Browser usage so far in 2012

Posted on April 20, 2012 by

Continuing the series on browser stats from nzpost.co.nz, here’s the first  installment for 2012. I’ll do this more or less quarterly this year, as a few month’s worth of data makes trends more visible, and we’re seeing some definite trends emerge.

You need to know:

  • these stats are rounded from Google Analytics for the site nzpost.co.nz
  • all volumes in charts are percentages
  • let us know what else we can share

Versions of Internet Explorer (% visits)

IE9 has roared ahead of IE7, and IE8 has dropped for the first time in almost a year.

Browsers

Internet Explorer’s decline has stopped and share remains stable at about 60%. The interesting part of this chart is the battle between Firefox and Chrome. Chrome’s growth has placed it next to Firefox in the popularity stakes.

Operating systems

Windows is predictably popular.

Versions of Windows

7′s rate of gain on XP has eased for the time being.

Mobile devices visiting the full nzpost.co.nz

iOS again dominates with 80% of the share. There’s a general trend toward an increase in Android, but it’s not getting the share of the market that I anticipated it would 12 months ago.

Mobile devices visiting m.nzpost.co.nz

The mobile site is currently only lightly used, in the last 30 days we had just over 3000 visitors. The low sample size is therefore prone to seemingly random changes which are evident from the chart. iPod and iPad again swap rank, and we see quite large shifts in iOS and Android from month to month.

In December we began to see Windows Phone appear on the chart, and while we can’t draw too many conclusions from this small sample size it looks apparent that Windows Phone well and truly has a foot in the door.

Let us know if you’d like us to provide other information, and as always, we welcome your feedback.

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Saving time and tedium with automated testing

Posted on April 3, 2012 by

Background for www.nzpost.co.nz

We are adding more moving parts to the New Zealand Post web and mobile sites all the time. Each time we make a code release, regression testing is critical to ensuring that none of the existing site functionality has been inadvertently broken. Twelve months ago we had no automated testing, and the effort to regression test site was around 2-3 person days per release.

Our current situation

During 2011, we have put a lot of effort into the creation and maintenance of automated tests. By automating much of the testing, that effort has been cut to around 3 hours per release, completely revolutionising our flexibility, responsiveness and ability to deliver.

Given that we release fortnightly (and would like to increase the frequency even more!), this automation also represents a major saving in time and resource. We now have in excess of 300 automated tests that run for every release. This is supplemented by functional testing and visual checks of the site to ensure that styles are OK.

Technology used

We currently use Selenuim IDE and Firefox 10. The first year has been very much a setting-up process, and in the coming months we would like to upgrade the version of Firefox and increase the number of browsers covered.

Continuous Integration Testing

In addition to the tests we run for each fortnightly code release, we have also set up a Continuous Integration Testing (CIT) environment, over which around 250 continuous automated tests run several times a day. This environment is a stable copy of our development environment, and allows us to diagnose problems caused in the development process – before the code even hits UAT.

More to come…

I’ll be sharing more of our experiences and learnings in future issues.

See it in action

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Save your credit card for easier purchasing

Posted on March 15, 2012 by

You can now a store a credit card for faster and easier ordering. We don’t even keep your card number – this is handled by our PCI compliant payment gateway who take care of this (securely) for us. This feature is available to anyone who is logged in.

Here’s a preview of what to expect. Notice the “store this credit card for future orders” checkbox below the card details fields.

When you return to purchase again this is what you’ll see:

You can manage your stored cards from your profile page.

We’re always keen to hear your feedback on what we’re doing, so don’t be shy.

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Latest release highlights: Rate Finder, re-ordering, and Prezzy Cards

Posted on March 2, 2012 by

Our March 1 release to nzpost.co.nz was a biggie and with it come some important changes.

Find a parcel rate for sending within NZ

Back in November we released a beta of the domestic Rate Finder which had many new features and a better user experience. Yesterday we turned off the old Rate Finder, and the Beta became the new Rate Finder.

We felt just a little nervous as the domestic Rate Finder is one of the most used parts of the site, and we knew that despite the many improvements some customers weren’t going to like the change.

During the beta we received a lot of feedback which we acted on to make it as good as we can. Some of the feedback included:

  • entering parcel dimensions in centimetres not millimetres was the overwhelmingly preferred
  • similarly with weight – far more of those who responded to our survey think in kilograms rather than grams
  • adding common items: these are like a template for size and weight so you don’t have to enter all the values yourself. It’s especially useful if you don’t have a ruler handy
  • the sending from and sending to fields were changed to include a huge range of New Zealand addresses instead of the shortlist of towns on the old Rate Finder. We’ve had feedback from a customers as far away as the Chatham Islands who appreciate at last having their location in the Rate Finder
  • once a result was displayed, in order to tweak it some customers had to reenter all  sending information (it depended on the browser they were using). This was not the experience we wanted anyone to have. The parcel criteria can now be changed on the results page:

Things that you told us you didn’t like that we still need to work on are:
  • including CourierPost rates (although some Ready to Go Courier products are in the results)
  • the results are divided into two tabs – “postage only” and “postage included”. Some folks don’t see the postage included tab  - we need to make this work better for everyone
The sending to and from address predictive typeahead is very flexible and accepts postcodes, towns or cities, suburbs, and full street addresses, whereas the old dropdown list had a small selection of towns. 

We haven’t stopped working on the Rate Finder – we know we still have plenty to do. You’ll continue to see many improvements based on your feedback, you can leave feedback on the Rate Finder here.

Re-order previous purchases

Orders you’ve made in the past can now be re-ordered with one click (if you’re logged in). This doesn’t yet apply to Prezzy Card orders or printed postage, although we’ll add these soon. Log in and visit your account page to use this.

Activation codes on Prezzy Cards

In addition to adding a larger range of cards you can set an activation code for your cards, making it much more secure.

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“How big is that?” versus augmented reality

Posted on January 27, 2012 by

An issue we often face as a postal organisation is communicating to our customers what can fit in our boxes and bags. Some folks work in cm, others in mm, and still others in inches. On top of that if you don’t have a ruler handy it gets tricky to know exactly how long a measurement actually is.

We’ve taken a number of approaches to this problem (see the mobile version of our Rate Finder m.nzpost.co.nz/r/nz), but one of the most intriguing was the exploration of how augmented reality could help our customers select packaging, and the result was a rapidly built prototype which we’ve dubbed Smart Pack.

You’ll need Flash (sorry about that) and a printer to play with this. If this prototype is wildly successful we’ll iterate on it. Remember, it’s very much in beta, and your results may vary. Try it now and as always, tell us what you think.

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We’re hiring!

Posted on January 19, 2012 by

Happy new year gentle reader! Do you want a cool job in a really great team? We’re looking for a front end web developer to join the New Zealand Post Online Team.

We need a passionate and knowledgeable bod who is an HTML, CSS and Javascript aficionado. We’re looking for a stickler for standards and accessibility who has an eye for detail and exhibits streaks of perfectionism to work with our designer and back end developers.

We are a small and dedicated team managing and building a number of websites and online services including www.nzpost.co.nz which gets over 1.5 million visits per month, and m.nzpost.co.nz. We take an agile approach and have a track record for getting things done. You can see some of the fruits of our labours on this blog.

Interested? The full job description is here. Please apply online at www.nzpost.co.nz/jobs. For further information please call Jo Attewell on 04 4964258.

Applications close: Wednesday 25th January 2012

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Merry Christmas!

Posted on December 23, 2011 by

It’s been a huuuge year for the Online Team at New Zealand Post, a few of the highlights from 2011 include:

  • released beta versions of all the most popular online tools and calculators
  • linking of Trade Me accounts to New Zealand Post online accounts to make Tracking more powerful and easier for online traders - link to your Trade Me account and name items based on your auctions, and easily share the auction’s tracking number with the buyer/seller
  • introduction of online postage printing
  • a completely revamped mobile web site
  • registering on the site went from a long and tedious form of doom to a three field breeze, and online registrations went through the roof as a result
  • we also added many features that make Tracking much easier to use if you are logged in. These include remembering previous tracking results, adding a parcel name to a tracking number, and sharing tracking details via email. If you regularly track parcels with us and you don’t have a log in, register and give it a go
  • tracking notifications – if you have a log in we email you when your parcel’s tracking status changes
  • continued development of our Twitterbot
  • continued development of our iPhone App
  • piles of customer feedback! This is perhaps the most exciting thing for us, learning something about our customers every single day – best of all in many cases we have the opportunity to make things better as a result of the feedback.

So, as we log off for a few days and enjoy a break, we wish you all a very merry Christmas. Have a happy and safe Christmas and a prosperous New Year! We look forward to bringing you many new and exciting developments in 2012.

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