggered at the correct moment. The event is not duplicated without cause. Unnecessary events are not sent arbitrarily. We verify spelling consistency: it should match the documentation, and event names across different platforms should be consistent (including case sensitivity). When sending data like country or city names, ensure uniformity across platforms (for instance, consistently using "UK" instead of variations like "Great Britain" in some instances). After the release, testers can also monitor the analytics system. They should examine the events related to new features or modified functionality. Have all the events been received? Are any of the old ones malfunctioning? If any irregularities are observed, the tester should first inspect the production build of the application. Our main goal is to ensure that our application works in production. Does the functionality work? If the functionality works, then see if the events are beIf it is, then check if the events are being triggered. Analyzing these aspects will aid in identifying latent application issues. , thorough testing of analytics events is essential for maintaining the integrity of data-driven decision-making in application development. By following the methodology outlined in this guide, testers can ensure the reliability and accuracy of analytics data, ultimately leading to improved user engagement and satisfaction. In conclusion

Testing Analytics Events: A Guide for QA Engineers

I started my career as a marketing project manager before transitioning into building upskilling programs to help adults kickstart their careers in marketing. Currently, I'm with a British startup that specializes in micro-learning for frontline workers — deskless employees, eg. construction workers, hotel personnel, restaurant managers, and taxi drivers. While working in product teams, I've had a chance to witness how marketing and product roles effectively operate both independently and together. One constant remains unchanged: marketing skills are beneficial for product managers and essential for their success in the role. Recently, , blending it into the role of a product marketing manager. This decision has caused a reasonable debate. In today's tech market, the merging of marketing and skills is becoming one of the key areas in career growth. Airbnb transformed its product management function product management This article explores how marketing skills can help build a successful career in product management and how active collaboration with marketing teams can help product leaders create great products. What determines the level of marketing involvement in the product? Growth strategy/model of the company The degree to which an organization prioritizes marketing efforts against product development depends on its . type of growth strategy focuses on leveraging the product itself to drive user acquisition and growth, relying on its quality and user experience. Marketing supports by enhancing product visibility but does not lead the growth initiative. Product-led growth focuses on traditional marketing methods like advertising, campaigns, and branding to acquire customers and boost product growth. Business investments primarily focus on marketing the product. Marketing-led growth concentrates on direct sales through a dedicated team that drives revenue growth. Marketing supports by providing assets and messaging, and generating inbound leads. The goal is to create a seamless customer acquisition and conversion process. Popular in technical B2B products. Sales-led growth In product-led and marketing-led organizations, marketing skills are critical for product managers. In sales-led companies, these skills are less crucial as the focus shifts towards direct sales that are driving revenue. Size and maturity of the organization For startups, is crucial for gaining an initial customer base and building brand awareness. This is due to their limited market presence and the urgent need to establish a name in the field. performance marketing In established corporations, the focus often shifts from performance marketing to . brand marketing This shift is evident in tech giants like and , which highlight brand strength over performance marketing metrics. Apple Google In big companies, the role of product marketing managers becomes vital. They bring product and marketing together, translate technical features into compelling use cases and value propositions for end users, and make sure that the product aligns with the market's needs and expectations. 💡 This shift and the introduction of PMM roles highlight a wider trend in the IT market: as companies grow and their products become more sophisticated, a strategic product marketing approach is needed. How to get the most out of your marketing team as a product manager ✅ Work with Product Positioning and Adapt It Based on Marketing Insights Product positioning is about highlighting how a product can address the needs of a specific audience segment. Marketers often face limitations in advertising a product — whether it's character limits in ads or banners, fighting for audience attention is a constant battle. Product managers have a great understanding of the market and user demands. They can that might catch potential prospect’s attention. support marketers in identifying the most impactful areas of the product In response, marketing can , that their team has been doing, with the product team. Product managers can learn something new about what specifically attracts users to try the product. This allows them to refactor existing features to cover more prospects’ needs and expand the lead pipeline. share analytics from various positioning or messaging experiments 💡 Example: A new brand specializing in eco-friendly clothing initially positioned itself around the environmental advantages of its products. However, conducting user interviews with the non-paying audience revealed a significant interest in fashion and style. The team has tweaked the product positioning to highlight both eco-features and a trendy design. As a result, the product managed to grow its sales and revenue. ✅ Perform User Segmentation Generally, products that suit everyone don't exist, making segmentation critical for both marketing and the product itself. Actively analyzing product data is crucial for understanding how different user segments use the product. It helps that inspire hypotheses for further product development. identify usage behavior patterns Additionally, having a close relationship with the marketing department helps in exchanging data insights. The marketing team can share which positioning of product features works most effectively or which user segment it is the most interested in. Example: A fitness app faced low user engagement. By segmenting their users by activity levels and interests, they found that advanced users exercising 4+ times a week left due to a lack of new and exciting content. The product introduced a new set of advanced workout programs and adapted the user interface to display content based on each user's fitness level. This increased product retention across a few segments. ✅ Test Product Hypotheses with Marketing Product development is expensive. It's critical to move to product or feature development only after validating the hypothesis about the feature's necessity. Marketing is an excellent tool for the product discovery process, i.e., research. In B2C products, you can test product hypotheses regarding the need for a product or feature through quick marketing tests. 💡 Example: An online plant store tested hypotheses about which plant types were most popular in different seasons. They launched targeted marketing campaigns on various plant types on social media and tracked sales. The data collected during these campaigns gave ideas for inventory decisions and marketing strategy, and resulted in increased sales and customer satisfaction. ✅ Sync User Expectations Between the Marketing Image and Product At the same time, it's crucial to remember that attracting users is only at the top of the funnel. Even if marketing draws in hundreds of users, once they land on the product, users already have formed expectations from their interactions with marketing. The product must match these expectations. It’s a common practice to start advertising product capabilities that aren't yet built — simply to test the demand and interest. However, it's vital to avoid setting misleading expectations that the current product cannot fulfill. When users don't find the promised features, they will likely leave. They might even leave you a poor review, and they won’t come back. It’s essential to balance between testing market demand for a hypothetical feature and ensuring that the actual product aligns with what is advertised. Aside from that, knowing the marketing channel that the user came from could be used to personalize their first experience with the product. By identifying the user's segment or acquisition channel, the product can show a custom in-product walkthrough, highlighting the features that are most relevant to that particular user. This customized onboarding helps guide users to their 'aha' moment. ✅ Understand the Role of Paid and Organic Traffic Any product's goal is to learn to grow and develop organically, removing the need for paid traffic. However, as a product evolves, the importance and performance of various marketing channels will change. Knowing the difference between different user acquisition approaches and how to interpret their results, you can make more informed decisions about your product health. In the example of product-led growth organizations, investments in product improvements might show higher ROI than investments in paid traffic. This is because improving the product and satisfying existing users can lead to natural audience growth without additional advertising costs. and what the product can do to drive stickiness and NPS. Try getting actionable insights into what prevents your product from growing organically Example: Slack's growth strategy heavily relied on organic growth through word-of-mouth and user satisfaction rather than on paid traffic. Their investments in product development and enhancing user experience, as well as the right monetization strategy (eg. limited features in a free plan) led to a natural increase in their user base. ✅ Collaborate with Marketing on Returning or Paying Users Building upon the previous point, it's important to clarify that often a marketer's main metric is attracting paying users. With users who are already paying, the story changes — retaining the customer to prevent churn and further developing them to spend more within the product is crucial. A good product never remains stagnant; it continuously adds features and new value for the user. Having marketing skills provides a good context for creating in-product marketing and the ability to educate users about the product. Essentially, , market new features, and new use cases, and demonstrate how innovations in the product can improve their work. you need to sell your product to users in each session Implement in-product notifications, email marketing, or updates about new features to keep users engaged and invested in your product. Example: A personal finance app noticed low user activity post-initial registration. They added personalized in-app messages and email marketing to users who hadn't completed a key action within 3 days, highlighting primary and lesser-known features and tips. This approach re-engaged users, leading to an increase in subscriptions. ✅ Analyse User Sessions A frequent marketing team’s task is to monitor a product's website activity, identify weak points, and adapt it to generate the most interest from users and conversions. Just as marketers use heatmaps to understand how users navigate websites, . Analyzing what users do after entering the product helps make decisions, such as optimizing onboarding or highlighting unsuccessful UI decisions causing user confusion on a page. product managers can use tools like Hotjar to analyze user sessions Example: A graphic design online tool, through analysis of user sessions, noticed many users abandoning the tool midway through creating designs. They identified usability issues and introduced a product tutorial and simpler design templates. This reduced dropout rates and increased the fraction of completed projects. ✅ Calculate CAC and Unit Economics One of the product manager's tasks is to be responsible for product and business metrics. Depending on the product, these business metrics may include revenue, profit, or additional sales of product parts (upsell). It's essential to have a deep understanding of how marketing metrics correlate with product metrics. This involves understanding the relationship between CAC (Customer Acquisition Cost) and LTV (Customer Lifetime Value) as well as the ability to calculate unit economics. Unit economics helps grasp and establish product pricing considering the cost of acquiring a customer and market trends. Marketing experiments might lead to different CACs and product managers can use these insights to experiment with product pricing. Example: A food delivery startup initially struggled with high customer acquisition costs. After analyzing their unit economics, they realized that focusing on high-quality locally sourced ingredients increased the customer LTV by 2x. They adjusted their marketing strategy to highlight these premium ingredients, which improved the LTV-to-CAC ratio. Establish Trust with Marketing Managers Tensions between marketing and product teams are not uncommon. This tension often stems from differing goals. Marketers aim to attract paying users, but what if the users are unwilling to pay for the product? Is it the fault of marketers for attracting the wrong type of users or the product team for creating a product that doesn't align with users' needs? In reality, it's no one's fault. Rather than working separately, both teams should seek collaboration and mutual improvement, eg. work together to find the right segment and messaging to drive overall product growth. Communicating effectively is crucial. Conclusion The intersection of marketing and product management roles is critical in today's rapidly evolving tech world. The merge of marketing and product expertise is more than just a trend; it's a strategic approach to ensuring that products not only meet market demands but also resonate with users at a deeper level. By leveraging the strengths of both roles, businesses can create products that exceed customer expectations, leading to long-term success. Editor: Tanya Kamenskaya Design: Stas Yudin

Elevating Product Management with Marketing Insights

বিপণন অন্তর্দৃষ্টি সঙ্গে পণ্য ব্যবস্থাপনা উন্নত

Verbesserung des Produktmanagements mit Marketing-Einblicken

Mejorando la gestión de productos con conocimientos de marketing

Améliorer la gestion des produits grâce aux informations marketing

मार्केटिंग अंतर्दृष्टि के साथ उत्पाद प्रबंधन को उन्नत बनाना

マーケティング洞察による製品管理の向上

마케팅 통찰력으로 제품 관리 향상

Elevando o gerenciamento de produtos com insights de marketing

Улучшение управления продуктами с помощью маркетинговой информации

Pazarlama İçgörüleriyle Ürün Yönetimini Yükseltme

Nâng cao quản lý sản phẩm với những hiểu biết sâu sắc về tiếp thị

通过营销洞察提升产品管理

In a nutshell Software is the main engine of revenue and growth for most companies. It is also done at a scale that makes it impossible to micromanage everything top-down. Thus, being just a code monkey won't cut it. Professional developers are expected to contribute to the company's overall success: provide a competitive advantage, fuel sustainable growth, ensure adaptability to changing market conditions. In this article, I'll take a deeper look at what makes companies successful and what skills you need as a developer to help achieve this success. The evolution of software development (too critical to neglect, too complex to micromanage) As Marc Andreessen famously said in 2011, software is eating the world. Modern companies depend on software as never before. Even if they don't sell it directly as a product, software is still fundamental to driving their operations and growth. It's critical for their customers, employees, suppliers, and partners. It's the engine that runs the business - and the network that connects it with other businesses. It's the cornerstone of the company's success. At the same time, the software got bigger. Much bigger. And the software development process got incomparably more complex: Huge teams. The whole portfolio of products. A vast network of interconnected APIs. Complex distributed architectures. Tens or even hundreds of external vendors. Constant progress at a crazy pace. Cutthroat competition and continuously changing user tastes. No manager, analyst, or architect is able to micromanage it all. The responsibility has to be distributed. And this completely changes the game for us . developers Raising the bar for software developers (the new definition of a "code monkey") A " " isn't a new term. Developers who just churn out code without looking at a broader context were frowned upon from the early days of programming. However, for a long time, this "broader context" just meant more conceptual work like code design or architecture. But it doesn't cut it anymore. code monkey Nowadays, I'd define a code monkey differently: . A code monkey is a developer who contributes only to building software, not to the holistic company's success Yes, this is why we, developers, are hired. To generate business value. To make companies grow and thrive. And this requires . a different mindset and a different, broader set of skills But, first of all, you need to understand what makes companies successful - and where fit into this puzzle. you The 4 key elements of the company's success (and how you can influence them as a dev) The recipe for a company's success, while insanely hard to achieve, is, at its core, very simple. First of all, a company needs to have a competitive advantage. It needs to be better than the competition (or at least differentiate itself enough) in one or more of these aspects: have a better product, be more innovative technologically, build new products faster, or be cheaper. Then, when the company becomes successful, it naturally starts to grow. Rapid growth is hard to manage and - if the company is not skillful at it - can destroy its competitive advantage. Next, to be truly successful, a company needs to sustain its competitive advantage over time. It needs to cut enough corners to win now - but not as many as to die the "death of a thousand cuts" later. Finally, the world never stands still. To not lose its edge, a company needs to continuously evolve to adapt to the ever-changing user tastes, competition, and market. Let's now take a look at these four ingredients in more detail. Competitive advantage: Product Building a better product is the most obvious competitive advantage. If users like and buy your product more than the other ones - you win. But what convinces them to do so? It all boils down to two things: addressing users' needs and providing a great user experience. So, how can you, as a developer, influence these two areas? Improve your communication skills to collaborate effectively across functions with designers, product managers, business stakeholders, and users. Especially learning how to talk to non-programmers (explain technical concepts simply, abstain from jargon, be patient with less tech-savvy people, etc.). Learn the principles of experimentally discovering what users want: Agile, empiricism, iterative development, Lean Startup, and product discovery. Get good at working in short iterations, building small MVPs (Minimal Viable Products), and rapid prototyping to help product managers validate ideas faster. Understand how to rapidly test ideas without coding (fake door, Wizard of Oz, concierge, and similar techniques). Learn the fundamentals of the product metrics and get a good overview of various analytics approaches (page views tracking, event tracking, backend API requests tracking, heatmaps, etc.) and the analytics tooling ecosystem (Google Analytics, Pendo, Segment, HotJar, and so on). Don't push to always solve everything by writing new code. Get comfortable with solving problems through 3rd party integrations and no-code solutions. Learn the basics of usability and user experience (UX). Competitive advantage: Technology Developing more advanced technology is another competitive edge. This is a bit different from just creating a better product. Of course, you still need to solve real user problems, but your winning strategy is not making the product more fine-tuned and polished but making it capable of things no one else is capable of. Imagine invoicing software. Making re-typing the content of paper invoices into the system by hand smoother, faster, and done in fewer steps is one thing, but being able to import them automatically, without typing anything, through advanced text recognition and extraction would be at a completely different level, even if the interface is not that polished. It doesn't have to happen at such a dramatic scale, though. Even small technical advancements can provide a competitive edge: make processes faster for the user, reduce their costs, and make the product more capable. But how can a regular developer help their company gain a technological advantage? Get a good overview of the existing ecosystem, both open source and commercial: languages, frameworks, libraries, cloud and SaaS platforms, APIs, tooling, and so on. Often, the advanced capability you need is already out there, available as a 3rd party library or service - you just need to know it exists and understand how it can be used. Stay up to date with the newest trends and technological advancements (especially the upcoming, not yet widely adopted ones) to be able to notice and exploit opportunities to gain a technical advantage. Learn about your company's business domain, its product, and its competition so you can propose the most innovative technical solutions to the business problem at hand. Stay up to date with what's happening also outside your company's domain. Track what other popular apps are doing - what's the current state of the art in the broader industry - and "steal" and adapt the best ideas to your company's needs. Experiment with new stuff regularly (just enough to get a good grasp of what it is about and be able to quickly learn more about it when needed). Get good at researching, quickly learning new tech when needed, and doing small prototypes and proofs-of-concept. Competitive advantage: Process The next way of gaining a competitive advantage is through better processes. In other words, the ability to build stuff faster than the competition without sacrificing quality. In the short term, it will give your company the first-to-market advantage. In the long term, it will allow you to experiment more rapidly, which will also impact the first two advantages: better product and technical innovation. An important part of a good process is also the ability to continuously refine the process itself to stay ahead of the competition in the long run. Processes - especially related to efficient delivery - are something developers have a lot of influence over. Become a fast, efficient coder. Learn . Get good at debugging. Use tools that speed you up: auto-formatters, code generators, code intelligence, hot reloading, etc. Understand how to organize the codebase to navigate around faster. your IDE in-depth Learn how application architecture impacts not only scalability and performance but also efficient teamwork, code navigation, and debugging. Build a robust toolbox of techniques to minimize the number of bugs (and to fix them more efficiently): unit testing, error handling, application monitoring, and logging. Understand technical debt and how to strike the right balance between cutting too many corners and over-engineering. Become good at making the right compromises between delivering business value and maintaining necessary non-functional features (reliability, performance, security, scalability, maintainability, and quality). Understand modern delivery processes: CI/CD, Git branching strategies, feature flag-based development, and so on. Learn at least the basics of the most popular software development processes (Scrum, Kanban). Get accustomed to process improvement techniques (retrospectives, project post-mortems, root-cause analysis, etc.). Be open to experimenting and trying new processes and techniques. Be proactive in proposing and championing improvement ideas. But also know how to balance implementing improvements with generating business value. Competitive advantage: Operations The last type of competitive advantage is more efficient operations. Depending on your company's profile, you may have different teams involved in acquiring, onboarding, and supporting users: sales, call center, customer success, customer support, implementation, operations, invoicing, and so on. Making these teams faster, cheaper, and more user-friendly is another way to win over the competition. How can you help with this as a developer? Learn how your various "operations" teams work: what they do day-to-day, what metrics they use to measure their success, what makes them efficient and what slows them down, and how they interact with customers. Get a good overview of the tools to rapidly build internal tools faster: automatic admin panel generators, CMS frameworks, UI component libraries, and so on. Understand the trade-offs of buying vs. building vs. integrating internal tools (admin panels, invoicing systems, CRM platforms, inventory management, order tracking systems, etc.). Know how to most efficiently keep your customer-facing teams updated about the status and expected completion time of your work (for example, bug fixes) so they can easily obtain and pass this information to customers. Understand personal data privacy and security issues: how to make your "operations" teams more efficient by providing them tools like user-impersonation or giving them access to user data for tech support purposes without compromising user privacy. Growth To become successful, companies need to constantly grow their revenue. It almost always means also growing the team. This, in turn, means more recruitment effort (including onboarding and mentoring), a bigger codebase, more complicated architecture, and increased complexity of organizational structure. It also makes communication, teamwork, and management more challenging - usually to the point where top-down micro-management doesn't cut it anymore. This sounds like a management problem. But even as a "regular" developer, you can help much more than you think. Learn how to modularize the so multiple teams can collaborate without collisions. Familiarize yourself with domain-driven design, micro-services, micro-frontends, API design principles, git repository topologies, and similar. Understand how to evolve the architecture over time to accommodate the growing size of the platform and the growing number of teams without over-engineering it early on. codebase and architecture Learn how to make code easy to read, understand, debug, navigate, and modify for other people. Understand the concept of cognitive load. Get a good grasp of clean code principles. Understand what makes the whole engineering organization go faster (design systems, component libraries, coding conventions, UI guidelines, and so on). Understand compromises between what to standardize and what can be different per team. Learn how to communicate well (clearly, understandably, concisely, and on-point), both verbally and in writing. Learn how to effectively brainstorm, make decisions together, and navigate disagreement or conflict. Understand how to effectively sync and collaborate with the other teams. Find opportunities to help with recruitment, if not by directly participating in the interviews, then by reviewing CVs, preparing and evaluating coding and system design challenges, and promoting your company (through blogging, social media, conferences, or by directly recommending your colleagues). Make onboarding easier. Understand and use industry-wide standards to lower the entry point for new hires. Know how to document and explain architecture and logic. Be responsive, non-condescending, and open to answering all questions. Help with mentoring. Understand what tasks to assign to someone new or more junior and how frequently to sync with them to not overwhelm them but also not leave them hanging. Be supportive and patient. Take ownership of various projects, initiatives, and modules to reduce the burden on management - so they don't have to micro-manage everything. Sustainability Companies are long-living entities. Gaining a competitive advantage and achieving initial success is only the start of the game. A company needs to sustain its success over decades. But when a company is under constant pressure, fighting off new challengers and chasing ever-changing market conditions, it's often necessary to cut corners, which may put the company at risk further down the road. To thrive over a long time, a company needs to strike a fine balance between aggressive and sustainable. How can you help maintain this balance? Get a good understanding of the concept of technical debt and the ways of managing it. Develop a keen eye for both under and over-engineering. Learn the patterns and principles of code maintainability and evolving complex legacy codebases over time. Be aware of the short- and long-term trade-offs between the development speed and the concerns like reliability, performance, scalability, security, privacy, usability, or maintainability. Understand short- and long-term implications of various architectural decisions (monolith vs. microservices, native vs. hybrid mobile, REST vs. GraphQL, single-page app vs. server-side rendering, mono repo vs. multiple reports, and so on). Know how to evaluate new technologies not only by the "cool" factor but also by the learning curve, maintenance cost, ease of recruitment, vendor lock-in, long-term support, and similar. Be aware of the build vs. buy vs. use open source trade-offs. Understand how technology choices impact business and UX capabilities and how they broaden or narrow down what the company will be able to solve for its users. Don't just passively follow business requests. Participate in setting technical vision and direction and provide guidance and counsel to the rest of the organization. Learn how to maintain a healthy lifestyle and avoid burnout. Adaptability Sustainability alone is not enough to stay successful for a long time. Companies also have to continuously adapt (or even reinvent themselves). A company has to adapt to the macro-scale events (changing market conditions, changing customer tastes, new technologies, economic situations, fashion, and social trends) and to the micro-scale events (finishing and starting projects, people leaving and joining, reorganizing teams or departments, adopting new methodologies and processes). It may, again, seem like something out of the scope of a software developer. But with the right attitude, you can help much more than you think. Understand the core principles of empiricism, experimentation, and Agile. Be able to quickly pivot and adapt to new trends, tech, and methodologies. Become an eager learner. Know how to learn fast, how to research, and how to efficiently find information. Understand how to architect systems to make it easy to gradually migrate parts of them to new tech in the future. Learn how to effectively carry out such migrations. Most people dislike and avoid change. Make yourself open to it and comfortable with it. Train yourself to thrive in such an environment. Become good at adapting to new projects, teams, and roles. Learn how to quickly build rapport with new people. Be open to new points of view and for updating yours in the face of sound evidence. Bottom line One purpose of a developer is to make the product and company successful. That's why we're hired. That's why we exist. And modern software is so complex that this process can't be micromanaged. We must proactively contribute to the company's success. . Become the experts on the topic If you understand the holistic view - what makes companies successful, how the software fits into this puzzle, and how you can influence it as a developer - you'll be invaluable. (And it also opens the door to a future leadership career.) Plus, it's much more satisfying to understand the whole picture than to just blindly follow what you're told. Also published . here

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The growth of ecommerce over the last decade has been nothing short of spectacular. The market is expected to be worth by 2026, and Shopify is set to account for a significant chunk of that. With some customers, it’s the top choice for entrepreneurs looking to quickly set up an online store. over $8.1 trillion 6.4 million With so many players, online merchants need to come up with new ways to stay competitive in their industries. SEO is an excellent, cost-effective way to achieve this. It can help you boost organic traffic sustainably without having to buy your way into search results. Here’s how to go about improving SEO on Shopify. Why SEO Matters With Shopify SEO (search engine optimization) is the process of optimizing your website so that it’s more visible on search engines for relevant queries. Organic results also tend to get more traction than paid results. Consider that the average CTR on the first organic result is , whereas that on paid results is 2%. 28.5% SEO is particularly important in the context of Shopify given the massive competition both on the platform and in ecommerce more broadly. What’s more, SEO on Shopify is a to execute than on other non-proprietary platforms. bit trickier If you’re able to get it right, this gives you a significant competitive edge over your rivals. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CQTAf-9s4oQ&embedable=true Understanding Shopify SEO Basics With the right technical knowhow, you can absolutely your Shopify SEO and accelerate sales. level up It’s worth noting that Shopify itself provides you a lot of options to boost website performance. It has a flourishing that you can bank on to optimize your store. This includes: app ecosystem : Review apps help you showcase customer reviews for your products. This improves visitor experience on your site and is a trust indicator for search engines, improving your chances of ranking higher. Review Apps : These help you do everything from adding alt text to images to creating meta tags and fixing broken links. SEO Apps : Improving email campaign management should be a focus for any ecommerce brand. Coalition client was able to increase email revenue by 277% using email optimization strategies. Email Marketing Apps Koyal Wholesale : These help provide customized payment processing options for your buyers. Payment Apps : You can boost page load speeds to improve user experience on your site. Page Speed Optimization Apps : These help with image compression and SEO optimization to improve page load speeds. Image Optimization Apps : These are integrations to boost on-site conversion and product promotion. Promotion Conversion Apps Outside of third-party , the core platform also provides you a number of features for store optimization, such as: Shopify apps Automated XML sitemap Control over Robots.txt Option to hide pages for search engines using Noindex tag Native Google Analytics 4 integration to track ecommerce revenue Ability to optimize URLs Manage canonical tags Mobile-friendly build for stores You can also take steps for off-page optimization by ensuring relevant and authoritative third-party websites link to your store and products. This is called backlinking and helps drive link equity to your site. This is essentially an indication to search engines that your website is worthy of consideration. A systematic backlinking campaign can help boost your site’s Domain Authority (DA) and its search ranking. Implementing SEO SEO is a precise science made up of a host of different actions you can take both on your website and off it to improve your store’s . search ranking On-Page Shopify Optimization On-page optimization includes all the actions you can take on your store to make it more competitive and convert-worthy. Keywords are a big part of this. Your prospects use keywords (search queries) on search engines to find relevant results. If you aim to figure in those results, you should have those keywords embedded throughout your content. This includes your product and category pages, blogs, as well as your meta elements. Meta elements include your title tags and meta description, which is the brief information snippet users will see next to your site link in search result pages. Crucially, all your content should be relevant and original. The results of a focused content strategy can be eye-opening. Coalition client , for instance, was able to boost organic sessions by 84% and nearly double organic revenue through a revamped content and SEO strategy. Color Cord Other aspects of on-page optimization include improving navigation, which in turn, boosts user experience. This is a key metric for search engines when allocating search rankings. A seamless user experience improves on-page dwell time and reduces bounce rates, which is the percentage of visitors who leave your website after viewing just one page. User-friendly URL design can also help with improving navigation. Users are more likely to remember easy-to-read web addresses and directly navigate to those pages if they’re interested. Effective interlinking, where you link relevant site pages to one another, is another important on-page activity. This drives good semantic and link equity value to your internal pages, helping search engines understand them better. Finally, the value of high-quality images cannot be overemphasized in the context of ecommerce. People buy with their eyes and without high-definition, varied product imagery, you’ll be falling behind your competitors. Technical SEO for Shopify Technical improvements to your site, particularly those targeting website speed and mobile responsiveness are key to improving SEO performance. Users simply won’t waste time on a website that loads slowly or isn’t optimized for the device they’re using. This, in turn, increases your bounce rate and affects search ranking. , another CT client, was able to increase organic sessions by 371% and monthly organic revenue by 339% through a concerted approach of optimizing product images and on-site technical optimization. Rainbow Symphony It’s also worth looking into aspects like structured data and schema markups (such as Google FAQ Schema). These are a standardized way of structuring your content at the backend so that search engines quickly pick it up. Ensure your site features an XML sitemap, which is a file that helps search engines better understand and log your site structure. Submit this sitemap to search engines, including the Google Search Console, to help them crawl your site quicker and successfully. Tracking SEO Performance You can’t measure the results of your optimization if you’re not tracking site performance all the way through. The most important of these are and Google Search Console. Google Analytics The former gives you comprehensive, granular information on how your web pages are performing across multiple fronts, such as organic sessions, number of users, channels, bounce rate, dwell time, and click-through rate among others. Google Search Console helps you ensure web pages are crawled, fix indexing issues, understand your site’s search performance, and more. You can use these in combination with other tools SEMRush, Ahrefs, Copy Scape, and Hotjar to further improve SEO and on-page conversion.

The Ultimate Guide to Shopify SEO for Ecommerce Stores

Yes, and no. Well, as with everything, it depends. In this post, I'll try to illustrate my experience with testing as a developer, then as a startup founder. About me Hi! I'm Simone, a full-stack developer, and CTO with 15 years of experience coding in various industries, including web agency, e-commerce, adult, and enterprise software. In this blog post, I'd like to share insights on software testing and how to determine appropriate methods for different business needs and stages. I'm the CTO and Co-founder of Bugpilot, a bug monitoring tool that helps SaaS teams catch bugs that slipped through the development, testing, and QA processes. Introduction Different kinds of testing In the software development world, many testing practices have long been regarded as essential for ensuring the reliability and quality of software products. However, it is important to recognize that while these methodologies have their merits, they are not without their drawbacks. This blog post aims to spark a conversation and shed light on the potential harm that TDD and QA can inflict on software teams. By acknowledging that there is no one-size-fits-all approach and that different businesses and stages require appropriate methods, we can begin to navigate the complexities of software development more effectively. I acknowledge many different methodologies, common practices, and recommendations around software testing; in this post, I focused mostly on Test-driven development and Quality Assurance. Here's an overview, in case you're not familiar with the terms: TDD Test-driven development (TDD) is a software development method that involves writing automated tests before writing code. This helps catch issues early in the development cycle, ensuring that the code is thoroughly tested and meets business requirements. Developers first define the expected behavior of a new feature with a test, then write the code to pass the test, and finally optimize the code through refactoring. QA Quality Assurance (QA) ensures software meets quality standards before release. Typically a manual process carried out by a QA Engineer, identifies and fixes defects through manual and automated testing, such as verifying functional requirements and checking performance. This ensures reliable, stable software that meets business and end-user needs. A couple of questions for you! I can't stress enough that I strongly believe that tests are needed in many cases. Think of medical appliances, aircraft software, control systems, banking, and much more, software in use by billions of people where the color of one button makes a significant profit difference. My goal with this post is to spark a conversation. Software development requires a balance between structure and flexibility, and blindly following testing principles without considering the context can lead to suboptimal outcomes - code libraries probably benefit from 99% coverage. But does your software need 99% coverage as well? I prepared a couple of questions. Try to answer yes or no — why is that? Do you need to test your UI components? really Do you need E2E testing for that “update profile picture” functionality? Do you fail QA and delay a release if there's a minor inconsistency between Figma designs and actual UI? What's the boundary? Should I fire John for refusing to write tests? Chapter 1. My case against Test-Driven-Development Challenging the dogma Test-driven development (TDD) has gained an almost-religious following. and it is often accompanied by the dogmatic belief that it is the only path to success. This chapter aims to explore the drawbacks of TDD and shed light on the . Some claim it helps with mental health, rigidity trap, time constraints, and false sense of security As a CTO, I have encountered colleagues who staunchly insisted on TDD for even the most trivial functions. The prevailing dogma seemed to be, This unwavering belief in TDD as the only acceptable approach often made me question my own judgment and competence. I distinctly recall incidents when I was being laughed at for refusing to write tests for a simple 2-line function to filter an array. "You must do TDD, or you're an idiot!" This personal experience highlighted one of the key pitfalls of TDD— The dogmatic adherence to writing tests first can sometimes lead to rigid processes, which may, in turn, impact a company's time-to-market and competitor advantage. the rigidity trap. Is it really worth the time? A significant challenge posed by TDD is the time constraint it imposes on the development process. Writing comprehensive tests for every piece of code can be time-consuming, especially for trivial functions that have minimal impact on the overall system. In fast-paced environments where quick iterations and timely delivery are crucial, the additional overhead of TDD can slow down the development cycle and hinder agility. and there are scenarios where a more streamlined testing approach may be more appropriate, allowing for faster iterations and quicker responses to market demands. I find it unreasonable to always go with the “I need 99% coverage” approach. Balancing thoroughness and efficiency is essential, Moreover, the complexity and imperfection of writing tests that involve interactions with external dependencies or complex systems can further compound the time constraints of TDD. As a developer, I might even say I enjoy writing tests, but… find a CEO who's happy their team spent 80% of their time writing tests for code that will eventually be deleted. Developers often need to create mock objects or stubs to simulate the behavior of these dependencies during testing. While mocks can be valuable tools for isolating code and reducing dependencies, they can also introduce additional overhead and complexity. The reliance on mocks may lead to an imperfect representation of real-world interactions, as it can be challenging to replicate the behavior of external systems or third-party components accurately. This can introduce a level of uncertainty into the testing process, potentially resulting in false positives or false negatives. Tests are passing; I can have a good night's sleep, right? Right? Tests are passing; I can sleep safe and sound! There's an inherent but often overlooked danger of relying solely on tests— While testing is undoubtedly essential for identifying and preventing defects, it is not a foolproof solution. a false sense of security. “Did we test on every device?” One such factor is the diversity of end-user devices, including different screen sizes, resolutions, operating systems, and browsers. Each combination presents a unique set of challenges that can affect how the software functions and appears to users. It's also difficult to test all the possible cases. Especially in the realm of web development, there is a multitude of factors that can impact the user experience. Consider the vast array of devices and configurations: smartphones, tablets, laptops, and desktops, running on iOS, Android, Windows, or macOS, using various versions of browsers like Chrome, Safari, Firefox, Edge, or Internet Explorer.  Each device, operating system, and browser combination may render web content differently, and user interactions may vary as well. It is virtually impossible to anticipate and account for every possible device and configuration, making it challenging for tests to provide complete coverage. “Did I test this UI as if I were my grandma?” Your software may target a diverse audience with different preferences, behaviors, and . Testing can help uncover issues that arise in typical scenarios, but it may miss edge cases or specific user interactions that deviate from the norm. User personas and profiles add another layer of complexity. accessibility needs For example, users with visual impairments who rely on assistive technologies may encounter usability challenges that are difficult to capture through automated tests alone. In addition to the technical variations, user context and real-world scenarios play a crucial role in shaping the user experience. Factors such as network conditions, bandwidth limitations, or concurrent usage can impact the performance and reliability of the software. While tests can provide a controlled environment, they may not accurately simulate the diverse network conditions and usage patterns that users encounter in their daily lives. If tests cannot ensure your software works well, are they worth it at the end of the day? Chapter 2. QA & The need for speed I've witnessed firsthand the challenges posed by “strict” Quality Assurance practices, particularly when it comes to smaller companies that must move swiftly to stay on top of their competitors. I believe this is especially true for early-stage startups; you're somehow likely to throw away the whole feature soon if your customers are not using it. So, was that one whole week of testing and refining the unit tests worth it? Let me share my personal experiences and shed light on the dangers of getting caught up in perfectionism, especially when minor visual or presentational aspects become the focus of QA efforts. In my previous role at a startup, we faced a constant battle between delivering features quickly and ensuring impeccable quality. There were instances when our release cycle was unnecessarily delayed due to minute issues such as a misaligned CSS margin, an incorrect font choice, or a missing line break. While attention to detail is important, I began to question the impact of obsessing over these cosmetic imperfections on our ability to stay ahead in the market. One of the risks of excessive QA is the In our pursuit of flawlessness, we often found ourselves investing significant time and resources into fixing minuscule visual glitches. prioritization of perfection over practicality. Isn't this the enemy of productivity? While it's essential to maintain high standards, I started to realize that dedicating extensive effort to these minute details might be counterproductive, diverting our focus away from core functionality and user experience improvements that truly mattered to our customers. The danger became apparent as we observed the consequences of an overly cautious QA approach. Our team began to exhibit risk-averse behavior, opting for a slow and meticulous release process. While the intention was to deliver a near-flawless product, we inadvertently stifled innovation and hindered our ability to respond quickly to customer demands. As a small (30 employees) company, However, excessive QA practices resulted in a widespread fear of “bugs” which was holding us back. we relied on our agility to iterate rapidly and outmaneuver larger competitors. Shouldn't we accept bugs exist? (Sorry - football quote) Anyone who works makes mistakes; if you don't work, you never make mistakes. Chapter 4. Customers might be the best testers The financial implications of prolonged-release cycles became evident. Missed market windows, delayed revenue generation, and potential customer churn began to take a toll. We couldn't afford to dawdle as a small company with limited resources. We needed to leverage our agility and speed to seize opportunities and maintain a competitive edge. The time spent on perfecting minor details needed to be balanced against the need for rapid iteration and market responsiveness. Postpone, postpone, and postpone every release until we are “more certain” that everything works; shipping on Tuesdays became the preferred option. Why ship on Monday if we can take one more day to test everything? While testing helps identify and prevent defects, it is equally important to embrace user feedback as a valuable source of information. We can create a user-centric product that meets their expectations by fostering a feedback loop with users, actively listening to their needs, and Users' experiences, preferences, and suggestions can provide insights that go beyond what testing alone can uncover. incorporating their input into the development process. Rather than relying solely on extensive internal testing, involving users in the testing process can be highly beneficial. Early user testing, such as beta testing or usability studies, allows for real-world scenarios and user interactions to be observed. This user-centric approach helps identify pain points, usability issues, and unanticipated problems that may not be caught through internal testing alone. Incorporating this feedback early on can greatly enhance the user experience and satisfaction. Unfortunately, I personally witnessed a strong “unbalance” in many software teams. Here's a question for you: Should QA fail for a UI inconsistency? How often should QA fail? Chapter 5. “Users will leave if they encounter a bug!” Research consistently highlights the negative impact of broken functionality on user retention. We have been told many studies show that users are less likely to continue using a product if they encounter frequent bugs, crashes, or errors that disrupt their experience. , 88% of users will abandon an app after just one or two instances of poor performance. These findings emphasize the critical role that functional stability plays in retaining users and building long-term engagement. According to a survey by Qualitest When users encounter broken functionality, it erodes their trust in the product and the development team behind it. Even if the issues are eventually resolved, users may develop a negative perception and be reluctant to return. Users may lose trust in a website or app if they repeatedly experience functional errors or glitches. But… is this still true in 2023? Bugs are everywhere, and we all know . bug-free software may never exist Users may encounter bugs from time to time, and it is important to distinguish between minor bugs and critical functionality issues. Users may be nowadays more forgiving of minor bugs that do not significantly impact their overall experience. In our view, users have learned to accept bugs as inevitable in software development; bugs are part of our daily lives. However, when it comes to that hinders their ability to use the software as intended, users are likely to be less forgiving and may seek alternatives. broken core functionality B2B bugs are more painful (or not?) In B2B scenarios, broken functionality can have severe consequences for users and their businesses. It can result in delayed project timelines, missed deadlines, and even . a $440 million financial loss As for consumer software, business users might become frustrated and angry when encountering bugs preventing them from accomplishing their work. Their loyalty to a software product is closely tied to its reliability and ability to help them succeed in their professional responsibilities. Low reliability should equal higher churn. However, I have learned that's not always the case. Once a whole organization adopts a technology, is it that easy to make the whole company switch to a competitor solution? Unlikely. E-commerce has (more) loyalty challenges. In e-commerce, users have numerous alternatives readily available at their fingertips. As a user, your job-to-be-done is very clear. You need to buy a vacuum cleaner. If the Amazon app crashes, how long before you try the next app in your drawer? Broken functionality or bugs can lead to quickly abandoned shopping carts, permanently decreased customer satisfaction, and lost business opportunities. Chapter 6. Are TDD & QA the only solution? Obviously, no. While tests play a crucial role in identifying and preventing some defects, there are additional measures that can be taken to minimize the impact of bugs on users. Here are a few approaches I have studied: Monitoring and Error Tracking Implementing systems allows for proactive identification and resolution of issues. Real-time monitoring can help detect anomalies, performance issues, and errors, allowing for prompt remediation before they Error tracking enables the capture of error details and helps prioritize bug fixes based on their impact on users. robust monitoring and error tracking impact multiple users. Tools such as , , Bugsnag, and help teams automatically detect coding errors and problematic UX sessions, so teams can Sentry Rollbar Bugpilot proactively address issues. User Feedback and Support provides valuable insights into usability issues, bugs, and areas for improvement. Promptly addressing user-reported issues and providing support demonstrates a commitment to resolving problems and maintaining a positive user experience. Actively encouraging and collecting user feedback Tools such as , , and help teams easily collect feedback from their users. Canny Hotjar Bugpilot Documentation and User Education Clear and comprehensive documentation and user education materials can help users navigate the software effectively and minimize the risk of user-induced errors. Providing resources that explain common issues and troubleshooting steps empowers users to resolve minor problems independently. At Bugpilot, we use a Notion page to keep all our documentation. Easy and free. Conclusion Testing acts as a crucial preventive measure by identifying issues early in the development process. Thorough testing, including unit tests, integration tests, and end-to-end tests, helps - to some extent - catch bugs and ensure the stability and functionality of the software. But over-testing and too strict processes are very likely to damage the company in the long run. However, Therefore, it is equally important to have mitigation strategies in place. By implementing mitigation solutions, software teams can quickly detect and address errors, minimizing their impact on users and swiftly resolving any issues that arise. errors may occasionally slip through the testing net despite our best efforts. Recognizing that , creating an environment that encourages user feedback and provides effective customer support is essential. By actively listening to user reports and promptly addressing their concerns, software teams can maintain a positive relationship with their users and foster trust and loyalty. no software might ever be entirely bug-free tl;dr Don't overtest. You probably don't need 99% unit test coverage. Ship fast. Also published . here

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