Level Up - Webmaster: How To Randomly Redirect Visitors To Different Websites

There is a very simple method using PHP to have visitors automatically redirected to another site.

Why this is useful:
- User clicks "Take me to a random" page. You can finely-tune the random outcome.
- You are doing some A/B testing and want to sent users to different locations to test.
- Or, like me, you want to share your various websites/games, from a single button.

Try clicking
Ex: http://apps.simplyadvanced.net/windows8/redirect

Step 1: Here's all the PHP code that you need:

$urls = array("siteA.com",
              "siteB.com",
              "www.example.com"); $url = $urls[array_rand($urls)]; header("Location: http://$url"); ?>

Step 2: Done

Or, if you want to redirect the visitor after they visit a certain URL on your domain, then simply create an "index.php" file in the public directory that you want users to be redirected from, then the above code is all that you need to put in it.

Try it: Random Windows 8 Games created by me.
Try it: Random Windows Phone Games created by me.

~ Danial Goodwin ~

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Terrible User Experience - There's Only One Major Application I Know That Does This

Perhaps the most terrible example of all user experience (UX) an application/program can give to users, is to shut down the program when the user is in the middle of working. Case study: Windows. I just got auto-updated.

In Windows 7, there is a small window that pops up that says the computer will restart in 15 minutes, in order to install updates. After that message is postponed, it doesn't pop up in the front any more. In my multiple monitor setup, I don't always pay attention to all of them. There is just typically one main monitor I work with. My current work involved having about 20 tabs in a browser open and a few more large RAM-hungry application, so I didn't want to have to re-setup my workspace. So, I was able to postpone the auto-update a few times. But, when I was really into my work on one monitor, the auto-shut-down prompt I assume was ominously counting down on my other monitor, behind everything. In the middle of typing, sudden the document disappears. There goes all the work (if I was working in a program without autosave).

I am a UX designer and have many recommendations to improve this "feature" in Windows 7. I'm glad my biggest recommendation is taken care of in Windows 8: Make the death prompt more visible. Just having that one change would save me from more trouble.

I understand where Microsoft and other companies are coming from. They want to make sure that updates are installed so that users are protected from even worse virus/malware attacks. I'm sure they've done their research to learn that many people unfortunately don't install the updates in a timely manner, if at all. So, in order to protect users from worse troubles, Microsoft has by default decided to be more aggressive in getting the updates installed.
I had to throw in that "by default" in the last sentence because I know there is the option to disable all automatic updates. But, good UX and good customer service wouldn't put the blame on the user/customer. If the user does something "wrong", then it is only because the application allowed the user to do so.

Bonus: Here's a copywriting tip: Never have long chunks of words/paragraphs.

~ Danial Goodwin ~

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Short Search Engine User Analysis (Money In The Bank 3)

Summary: This post describes an interesting analysis of search engine users. I provide a quick insight into the types of users that use Bing search and Google search. (UPDATED: Added Yahoo search results and pictures! soon)

In my blog post yesterday, I had to use the auto-complete feature that search engines provide in order to quickly learn some new perspectives on how society thinks about a certain topic. Though, I figured out that the results weren't society as a whole, but the community of users that use that search engine.

A little background: Search engines want to show the best results to users. One part of how they try to do this is by analyzing the way users use the search engine. Basically, the more times users search for a phrase, the more likely it will appear at the top of the auto-complete suggestions (Yahoo calls this feature "Search assist"). Analyzing a single search engine has been done before, but I in this post I analyze the differences between different search engines.

This answers the question, what type of users use Google/Bing/Yahoo?

The practical uses of knowing the answer to this question mainly lies in ads, or marketing to be more exact. When one purchases Google ads and Bing ads, maybe they shouldn't be using the same copy or text or graphics. The user demographics may be different. This information also helps out the search engine when advertising their product to more users, or adding features for current users.



My search seed for the auto-completion suggestion search was "money in the bank is ".

From a Google search beginning with that phrase, I found:
- "Money in the bank is like toothpaste in the tube"
- "Money in the bank is safe"
- My blog post
- "Money in the bank is stupid"
- "How much money in the bank is insured"
- "Money in the bank is peace of mind"

All of these seem like reasonable perspectives, or at least understandable. When using Chrome's incognito mode, only the last "peace of mind" one shows up.

From a Bing search beginning with that phrase, "money in the bank is " (note the extra space after is), I found:
- "Money in the bank is it m1"
- "Money in the bank in the water"
- "Money in the bank in hot springs ar"

Then I noticed more results when I didn't put the extra space after "is". These results included the ones from above and more:
- "Money in the bank images"
- "Money in the bank injuries"
- "Money in the bank singer"
- "Money in the bank instrumental"

These are very interesting results. The very interesting thing about these results is that it shows what type of people use each search engine! So many things can be said about each search engines' users.
 - Google users appear to be straightforward
 - Bing users appear to be more influenced by media
 - More...


I'm sure there are other excellent phrases to auto-complete-search for also and in a future blog post, I might write about it. So far I have searched:
 - "dog " with no interesting distinguishing characteristics
 - "cat " on the other hand allows Yahoo to stand about from the others
 - "fire" and "fire " are both great. Microsoft stands out in this one, the first four auto-complete suggestions are four Firefox (browser).
 - "safety ". Let's see, here's the first auto-complete suggestion for each search engine: Chrome - "safety not guaranteed", Bing - "safety topics", Yahoo - "safety 1st"
Disclaimer: For these quick searches, I used incognito mode in Google Chrome.


If you think of something I missed, then please share it in the comments!

~ Simply Advanced ~

ps - If you would like to find out more information on how I came upon this topic, then there are two more posts I made before this one, in this "series". [this 1] [that 2]

pps - Pictures!

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