Philosophy

Any web monkey can build a site, even a dynamic site with cookie-based login sessions, search functionality etc. However, at Quirk, we know that you need to look a little further to build a fantastic and functional site, and that's exactly what we do.

This section outlines many of the features that we build into every website, and the services we can offer as a result of our technology platform.

Search-friendly Sessions

The use of sessions in a web application is necessary in all but the most trivial applications. Normally, sessions are maintained by either cookies, or, if cookies are unsupported, by URL rewriting. Search engine spiders browse through the internet, indexing and archiving as they go. These spiders do not support cookies as a rule, and thus most competent websites will attempt URL rewriting to maintain the session.

The problem with URL rewriting is that it introduces search engine unfriendly URLs, creating a moving target for the spider which can cause an entire site to be un-spiderable and unendurable beyond the first page. In order to solve this problem, Quirk has developed technology to detect search engine robots and avoid rewriting URLs for them, a technique recognised and accepted by Google and other major search engines, although rarely applied.

URL Rewriting

Closely linked to this is Quirk's technology to ensure that important URLs in your site are easily indexable by the search engines. Any URL that contains a question mark (?) character is suspect and likely to be ignored by common robots. However, the question mark is a critical part of the way websites work, relating to the HTTP protocol - sites cannot be dynamic without them.

Quirk's solution in this is to present search-friendly URLs to the world (without question marks), rewriting them on the server to their standard format suitable for use in querying dynamic content.

In this way http://www.xyz.com/product.q?id=1 can look like http://www.xyz.com/viewproduct/product - easily indexable, and meaning that your product information is dynamic and searchable.

Split Testing

There are a large number of factors, from the overall design and size of the fonts used, down to the use a button or text link in your call to action. Given the choice between two or three options, it is generally impossible to know beforehand which option will produce the best results. Even expert web and user interface designers agree that testing is the only way to get any certainty.

For this testing to be correct, all available options must be tested simultaneously. Given three options to choose between, visitors must be divided equally into thirds for the duration of the test, and each third presented with one of the three. Using Quirk's tracking software, impressions and clicks are then tracked to the conversion point to determine which of the three options is best at turning visitors into customers.

By reapplying this technique to different elements, you can refine and refractor your site to an efficient marketing tool, tuned to the needs of your clients. Even a difference of a few percent can mean a significant increase in returns.

Interactions with Referrer Information

All good web stats software captures and presents information on how a visitor reached your site, whether from a search engine, an affiliate or another linked site. This information, called Referrer data, is critical to understanding how visitors find you, an understanding which can be further used increase your visibility.

The problem with web stats software is that it is presented as an average after the fact - the actual visitor has generally long gone by the time the data is viewed, and if they leave their details the referrer information is unconnected to it.

Quirk has developed technology to capture the Referrer data as soon as a visitor arrives at your site, and to present this information at the first relevant point in the conversion cycle - typically when they fill out a contact or booking form. You then have the Referrer data presented to you along with the visitors' details, immediately accessible and useful in responding to the inquiry.

GZIP Compression

By default, all the websites that are built by Quirk support compression using GZIP. This speeds up the time to download the site, resulting in a better user experience.

Interaction Archival and Receipts

Every time a contact, booking or similar form is filled out; the information entered is archived in your MyQuirk portal. This acts as a central repository and safe storage for this critical data, ensuring that you will always be able to refer back to the point of contact.

Additionally, each interaction sent on to you and others via email contains technology to record when it was first viewed, and by whom - a useful audit trail.

Data Caching

A website is a product that must serve many of your customers simultaneously, without any kind of conflict or slowdown. As the number of visitors increases, the need for performance becomes greater, and scalability becomes critical. This issue is further compounded by the setup of most hosting services, where multiple websites are hosted on a single machine.

To alleviate these performance issues, Quirk hand-tunes every site to ensure that often-reused data is cached, reducing the amount of database activity and improving the performance. This results in quicker browsing for your visitors and a better user experience generally.

Translation Support

Quirk has the technology to place the textual content of your site into a separate file, which can be translated into any language to support visitors across the world. Once this has been done once, it is relatively simple and cost-effective to provide support for more languages as the need arises.

Scheduling Support

Want to send out a greeting when one of your registered customers has a birthday? Quirk supports all kinds of scheduling of this nature, improving the contact between you and your customer without burden on your current systems.

Web Analytics

With Google Analytics, award-winning web analytics software, you will finally ensure that you are able to understand your visitor behaviour in relation to your online strategy. It shows you campaigns, site navigation patterns, PPC, SEO and ROI stats instantly.