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We had a hotpoint washing machine that just wouldn't die. It had to be 20 years old and used daily. In the end we replaced it with a modern Bosch as we thought it was only a matter of time as it was making dodgy noises.

But now the Bosch after about 3 years of use is on the way out  I've also heard things are now engineered to fail which is a sad reflection on progress in the ever more weird world we live in...

It's funny, they all seem to keep swapping places. I'm a long time user of Chrome, and because of bookmarks and settings I'm loathe to move elsewhere. But it has it's moments and sometimes runs like a dog. It certainly doesn't like too many plugins and some fare worse than others. Norton seems to kill it for some reason.

Always despised Microsoft browsers as slow and clunky, but the Win 10 Edge browser is actually very fast and do use it sometimes. Use FF for testing and Opera but both are unremarkable and FF can be dog slow loading

So chrome for me until it crashes then maybe edge 

Hi Andy, sorry been a bit quiet recently, busy as a mad man!

Cannot imagine life with Google Analytics, used it ever since it was launched and has to be one of the best products ever, plus it's free!

Gives you buckets of data which can be overwhelming.  So focus on what you need, but it will paint a picture of your site, activity, bottlenecks, show problems etc.

Sales are simply conversions which you set up as goals, eg:

If you want to see how to set up conversions, goals etc, then go to the help option. Select help and choose your topic.

Their help topics are much better these days.

There are tons of resources out there to better interpret the data and identify the issues. A GA master is www.kaushik.net/avinash/ learned loads from him, particularly setting up filters and disregarding irrelevant data. 

But in a nut shell, high bounce rate is bad, which will point to either low page speed (users bored) or poor UX (low quality page or irrelevant to their query). Pages per session needs to be around the 3+ mark and average session duration wants to be over the minute mark. If people bounce away after a few seconds then your pages don't do it for people, or you have untargeted unwanted traffic.

Sales are obvious, track the checkout process. But once set up analyse abandonment, then look to see why. If you have a high abandon rate once they are in your sales funnel, ask yourself why? Try and look with a visitors eyes, or ask someone else to look for you. Be critical and fix the issues.

The average conversion rate for an eCommerce site is 2-3% which is shockingly low, but if you are lower then you have problems that need addressing. Analytics tells you all this and more, making it probably the most powerful tool in your armoury. 

I genuinely don't understand anyone who runs a revenue generating website but doesn't utilise analytics. There is endless free advice and courses out there, hoover it up and use it to your advantage  An increase by 1% in conversions can see a very healthy return.

SEO is good, but make sure your SEO guys have clear objectives. All traffic isn't made equal. You want targeted traffic, the stuff that stands a chance of converting. Anything else is vanity traffic and doesn't pay the bills.

It may well be that a targeted Facebook campaign for example will send a fraction of the traffic you get via search, but converts 500% more because it is highly targeted. Again analytics will tell you this and track social traffic and conversions, including assisted conversions, ie visited your site, didn't buy, went to your FB page, saw what they liked, then went back to your site and completed a sale.

Keep your options open and respond to your data 

This very nearly got me, just on the verge to click the link before my common sense autopilot kicked in 

The link obviously goes to mr-dodgy-scammer-website.com

First glance though, looks quite good. Only when you read it you get a sense of the Country of origin 

Thanks to Jan 

Originally Posted by Rebecca (PayforPrecision)

“Depends if the mate is a qualified mechanic surely? ”

Suppose it will help, but it's nicer having the car fixed undercover in a garage with access to the proper tools, rather than Bob with his Swiss army knife. Plus it's the only time the car gets a clean 

Originally Posted by Rebecca (PayforPrecision)

“Still no fix? Must be a tricky one, it sounds very irritating. Much like my laptop no longer going into sleep mode after Windows 8. ”

Well not so much fixed, but there is a work around to stop it from happening, revert to an earlier build. Just applied it, took a couple of minutes to download and install.

For anyone who has the same problem:

Outlook known issues in the Oct 2017 updates

ISSUE

Outlook 2016 On Premise users are prompted for credentials when opening email attachments. This occurs after updating to Current Channel build 16.0.8431.2079.

STATUS: WORKAROUND

Do the following to revert to an earlier build:

Open a command prompt window.

At the command prompt, run the following commands:

cd %programfiles%Common FilesMicrosoft SharedClickToRunofficec2rclient.exe /update user updatetoversion=16.0.8326.2107

Hubby will know best because us hubbies do  I'm more of the old adage, you get what you pay for.

Years ago in my IBM days when I could still spell techie, there were a number of free AV products that were left wanting. A popular free one used to be AVG which regularly got trounced and caused all sorts of problems.

No doubt it's all tickety boo now, but if I have a choice of taking my car to a garage versus my mate doing it for free, I'll always pay for a professional service 

Bahh humbug, I hate Halloween

But spent the night trudging round after 2 very excited youngsters dressed as witches filling their buckets with enough sweets to last until next Halloween.

Definitely not as many people playing this year as last year. Strict rules for the kids, they only knock on doors where the house is obviously taking part, and are polite and courteous, particularly to older folk and take the time to talk to them.

But watched groups of "older" kids, mid secondary school stampeding round in hyper mode which is what puts me off. I think there should be a commonsense cut off age. It's for little ones, not snotty youths terrorizing neighborhoods. 

I think austerity and Brexit will define this decade as one of the most turbulent and economically miserable in history. It  has turned politics on it's head and left us all in state of flux and chaos. All because one of the most important decisions in our history was treated with a circus mentality and left to us common folk to choose, along with a poor grasp of the complexities or realities about what we were voting about. 

Roll on 2020 and at least we'll know what direction the UK is going, ie economic armageddon  or euphoric phoenix out of the ashes 

My view on "democracy" has been tarnished over the last couple of years and I'm now left wondering if the political system we currently rely on is actually fit for purpose...