Comments on: The IE CSS Bug That Cost Me A Month’s Salary

By: Greg Lambert

Greg Lambert — Tue, 02 Nov 2010 14:08:21 +0000

I am really sorry to hear your news. Unfortunately, I am not surprised. We are working on IE compatibility and we had a real “corker” with a client. We analysed their primary website and found a number of IE8 related compatibility issues.

The customer was surprised as they had not received any complaints. Upon further examination of the issues, we found that the Submit Button on the complaints page did not display under IE8. No wonder the number of complaints were so low. Noone could complain.

And the issue was identical to the issue that you experienced.

By: How A Half-Broken Halloween Promotion Smashed Revenue Records: MicroISV on a Shoestring

Mon, 01 Nov 2010 15:05:33 +0000

[...] I did a bit of extra work getting the Halloween promotion to work this year, and also automating/systemizing so that I’ll be able to exploit similar opportunities without needing to take time off to do custom coding. Some parts of the strategy worked very, very well. Other parts lagged expectations. And, naturally, I managed to make a critical CSS error and cost myself a few thousand dollars in sales… again. [...]

By: Dashboard Design For Metrics-savvy Software Companies: MicroISV on a Shoestring

Dashboard Design For Metrics-savvy Software Companies: MicroISV on a Shoestring — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 16:09:10 +0000

[...] Logins Today / This Week: This is my “one glance health check” for the business. I have a rough idea of what these numbers should be. If they go down far below that, I have broken the login button and need to fix it immediately. If they go high above that, it must be Halloween. If they stay flat I might have broken the login button close to Halloween. [...]

By: Phil Newton

Phil Newton — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 02:56:53 +0000

I made a similar mistake to this that only just fixed. I made a minor change to my site that broken a download form. After a few days of 0 conversions, I checked it out and fixed the problem. I’m still smacking my head.

By: Segementing Reports In Google Analytics to Gain Valuable Insights | Online Sales

Mon, 02 Nov 2009 16:40:47 +0000

[...] recently published The IE CSS Bug Which Cost Me A Month’s Salary and in it details a problem in which users in MS Internet Explorer 6 & 7 were not seeing the [...]

By: Hedgie

Hedgie — Sun, 01 Nov 2009 15:08:54 +0000

Uhm… I just thought I’d let you know: I’m STILL not seeing a sign-up button!

I’m using Firefox on Debian Linux in high-contrast mode (admittingly not your target users’ platform). However, a simple () would never cause any problems on any platforms!

By: Vivek M

Vivek M — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 15:57:53 +0000

Hey Patrick,

We have been working on Automated testing framework called Tellurium. It sits on top of Selenium but overcomes some of the problems found in Selenium… we can write some test scripts using Tellurium for you to do some automated testing… let us know

Thanks,
Vivek M

By: PhiLho

PhiLho — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 14:19:33 +0000

Ouch!
What is amusing is to see some comments telling you that you should test in various browsers (at least, some point to useful resources). Obviously, you already learned your lesson, and you are kind enough to share this experience: most Web designers know it already, but such reminder is useful.
Your designer knew it, actually, errare humanum est…

Thanks for the detailed analysis.

By: Mian Farhan

Mian Farhan — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 11:30:22 +0000

Thank you for the very informative post.

By: Nathan Wallace

Nathan Wallace — Sat, 24 Oct 2009 21:50:16 +0000

Another great, honest and highly informative blog post from someone who is clearly a leading micro-entrepreneur. Thanks!

It was disappointing to see the “how could you?” type comments above. All developers & site owners make this mistake at some point, but only the great ones have the discipline, insight and business skill to calculate the impact as you have done.

I learn something from everyone of your blog posts and only hope that I can do half as much right as you do in your business.