Screenshot from Semantico's Dictionarium app

Semantico’s Dictionarium app is available for download from the app store now (short link at http://bit.ly/dictionarium)

We’re really pleased with how quickly we managed to get this live in the app store. The app was approved on first submission – a testament to our internal QA.

Creating a dictionary has given us the perfect opportunity to refine a number of important concepts we use when developing mobile apps.

Throughout the design process we’ve taken care to optimise the display for both the iPhone and the new iPad devices. Delivering an app for both devices is not only essential for publishers, who don’t want to develop the same content twice, but also for end users who don’t want the complication of downloading different apps in order to access the same content.

We’ve built the app to take us through some of the core concepts that publishers will need when taking their content to mobile devices, whatever the subject matter. The essential functionality of Dictionarium is that of a search engine with an integrated e-content reader. Text with hyperlinks allows the user to navigate through the the content and jump from one concept to another.

Semantico’s bespoke publishing platforms deal with large amounts of complex information: putting together the dictionary has allowed us to create and deliver an app with a large data set behind it of 107,757 headwords and 123,742 definitions.

Data compression and application speed optimisations are essential to create a great end user experience and an app that publishers can be proud of. By compressing the database we’ve halved the size of the app from 105MB to 51MB.

The Dictionary is designed so that the main way users find the information they need is through search. Search functionality is important for all online publications. Users expect to be able to find the information they want through keyword searching at the very least, and there’s been no problem with implementing this in the iPhone / iPad environment.

After a successful project it’s pleasing to have had 2,000 downloads in the first week of the app going live. Take a look at the work we’ve done – and make it 3,000! http://bit.ly/dictionarium

1. Site Copy

Copy has a direct impact on search engine optimisation as it provides the crawlers with meaningful semantic information about the site. The book content of any publishing site will contain excellent copy but marketing and home page material should be carefully considered as this is often where crawlers, users and off-site links find themselves first. The number of keywords per site should be limited to three or four and these should be added to the content in such a way that the content remains natural and readable.

Particular attention should be paid to drafting text for hyperlinks. This is because the words that point to a particular page are heavily weighted by Google when determining keywords for that particular page. Never use phrases like “Click here for our contact form” (for example); instead use words that describe the page you’re linking to by thinking of what a user would search for if they were looking for that page. In our example this might be “Contact us now using our contact form“.

2. Incoming Links

Google rates a pages relevance using an algorithm called PageRank which is calculated based on the number and relevancy of links pointing to the site. The concept is that each link represents a vote of confidence for your site. But the votes are not equal, links from pages with a high PageRank are worth more. The PageRank of any site is shown on the Google Toolbar, which you can download from Google. Wikipedia have a good explanation of the PageRank alogorithm.

3. Google Webmaster tools

Google Webmaster Tools offers a comprehensive selection of tools for configuring a site for improved search results on Google. The main offering is the ability to submit an XML sitemap that improves the crawl across the site making it easier to control what pages are being indexed. The use of XML sitemaps will improve discoverability of the content for any site. In addition to this, is the ability to see when crawls have taken place and when they are next scheduled. This is of particular importance on each content update to ensure that the most recent updates have been picked up. Google Webmaster Tools also provides:

• A top search queries feature, where information about user search queries that have returned pages from your site are shown.
• An interface for quickly finding all links to a site, allowing incoming links to be tracked.
• Keywords and their frequency within the site.
• Internal links.

4. Google Analytics

Google Analytics offers further integration with Google search as the script that enables the tracking of the site provides constant activity feedback back to Google. Google Analytics should be used to determine where users are coming from and where users are landing. This information in itself will not help search ranking and discoverability, but it will provide metrics with which to measure the progress of any search engine optimisation activity. There are other analytics packages, such as Yahoo! Web Analytics (which provides real-time statistics), but Google Analytics has been recommended as it is the leading search provider and integrates well with other Google tools.

4. URL structure

Have a look at many complex publishing sites and you might notice that there are no PageRanks on many of the deeper linked pages within the sites. This is most likely due to Google’s crawlers not reading complex page URLs as these pages are often less meaningfully marked up and are the result of a a query. For more details you can read Google’s explanation of this behaviour.

Many sites can benefit from an overhaul of the URL structure to provide more meaningful and less complex URL structure. Care needs to be be taken in making sure that the original links are still operable and their appearance in search engine results will diminish over time.

5. Error pages

If the user requests an unknown page, return a friendly error message and use the correct HTTP status code. This might sound obvious, but it’s a surprisingly common mistake on publisher platforms. If you don’t return the correct error code (for example “404 Not Found”) then Google will cache dead or bad links on your site, leading to less than optimal search experience for your users. Similarly, link resolution services such as CrossRef can only quality check your DOI metadata if the HTTP codes are used correctly.

Conclusion

In conclusion, a little attention to the copy and structure of your site can pay dividends in terms of search engine rankings and discoverabilty.

If we take the example further, and look at how such an estimate would change over the duration of the journey, we can see that the only time the estimate can be guaranteed as 100% accurate is once the journey is complete – when the estimate is an actual.

The situation is no different in software development and the accuracy of the estimation of software tasks also increases over time. This change in accuracy over time often referred to as the ‘Cone of Uncertainty’.

Cone of Uncertainty

The Cone of Uncertainty shows how an estimate will start with a high degree of uncertainty – either over-estimated or under-estimated – which then improves over time as more is known about the task(s). The diagram shows several common stages within a project and shows how accuracy will be increased as the project progresses.

If, therefore, it is not possible to guarantee the accuracy of an estimate, then another approach is required.

It is reasonable to assume that an estimate for completion of a single task could be bounded by a range of best and worst possible cases. If such a range is further defined as having a most likely completion point, an estimation profile for the task can be demonstrated.

Program Evaluation and Review Technique

The Program Evaluation and Review Technique (PERT) for software estimations requires developers to provide a range of estimates for a task. PERT requests a best (B), likely (L) and worst (W) case for each task with which one can plot a probability curve for the task. The probability curve plots the probability of completion against the completion time.

Task Profile

From the ranged estimate an expected case (E) can be calculated that has a probability of 50%. As can be seen in the graph there are a number of ways of calculating the expected case, based on a weighted average of the best, likely and worst estimates for the task. The weights selected for the expected case should ideally be based on historical data from previous actuals and estimates. In the absence of such historic data, the E=(B+4L+W)/6 equation is the prudent choice.

Another benefit of the ranged estimation approach is that it highlights tasks that have a high risk. These can be seen as tasks with the largest range. Where such tasks are identified action can be taken to further understand their nature and therefore provide a more accurate estimation. This can be done through:

• research and analysis
• prototyping
• additional requirements workshops

Combining multiple tasks

Multiple Task Profiles

As multiple tasks are estimated a number of task probability profiles will be created. The tasks can be combined to produce an overall project profile that describes the full project.

Combining Multiple Tasks

Understanding the project profile is useful but the practicalities of project scheduling and costing dictate that a single figure is produced. As has been demonstrated, completely accurate single estimates are not possible. However, with the application of some basic statistical methods, it is possible to produce estimates at known probability or confidence levels.

The importance of selecting the right confidence level can be seen in the chart below which shows how the confidence level and break-even point for a project define whether the project is likely to be profitable or loss-making.

Project Break-even

Understand that estimates have two dimensions

Effective delivery of projects on time and on budget requires the application of a clear risk management approach throughout the whole project life cycle. The key learning from this approach is that any project estimate is meaningless without an accompanying confidence level. Applying this principle allows the management of both dimensions in project estimation, which in turn improves the identification and mitigation of risks throughout the project life cycle.