There’s a lot of ways to test and benchmark your website, but few are as fun as Nibbler. And it’s free!

What does Nibbler do?

Nibbler will go through 5 pages of which ever site you specify and test them on a range of relevant criteria. Once it’s finished you’ll get a nice, visual report – scoring on each criteria and giving you an overall score. The report includes tips and ideas on improving your score – which should also improve your overall web presence.

What criteria does it test?

Here’s a list of what they test on, in no particular order:

Grain of Salt

Nibbler is not meant to be the holy grail of website testing, so take the results you get only as a suggestion, or starting point. Some of the results you simply can’t fix. For example, when testing spigotdesign.com I get errors on things like Facebook Sharing, Incoming links, and Social media. I don’t spend enough time on Facebook to get anyone to like this site – so for me it’s nothing to worry about.

If you get errors with Semantic HTML, or URL format, then you’ve definitely got something to work on.

Beyond Nibbler

For those who desire more robust, professional website testing there’s SiteRay. It’s made by the same folks who make Nibbler and has the same easy to use testing tools but goes quite a bit farther. You can even give it a test drive for free.

If you enjoy tinkering with your website in the hopes of making it ‘better’ – Nibbler is a fun way to do it. At the very least it’ll be a great reminder to add metadata to each and every post.

Spigot Design

Website creator favors simple, clean & modern

By ANDREW KIRK Of the Record staff

Language purists may not appreciate that “Googling” is now an accepted verb, but the reality is that Google and similar search engines are the primary means many people use to find things they want or need.

Website designer Bryan Hoffman understands that, and believes it makes him the right choice for small to medium-sized companies in Park City hoping to get noticed.

A website has many functions, but getting noticed and indexed on Google is the primary one for many businesses, he said. Hoffman’s company, Spigot Design, focuses on creating sites with the right characteristics to be prominently featured as a result of Internet searches.

Spigot Design began in late 2007 and is run by the husband-and-wife team of Bryan and Kari Moe-Hoffman. They moved to Park City from Minneapolis for the outdoor lifestyle, he said, but it’s also the perfect sized community to build a reputation for quality and reliability.

“I don’t know that I could run a business like mine in a big city,” he said. “Here, people are so outgoing, you get to know others pretty easily. Word of mouth spreads faster here.”

Although analysts say the end of the recession is not yet in sight, Hoffman said his call volume is actually picking up. Advertising is one of the first areas to recover when financial situations improve, and a website is not only essential for that, but does far more, he said.

“A website to me is more than advertising. It’s a 24-hour showcase of your business. People realize that,” he added.

To grab people’s attention, many sites use Flash to create busy, fast movement. Spigot Design does not. Using Flash can make it difficult for search engines to identify the key terms listed in a site that result in connections between sites and search queries, he said.

Hoffman is careful to not interfere with that identification process, but also creates features that will enhance the probability of being found – like blogs.

“You don’t need to call them that. On my site I call mine a notebook. But it’s a great place to keep your site updated with fresh content. Every time it’s updated, it’s an opportunity for owners to add key words their clients will be looking for,” he explained.

Hoffman describes his style as clean and easy to use. As website building gets more complicated, it’s increasingly important to make a site user- friendly. Business owners should be able to update information without difficulty.

He also prides himself on meeting deadlines and returning calls promptly. That’s expected in the business world, he said, but sometimes small contractors like himself take that for granted. The world of design is changing so fast that no schools teach what he’s currently doing.

That specialization is no reason to neglect customer service, he said.

“That’s super important to me,” he said.

Two working sites Hoffman is proud of are chiropracticworksofparkcity.com and ParkCityArchitect.com.

“They took pride in providing personal service and added a creative edge that as a business tool, continues to garner a highly effective web presence for my business. Our site continues to maintain a top search listing presence. It was a pleasure working with them and I highly recommend them to other local business owners,” said Bradley Mimlitz, president of Park City Architecture.

Hoffman is currently working on a new site for the Park City Museum. Emily Beeson with the museum said he’s been great to work with.

“He’s very clear, very artistic. Gave us exactly what we were looking for,” she said. “He does clean design and it goes along with whole redesign that we’re doing.”

Spigot Design

Checking the stats for spigotdesign.com today revealed that less than 10% of the visitors here are using Internet Explorer 6. This is great news!

This means we can now officially drop support for this outdated browser, at least on this site. Now that I’ve reached the vaunted 10%, and with newer browsers continuing to improve rendering consistency and support for standards based techniques, continuing to support an aged browser simply doesn’t make sense.

I’ve come to this decision with hesitation, and also relief. I hesitate because I pride myself on designing websites with accessibility and usability in mind. Dropping support for any percentage of users doesn’t jibe with those ideals. I’ve continued on in this decision because I’m confident that while I’m ostensibly ‘dropping support’ for IE6, users of that browser will not notice a difference in how this site looks and functions than it did yesterday. Freedom and relief are what I feel when I realize that I will not have to spend countless future hours, at least when working on this site, on supporting a browser that doesn’t support me.

What does this mean to you?

For most of you it means absolutely nothing. For the 90% of you that are viewing this site on a modern browser (including Internet Explorer 7) – spigotdesign.com supports you. For the rest of you – you don’t have much to worry about either. ‘Dropping support’ sounds so harsh and violent, but I’m really just trying to make a point. I won’t be pulling out my .png fix support, nor will I take out my IE6 specific stylesheet. In fact, you won’t notice any difference from my previous ‘IE6 support’ days. In the future, however, I will not be going out of my way to make sure this site looks as good on IE6 as it does on any other modern browser.

Of course, I will continue to support IE6 for all of my existing and future clients sites. 10% is still a large enough portion of visitors on any site. Completely leaving them in the dark would be counter to our philosophy of building sites that are as usable as possible for as many users as possible.

Some helpful links

Get yourself a ‘modern’ browser

• Firefox
• Safari
• Opera
• Google Chrome (Windows only)

Join in on the IE6 bash

• Facebook Uninstall IE6 Day
• 37signals phases out IE6 support
• Apple’s MobileMe drops support for IE6
• LessEverything drops support (Good explanation on why they’re doing it)

Counterpoints of view

• Stop the Hate – IE6 Isn’t So Bad!
• Actually had a hard time finding any more… sorry.

No related posts.

Spigot Design