Testing...Testing...

I was recently interviewed for an article on lonelybrand.com about Facebook Optimization for mobile platforms, something I'm very passionate about.  One of the things I said was:

Mark Edwards, Managing General Partner at Mark Edwards Worldwide concurs, “I believe in testing, and then testing again, so what I do for most of my Facebook posts is post them so that I can only see them before they go live for the public. Then I look at them on a laptop computer, desktop, Android phone, iPhone, iPad, and two Android tablets. If I can’t see the post the way I want it to look on all those devices, I fix it and go through the same proof. If it looks right, I delete the test post and let the real post go when its time to go live. Nothing beats testing, and while this takes a little time, it makes for the best quality posts possible.”

I live by that mantra because nothing is worse for a marketer than working like crazy on a campaign and then having people not be able to see it.  Just this morning, I found a perfect example of that problem.  I got a well produced e-mail from The Cheesecake Factory saying I could win up to $250 in gift cards in their "Cheesecake Madness" promotion on Facebook.  Now, I'm not one to turn down free cheesecake (although I personally prefer Eli's Cheesecake from Chicago) so I gave the link in the e-mail a click and found myself on the contest page.  And this is what I saw for about five minutes.

THE EVIL SPINNING "LOADING" CIRCLE.  I use Chrome as my main browser, and for whatever reason, this contest page doesn't play well with Chrome.  The kids on the Interwebz call that a FAIL.

I don't know if the good people at the Cheesecake Factory or Socialtyze (who is credited with designing the page) did the right amount of testing, if my browser is somehow blocking the contest page (which it shouldn't as I have it set to let just about everything short of a virus or launch code load) or what the problem was. All I know is that as a consumer, I couldn't play the game and I'm kind of bummed.

Was this a testing problem?  Maybe.  Was it avoidable? Probably.  Would very thorough testing on different browsers, platforms, OS's, and devices have prevented the user experience I had?  Most likely.

I'll say what those who work with Mark Edwards Worldwide have heard me say over and over, TEST AND TEST AGAIN.  It's well worth the time to make sure what you post, especially on platforms you don't control like Facebook, render and work the way you want them to.

By the way, I just checked the page in the screenshot above.  The little "loading" circle is still spinning.  Ugh.

Just TRY To Listen To A Radio Station Stream Online

Over the weekend, I tried to listen several times to a very major market radio station owned by a very large multimedia company via their online stream, and I thought my ears would start bleeding.  It was a complete nightmare.

I don't want to mention the station or owner because they would be truly embarrassed to know that their very special programming over the weekend was almost unlistenable if you were trying to listen online as I was in St. Louis.  This company claims to have a "streaming strategy", but by listening to their big broadcast from this very major market, it's clear that whatever they dream of delivering simply isn't happening.

The music content and high powered Air Personalities sounded GREAT.  Its when the breaks came that things imploded.  During the eight or nine minute commercial breaks, I heard commercials start and then get cut off, local commercials begin and then get replaced by streaming spots that ran over and into the net commercial, periods of dead air, the same spots up to four times in one break, and other atrocities that are guaranteed to send many listeners away from the stream.

And let's not even talk about how the stream took up a tab in my browser instead of opening in a new window, so I had to make sure I didn't close it by mistake.  And I NEVER went to that tab to look at the ads the company placed on the page for my viewing pleasure.

I had the same awful experience on my Android phone, where I went to this major multimedia company's app to listen but heard the same brutally bad commercial breaks.

NOTE TO BROADCASTERS:  The future is mobile.  The future is streaming, not those big towers on the Empire State Building or in the middle of cornfields.  If you want to compete with people like Pandora, who know how to run short, smooth breaks, you've got to pay attention to what goes out on the stream during your local breaks.

Please don't send your listeners to the Emergency Room with bleeding ears from poorly programmed streaming breaks.  Thankyouverymuch.

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