There are tons of presentations and video guides on the Web.
But sometimes what you really need is a printable cheat sheet to hang on the wall.

For XML and XSL/XPath related information we can use free reference cards by Mulberry Technologies.

Found a cool tool today called Website Grader. Website Grader by HubSpot is an SEO tool that helps you diagnose how well your website doing in terms of SEO, social media, and traffic.

I ran Website Grader for QTT...


Some interesting notes from the analysis report:

• The blog scored low due to a low volume of incoming traffic (links, tweets, etc...).


• The readability level is "Primary / Elementary School". That's exactly where we want it.


• We are missing metadata. (I should probably add that...)


• Interior pages are missing descriptions as well. (Who the heck is the admin for this site? Oh wait....)


• I learned something really interesting about domain expiration. (I had no idea.)

(click for full image)

All said and done, a very helpful little tool. I ended up running a couple other websites I have as well. Needless to say, the feedback was consistent. I make all the same mistakes with each site. Guess I need to renew some domains and update some metadata this weekend.

Stella is a handy web application testing tool developed by Solutious Inc, a small software company based in Montreal. Stella is a very lightweight Ruby test tool for functional and performance testing. Like JMeter, Stella doesn't simulate a browser; it generates HTTP requests and parses the responses. Currently, Stella provides support for automatic parsing of HTML, XML, XHTML, YAML and JSON.

A few months ago, I wrote an introductory article on Stella for SearchSoftwareQuality.com - you can find it here.

Today's tip comes via Tim Koopmans. Tim recently posted on landing page load time and how tools like BrowserMob can help. Based on his post, I went over and took a look at BrowserMob and ran a couple of tests on my personal website. There were a couple of interesting things I found in the free tool they provide:

• They provide test results from four locations: Washington DC, Dublin, San Fransisco, and Dallas.


• They provide historical results across test runs:


• They provide a detailed breakdown of load times by object, by download site:

Based on these detailed results, I was even able to find out that I have a couple of 404's showing up in my current WordPress theme. I rather like the simple interface, and I find tools like this can be quite helpful when taking an initial look at a site's load time and where that time is going.

I've just spent a few minutes playing around with fivesecondtest. It's a bit addictive. It's an online tool for usability testing. From the site:

People use five second test to locate calls to action, optimize landing pages, and run A/B tests. You can use them for whatever you like.

You can either submit content for testing, or you can be a tester. There are two test scenarios: five second memory test and five second click test. With the memory test, you see an image for five seconds and then you're asked to list five things you remember. With the click test, you're asked to click on things you notice in five seconds, then describe what they are.

The memory test is hard. Five seconds is a lot of time, and I noticed the following patterns with my testing:

• The more text a site had, the less I remembered


• The more detailed the graphics the site had, the less I remembered


• The larger the images, the less I remembered


• The more correlated the logo and site look and feel were to the product, the more I remembered


• The less fancy the font, the more I remembered


• The fewer headings the site had, the more I remembered

The click test was much easier, and for me, more fun. I noticed the following:

• I clicked on contact information when it was there


• I clicked on headings when they were there


• I clicked on social media links when they were there


• I clicked on forms (submit a question, etc...) when they were there


• I clicked on user ratings when they were there

I like the idea of using something like this to gauge if a call to action is effective. I also suspect it can help you easily determine if your site might be too busy. I know I froze up on the more complex sites. I both couldn't remember anything and I couldn't focus on anything long enough to click on it before time expired. It became apparent to me what types of designs "worked" for me.

If you need some simple usability feedback, give it a try. If you're a tester and just want something fun to practice on, I found this a nice short diversion. I suspect I'll check back from time to time to test other designs.