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We’re pleased to announce that access to all Silktide AI features is no longer limited to a given number of requests.

All customers now have unlimited number* of credits for the following AI features:

• Ask AI Ask AI for help solving a problem with a specific webpage
• Improve UX Ask AI for help improving the User Experience of a specific webpage

Learn what AI can do for your website

Check our our recent webinar series on AI:

How AI will revolutionize accessibility – Silktide

How AI is transforming web design – Silktide

How AI will revolutionize web governance – Silktide

The small print

*Use of all Silktide AI features is subject to fair use. If we detect any abusive use of AI, we reserve the right to limit or discontinue access to it at our discretion.

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We’re delighted to announce that as of today, all customers can use the Silktide platform in any of the following languages.

• English (US)
• English (UK)
• Spanish
• German
• French
• Canadian French
• Italian
• Norwegian (Bokmål)
• Swedish
• Danish
• Dutch
• Finnish
• Japanese

You can access these languages inside your account, by clicking on your user menu, and clicking Settings. Or you can ask your Silktide contact to update the default language for your whole account.

A radical new approach to translation

It is usually considered best practice not to translate your software too early, as doing so slows down product development. After translation, every feature you release requires more testing, translation, and cost.

This wasn’t acceptable to us. Silktide is still in the early phase of our product vision. So we needed a way to support more languages without development being slowed down.

To do this, we pioneered the use of a new AI-augmented translation framework.

By leveraging the power of modern LLMs (Large Language Models), Silktide has been able to automate the production of high quality translations. We can release new features, and have AI-generated translations immediately available at launch, without introducing any delays.

Crucially though, we still keep humans in the loop. Our staff and our community can review and improve our translations in real time – without even needing to deploy a new release of our software.

How this is revolutionary

Traditional machine translations are poor. Normally, relying on automated translation would result in an unacceptably poor experience.

But with LLMs, machine translation has advanced dramatically. A key part of our new design was to embed our translatable text with context, such as “The following text is for buttons. Buttons should be short, and be expressed consistently.”

With context, we are able to dramatically improve how well both AI and humans can translate without a laborious back-and-forth testing process. Previous AI had no capacity to do this.

We’re also able to use AI to double-check the output of the AI. For example, we can feed screenshots of our application into a vision-based model, and have it assess whether the text makes sense in context.

The future

These languages are just the start of what Silktide will eventually support. With our new technology, we’re able to add more languages more easily than is normally considered possible.

We have a lot more planned for Silktide this year, including many new applications of AI, so stay tuned.

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We’re pleased to announce all Silktide customers now have immediate access to Silktide’s new AI capabilities.

Our Ask AI feature saves you time by explaining how to fix any specific problem Silktide discovers. It understands your code, your design, and even your CMS.

Here’s how it works.

Ask AI how to solve problems

When viewing a page inside Silktide, every issue now has an “Ask AI” button next to it:

Simply click this button to open a sidebar, where AI will explain the specific issue you’re seeing and how to fix it:

The explanation is not just static help text. Silktide uses cutting-edge AI to consider your specific code, text, and images, and to explain the specific problem you are experiencing.

Silktide knows about your CMS and related technologies. So for example, if your website uses WordPress and the Yoast plugin, our AI can tell you how to fix problems with those:

You can reply to the AI to ask follow-up questions:

Follow-up questions can help you resolve unusually tricky problems. Say Silktide gives you code to fix an accessibility issue, but that change impacts your design in a way you don’t like. You could ask Silktide to make changes to better suit your design tastes.

You can also customize the level of technical knowledge that Silktide assumes when it talks to you. Choose between very non-technical (but longer) explanations, or developer-friendly (shorter) dialogue:

How to enable Silktide’s AI features

Silktide’s AI has to be enabled by one of your account administrators before you can use it.

This is completely free of charge, but you should understand how our AI works before accepting. In particular, bear in mind:

• Silktide records conversations to enhance your experience and improve the AI’s performance
• Some of your website’s code will be sent to OpenAI (an approved 3rd party) for processing
• Our agreement with OpenAI ensures that your data will not be used to train their model

The first time an administrator chooses to use Silktide’s AI, they will be given the option to enable it for the whole account. Once this is done, everyone within the account has access.

Understanding AI credits

Silktide’s AI works on a credit model. We have given every customer exactly 1,000 AI credits for free now.

Every click of the Ask AI button (i.e. asking AI to solve a problem) uses up one credit. Asking follow-up questions also uses one credit.

This is an early access model, intended to give customers a taste of this exciting new feature. We may revise our credit model in the future, once we’ve learned from real-world use by our customers. Silktide are not currently offering more credits for sale, but we expect to do so shortly.

How clever is Silktide’s AI, really?

It’s not perfect, but you might be surprised how far AI has come.

For example, when Silktide considers the grammar of a confusing sentence like “all your base are belong to us”, it understands the joke:

And when asked to help write alternative text for a meme, it correctly suggests “Meme featuring a man with shoulder-length hair and beard, gesturing with his hand, with the caption ‘ONE DOES NOT SIMPLY IGNORE ACCESSIBILITY’”:

We continue to be amazed at the capabilities of modern Generative AI, and expect you will be too.

What’s next for AI?

Silktide will be announcing many more game-changing AI features throughout 2024.

Watch our recent “How AI will revolutionize web governance” webinar for a guided tour through the latest advances in Generative AI. And join our webinar mailing list to be notified about future AI webinars.

We expect to announce our next major AI feature in early January.

Need more help? Visit the Silktide AI support documentation.

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Let’s be honest. Migrating a website can be a real headache. 

Between managing content, broken links, and accessibility checking, it can feel like a never-ending to-do list. 

You’ve probably heard that you can expect a large drop-off in traffic after launching a new website. And while this can be true, it doesn’t have to be. Migrating or launching a new website doesn’t have to mean saying goodbye to your traffic or revenue. In fact, it’s possible to maintain and even grow your traffic after launching a new website.

So what’s the secret? Moz says “every single step [has to be] well-planned and executed.” But surely that goes without saying? The thing is, it’s a big project, with a ton of work. And that means it’s easy to slip up without realizing which can have huge ramifications on your website performance. That’s where automation tools come in.

But is it really worth the extra cost for automation tools during an already expensive website rebuild or migration project? Many would argue that it’s essential.

How do I manage content during a website migration?

One of the biggest challenges of a website migration project is moving content between websites. This can cause a whole host of issues, from hundreds of broken links to duplicate content. These issues have the potential to tank your site’s SEO and discoverability.

Here’s an example of a large retailer that after switching from HTTP to HTTPS saw a loss of 35% of visibility within just 2 weeks. It took them 6 months to recover. With a dip that large, the loss of revenue is huge.

The solution is easy – on the surface. Simply launch your website without issues like broken links and duplicate content. In reality, it’s a very difficult task. Finding these issues takes time and a whole lot of testing. And when you’re towards the end of a large website project, it’s easy just to go live with the intent to solve these issues later. 

Silktide helps us understand the new website, how it all hangs together, how it flows, and identify quickly any issues we are causing with the new build.

– Health Transformation Manager at National Health Service

That’s why it’s so important to track these issues throughout the website migration project. Using web automation tools, you can save time by taking the legwork out of manual tasks. By automating the finding, tracking, and monitoring of content issues as they arise you can make the whole project smoother, and remove the chance of human error.

How do I avoid traffic drops during a website migration?

It’s easy to assume that if the content on your website doesn’t change, then it should still perform the same after a website migration or rebuild. Unfortunately, that’s not always the case. 

A new website can introduce a whole host of issues, from content, user experience, and accessibility, to crawling and indexing issues. This can damage your website’s user experience, performance, and brand reputation. Removing (or adding) large amounts of content, can also damage SEO visibility and conversions.

Automation tools that scan your entire website for these issues can help build an accurate picture of how your website looks to Google. Often the technology to crawl and rank your website is similar to how these automation tools work.

Armed with this sort of data, you can turn the odds in your favor and stand a better chance of setting yourself up for better rankings and an increase in traffic after launch.

Should my website be more accessible after a website migration?

Since the big boom in smartphones, the idea of “Mobile first” web design has been at the top of the list for any website migration project. However, we’re stepping into an era where mobile-first is second to “Accessibility-first.”

If a website is accessible, that means that it also works seamlessly on mobile devices – it’s a huge part of accessibility standards like WCAG. Think of it this way; website performance is a subset of website accessibility.

That’s why many websites are turning away from mobile-first design to accessibility-first instead. It allows websites to be built with the same benefits as mobile-first design plus a ton more. Increased accessibility means better SEO, more available market size, and a better user experience. 

“We can make sure that overall the theme is accessible and compliant from the start. What we really didn’t want to do was get to the completion of the website, and then find that we built in a load of problems that we then had to go back to, and so it was really a case of wanting to build it effectively along the way and the team use and refer to Silktide for that on a daily basis to make sure that that happens.“

– Health Transformation Manager at National Health Service

Automation tools that can find and report on accessibility issues alongside content and user experience optimizations means that you can ensure your new website is on track throughout development.

Starting a website rebuild or migration project with this mindset saves you time down the line too. You won’t need to invest the time to improve the fundamental structure of your website to make it accessible after launch.

How do I know if my new website is really ready to launch?

Automated tools can access the areas where your content isn’t yet live. The fact that these tools can access areas behind a VPN or on a staging site can give you increased confidence that your site is ready to go live. 

By identifying and fixing issues as they arise, you can ensure your site is fully optimized and accessible before launching. This is the best way to avoid those large drops in traffic and website performance after launch. 

How do I manage a website migration project?

Managing a website migration project can be challenging, especially with a large site with lots of pages and content that are essential to get right. Add large teams, or external resources into the mix and it’s very easy for the project to blossom into something overwhelming. 

Automation tools are a vital project management resource that can streamline the process and make it much smoother. You can keep track of all your site’s pages, content, and issues, making it easier to identify areas for improvement and track progress. 

You can schedule page checks so that you can be sure that your reports are all up to date. This removes the headache from managing a large amount of work and meeting deadlines. By automating the processes that can be done by a computer, you can save time and effort, allowing you to focus on more important aspects of your project.

How do I prevent a negative impact on my existing website visitors?

Moving content between websites can be a time-consuming and challenging task. There is always a risk of losing content or introducing errors such as broken links, pages that don’t work on mobile, or outdated content.

For your existing website visitors, this sudden bad experience can seriously damage your brand reputation. Or worse, turn your loyal brand advocates away.

Using automation tools, you can identify and resolve any content-related issues before going live. The result? Your new website is error-free and ensures a smooth user experience for your existing website visitors.

Conclusion

In conclusion, using automation tools during your website migration can be incredibly valuable. They help ensure accessibility, improve SEO, save time, and enhance user experience. They can give you complete confidence in your new site and reduce the chances of reduced traffic and revenue.

With the cost and time involved in a large website rebuild or migration project, it’s essential that everything goes smoothly. It’s already difficult to launch a new website without seeing a large dip in web visitors and revenue that takes a long time to recover from. So don’t make it even harder. 

Want to see how your website holds up? Get a free scan of your website.

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Expect a year of change in the world of websites, as cutting-edge AI technology takes center stage.

2023 is shaping up to be an exciting year for website design and development, with many trends set to make a big impact on the industry. In this article, we’ll take a look at seven key trends to watch out for in the coming year.

1. AI design becomes mainstream

AI tools such as OpenAI’s ChatGPT and DALL-E-2 took the internet by storm towards the end of 2022 and it doesn’t look like the hype is going to die down in 2023. Already we’re seeing users using AI tools to inspire design and content ideas and save time. Expect to see more AI-generated website designs and more tough conversations on who owns what when it comes to AI-generated art.

If you’ve watched any sci-fi movie ever then you might recognize large steps in AI technology as the start of the end. In truth, it’s unlikely we’re going to see a time-traveling Arnie any time soon. Instead, there’s potential for AI to inspire us to break conformity when it comes to web design.

Over the years web design has fallen into a repetitive routine, they might all be different, but they essentially all look the same. We’ve decided on what a good website looks like and we all aspire to it instead of innovating. There’s a chance that AI-generated designs could be the push we need to start.

2. AI-generated content will be everywhere

On the content side of things, users of AI technology such as ChatGPT are already realizing its potential to change the game. Much like the in-demand skill of “Good at Googling”, it seems 2023 will be the year in which the art of prompt writing for AI tools becomes a valid skill for the resume.

Content marketing has long been a core pillar of an organization’s digital marketing strategy. But releasing a variety of content is often a challenge. Tools like ChatGPT make it a walk in the park. Expect savvy entrepreneurs to integrate AI tools into their websites to automate SEO-boosted blog articles, social media posts, and emails during 2023. In fact, we expect over a million web pages will contain AI-generated content before the end of 2023.

There are other steps to take too. Website chatbots are likely to install advanced AI to provide a more authentic and personalized experience for users. It is hard to say whether it’ll be indistinguishable from a human before the end of the year. But considering these AI tools are still in their infancy, it wouldn’t be surprising.

3. Cookies are dying

It’s been 10 years since Safari and Firefox browsers began taking internet privacy seriously and disabled the use of third-party cookies. Now, Google is finally catching up. In fact, it’s been “catching up” for a while.

Google announced it would be dropping third-party cookies on the Chrome browser back in January 2020. Now, it looks like they’re finally going to make good on that promise by the end of 2024. Expect 2023 to be the year that many organizations start thinking about alternative “cookie-free” technologies.

When cookies are finally no more, it’s going to mean big changes for many organizations. They’ll need to rewrite their software to follow the new rules. So yes, cookies are dying, but despite the efforts of companies like us creating cookie-free analytics solutions, the cookie banner is likely here to stay.

Despite this, website professionals should be aware that the way they collect and process data is going to change significantly. This is a great opportunity to rethink how to approach user data and make sure that data privacy is at the forefront of your website strategy.

4. Apple is looking at changing reality

Apple is expected to release Reality OS or xrOS, its new VR or AR project this year. There’s a lot of speculation about what it will exactly be – likely a VR headset/AR glasses combo that they hope will be the next big thing in consumer technology. While the tech is likely to be out of most people’s budget on release day, it could have a huge impact on web design and development.

The real question is, how do you build a website that works in augmented reality? How do users navigate? How do you optimize it? All these questions are speculative right now but 2023 is likely to be the year we start getting answers. If the tech is as big as rumors suggest, it’ll make website professionals rethink everything they know about website design. It’ll have a huge positive impact on digital accessibility and so a fully accessible web may be a lot closer than we think.

5. The next generation of voice control

The next level of sophisticated voice recognition technology, such as OpenAI’s Whisper, means we’ll likely see more voice-controlled devices and web navigation tools. This will be game-changing for web accessibility and will allow users to navigate a website using voice commands, rather than a mouse and keyboard.

6. Google will enable new web transitions

Earlier in 2022 we looked at Google’s new web transitions that allow the simple implementation of fancy animated transitions across a website. It’s the first step towards making websites look and feel more like native apps. Right now they are being tested but it is likely they’ll be released later in 2023.

7. WCAG 2.2 will finally release

After numerous delays, the next version of the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) is set to release in 2023. If you want to know more about what’s coming up in WCAG 2.2, you can watch our on-demand webinar or watch our YouTube series on WCAG 2.2.

It’s unlikely WCAG 2.2 will be upheld as a legal requirement any time soon. But it’s important to be aware of the changes that are coming. Particularly as organizations such as the Department of Justice have been working hard to hold organizations with inaccessible websites legally accountable.

8. Everyone is going dark mode

When it comes to design, more and more users are switching to dark mode on their devices, and it’s no surprise that this trend is set to continue in 2023. Expect to see more websites offering toggles for users to switch between light and dark modes to reduce eye strain and improve website readability.

9. A legal focus on privacy

Privacy laws are on the rise in the US inspired by GDPR regulations in Europe, and the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA).
Privacy laws on the way that will be enforced in 2023 specifically include:

• The Virginia Consumer Data Protection Act (“Virginia Act”) – effective January 1, 2023

• The Colorado Privacy Act (“Colorado Act”) – effective July 1, 2023

• The Connecticut Act Concerning Personal Data Privacy and Online Monitoring (“Connecticut Act”) – effective July 1, 2023

• The Utah Privacy Act (“Utah Act”) – effective December 1, 2023

Collectively, these are known as the “2023 State Privacy Laws”, and will require organizations to update existing privacy notices, extend additional rights to consumers and update contracts with vendors.

You can read more about the 2023 State Privacy Laws, what they include and what steps to take to prepare here.

10. Introducing Progressive Web Apps

We’ve heard a lot of buzz recently about Progressive Web Apps (PWAs). This looks to be the next step to bridge the gap between websites and native apps. For example, PWAs work offline and can access the user’s camera or photo album at their permission. It seems PWAs are a direct response to the increasing amount of users that browse the web on mobile compared with desktop.

It’s unlikely it’ll become the norm for all organizations. Instead, it’ll be a niche case for social media websites and other sites with a high volume of visitors. Here’s a great video about PWAs and how to build them yourself in case you’re interested.

In conclusion, 2023 is set to be a year of big changes and exciting developments in the world of website design and development. With so many new trends and technologies on the horizon, it’s an exciting time to be a part of the industry. Stay ahead of the curve by keeping an eye on these trends, and by being mindful of the legal and ethical implications of these new technologies.

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The new Silktide Index launches in January 2023. It includes enhanced accessibility testing and WCAG 2.2 support.

Over the past couple of years, Silktide’s website testing and scoring methodology has evolved. We now test for more issues and in some cases, test in different ways. We’ve upgraded some score weightings to reflect the importance of various accessibility issues. WCAG 2.2 accessibility testing is now included.

We’ve updated the Silktide Index to reflect these changes and advances in technologies.

What does this mean for you?

In short:

• Silktide Index now includes WCAG 2.2 checks
• Accessibility tests now match the Silktide platform
• Scores will change, some dramatically so

Why are the scores changing?

The approach for calculating scores is fundamentally different between the older version of the Silktide Index and the new one. You should not expect scores between the versions to match.

Think of it like how schools change their grading system each year. You can compare the grades of one child from 2010 with another in 2020, but they won’t (and can’t) be the same, as the criteria change.

There’s not a simple explanation for what has changed – there are new criteria, new concepts, and new approaches. For a technical explanation of the Index algorithm changes please visit this support article.

If you are a paid Silktide customer, you can expect the scores in the Index to differ from those in your account. Here’s an article that explains why Index scores differ from Silktide customer accounts.

Benefits

Broadly speaking, these changes:

• Improve scoring accuracy
• Bring some accessibility areas up-to-date
• Allow for more accurate identification of issues
• Add WCAG 2.2 success criteria
• Bring scoring between the Silktide Index and our customer’s reports more closely together

Things to consider

The following points have not changed since the previous Silktide Index but they are worth highlighting here:

• In most cases, we are testing a sample of up to 125 pages
• Those pages are unlikely to be the same each month
• Any ‘decisions’ made in your own report (if you are a customer) are not applied to the Index

What other changes are being made?

In order to expand the Index, we’re streamlining some categories during 2023. We’ll combine multiple similar categories together. A specific example is the combination of all UK NHS websites into a single category.

Later in 2023, we’ll expand Silktide Index to include non-accessibility checks.

What to do next?

In January, Silktide Index will be updated and websites in all categories are likely to see changes in scores and position. This is not something to be alarmed at, but we appreciate that this kind of thing can cause some concern.

Consider this. If your score does change dramatically, check your Silktide Index report to see if new accessibility issues are highlighted. It’s likely with the new and amended testing methodology that there are accessibility problems being found that could not be found before.

Also, the score weighting has changed. Some issues may have become more important, or less important, than in previous reports.

The biggest single change is the inclusion of WCAG 2.2 testing. It’s likely that accessibility issues will be found against the new Success Criteria, which will affect scores.

If you have any specific concerns, then do reach out to us at support@silktide.com and we’ll do our best to address them.

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In August 2022, Google published a blog post talking about their new Shared Element Transition API. And boy, do they look neat.

Now unless you’re a web developer or just a switched-on tech god, Shared Element Transition API probably just sounds like a bunch of random words. And that’s okay (it kind of is).

Web developers are pretty smart and so they can make cool effects and transitions happen on the page when a user does something specific. Just check out Screaming Frog’s Our Story page. I think you’ll agree that it looks awesome.

Companies aiming to be at the cutting edge of web design have done this sort of thing for years, so why don’t more websites do it too? Well, first, it requires a decent amount of web design and development understanding (a resource some companies just don’t have). And second, it takes a lot of time to get right.

That’s where Google’s new Shared Element Transition API comes in. Where page effects and transitions could take dozens of lines of code, now, the same can be achieved in two. It saves a bunch of time, a lot of headaches, and is pretty simple to pull off.

From now on, I’m just going to call the Shared Element Transition API Google’s new web transitions – because that’s exactly what it is in human language (I don’t talk robot). 

What does Google’s Shared Element Transition API look like?

While Google has shared a demo site where you can experiment with the transitions, they probably won’t work for you without some extra steps. That’s because it’s all currently going through feedback so it’s not enabled by default just yet. Think of it as being in Early Access. 

If you don’t want to go through the steps of getting it working and just want to see the pretty moving pictures, here’s a video from Google themselves showing it off.

If you want to get it working on your system you’ll need to do two things.

• Be using the Chrome browser
• Enable the documentTransition API Chrome flag

That second step is more simple than it sounds. To enable the flag, just visit chrome://flags/ in your Chrome browser. It’ll come up with the “Experiments” page. Make sure you understand the Warnings here – fiddle with your Chrome flags at your own risk. Search for documentTransition API and change it to Enabled. 

Here’s a GIF I made covering the process in case you need a hand.

And that’s it, you’re done!

If you check out Google’s demo site now, you’ll be able to see the smooth transitions when clicking on certain parts of the website. 

Are Google’s new web transitions worth using?

This is the big question. But it’s also not an easy one to answer. You might think that the transitions look basic and probably aren’t worth the extra hassle. However, the important thing to note is how much easier it is to achieve these transitions now than it ever has been before. 

What it achieves is not new per se, but it changes the way we approach web transitions in an equivalent manner to how streaming services changed the way we watch tv shows. 

The other thing of note is that this is just the beginning and it enables creative web devs to go wild with their own web transitions to create some cool-looking sites.

I’m a sucker for pretty-looking animations and transitions, (my PowerPoint presentations will blow your socks off), so naturally, I’m looking forward to seeing how Google’s new web transitions change how we interact with websites. Will they have an effect on the future of web design? Absolutely. Are they a good thing? Maybe not…

How do Google’s new web transitions affect web accessibility?

When it comes to web accessibility, we’re all over it. It is a huge part of what we help our clients with after all. And so you’ll forgive me for it being the first thing I thought about when seeing these new web transitions.

I won’t go into detail about the basics of web accessibility and the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) here, otherwise, this blog will be a book. Luckily, we already wrote that book, so if you want a beginner’s guide to web accessibility you can download the eBook for free.

Some users with various disabilities may find animations, auto-playing videos, or gifs distracting or nauseating when navigating a website, which can cause them a lot of problems. That’s why WCAG 2.1 A has a success criterion called Pause, Stop, Hide that aims to alleviate the issues caused by moving, blinking, scrolling, or auto-updating information. 

There’s a lot involved within the criterion so I’d recommend you have a read-through yourself if you’re interested. In short, you must provide a way for the user to pause, stop or hide any moving parts of your website that start automatically, are presented in parallel with other content, and last more than 5 seconds.

Most of the transitions seen in the Google example site are relatively quick and smooth (under 5 seconds), and we can imagine that this is likely to be the case across most websites. But because Google’s new web transitions are so easy to implement and customize, it opens the doors for less experienced web designers to create transitions that are highly inaccessible.

However, there is something you can do if you still want these sorts of transitions. A web manager or web developer can use the prefers-reduced-motion CSS media feature to prevent animations or transitions from being applied to elements on the page. This means that users who have their system set up to reduce motion won’t be adversely affected by moving parts on your website. It’s something you should look to implement anyway, even without wacky transitions across your website.

Back in the 2000s, I made my first website and boy did I think it was the coolest thing in the world. It had animated gifs of guitars on fire and autoplayed rock music when it loaded (yes I was a very edgy kid). Of course, it was objectively awful. But it makes me think about where websites could go with Google’s new web transitions.

All it takes is an inexperienced web designer thinking they are being innovative for us to see websites full of highly inaccessible and nauseating flashing transitions all over the place. 

Should I use Google’s new web transitions?

Most people will agree that they look great and from the examples we’ve seen, they seem to work pretty well. It updates websites to act like native apps and I doubt anyone has a problem with that. But of course, it’s in its testing phase right now so until it’s part of Chrome by default there are going to be a lot of updates, bugs, and changes. So it makes sense to hold off for now. But if you plan to use Google’s Shared Element Transition API right now, I’d suggest you think about how it’ll affect the accessibility of your website.

I don’t have a crystal ball but still, it’s exciting to see new developments when it comes to the web. Websites have changed a huge amount over the years, and now with new features like Google’s new web transitions and AI tools like we’ve never seen before, it’ll be interesting to see what the future of the web holds in store.

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I’m always interested in the latest innovative web solution that’s “proven” to increase conversions by 10 bajillion percent. And one of the big culprits are pop-ups. 

There’s no doubt you’ve experienced them before. You’re scrolling down a page when suddenly everything falls into shadow like a scene from War of the Worlds and then, pop! You get a pop-up. 

These pop-ups can be set to appear after various triggers. Some may appear on page load, others are timed to appear after a few seconds, at a certain point on the page, or (the more frustrating) pop-ups that appear whenever the user tries to change a tab or press the back button.

There are quite a few different types of pop-ups and common uses across websites today. In fact, OptinMonster lists 37 different types of popups. But some of the most common ones include:

• Lightbox – Darkens the webpage you’re on and displays a new smaller window over the website you’re viewing.
• Floating bar – A thin strip of text-based content usually at the top or bottom of a website.
• Chat pop-up – These are usually part of a live chat plugin on the website and look as if you have received a direct message.

Back in the early years of the internet pop-ups were a side effect of a computer infected with a virus picked up from a dodgy website. You may even remember the term “pornado” (please, do not Google this term. You’ll thank me later) to describe an onslaught of them across your boxy screen. Eventually, anti-virus got more sophisticated and pop-ups slowly faded into a melting pot of bad internet memories right next to dial-up connection.

Then, one day, clever marketers decided to bring back pop-ups – a concept that everybody hated – and make it the go-to strategy in today’s world of digital marketing. It’s gotten so bad that even Google has had to weigh in – although they affectionately refer to pop-ups as interstitials…

If you’re a Chrome user like me, you’ll also commonly see popups asking if you want to receive “Chrome notifications”. Not only are these annoying instant rejects but they are so common on mobile devices where screen real estate is already extremely limited. If you combine this with a cookie banner then it’s likely any users accessing your website on mobile have up to 40% of their screen covered by popups. 

What’s worse (in my superior opinion) are video overlays that I see all the time on news and gaming websites. If you visit IGN.com on mobile, almost half of your screen will be covered by a sticky video overlay that hides the majority of the page content. 

For those of you who use a browser ad blocker like me, you’re probably also used to ad blocker popups that block you from being able to browse the site unless you turn off your ad blocker and expose yourself to paid advertisements. You’ll find these across every newspaper website.

If it’s not coming across, I’ll be plain; I don’t like pop-ups. But it’s not because I’m an impatient millennial or technophobe, it’s simply because while they might have a chance to increase conversions, they can only do so at the sacrifice of major aspects of your website’s experience. Just take a look at OptinMonster which instantly showers you with popups.

Whenever you look up website pop-ups online you’ll see endless articles, lists, and expert marketers singing their praise (usually the people selling them). And if there’s anything that digital marketers suffer from it’s extreme FOMO (fear of missing out). If someone is doing something cool that increases conversions, then yoink! I’m doing the same thing. Or at least, I used to…

Sometimes it’s difficult to find a way around using pop-ups. Cookie banners are a good example. If you’re tracking cookies on your site (and following the law) then you’re likely to have a banner asking for users to accept cookies. Unfortunately, there’s no cleaner way to do this than a popup.

If I’m honest, I’ll admit that not all pop-ups are that bad… they just mostly are. If they’re not properly considered they can do more harm than good. Floating bar pop-ups for example can be done better. If they aren’t overlaid over any webpage elements or push down the contents on the page then they can be less annoying and accessibility friendly.

As for lightbox pop-ups, please get rid of them. A non-visual user is likely to use technology like a screen reader to navigate your site. It focuses on areas of your site and reads the selected content aloud. So, imagine the frustration when the focus is stolen from your content and instead is now on a pop-up. As a visual user, it’s frustrating enough to close the pop-up, find where you were reading, and carry on. For users using screenreaders, it’s even more cumbersome.

In fact, the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.1 bans all uses of pop-ups without explicitly alerting the user beforehand. While WCAG refers to this as part of a wider success criterion called Focus Order, it’s often referred to by web devs as stealing focus. It’s known as something that you should always look to fix on a website or web application. Yet it is literally the problem that pop-ups create.

So, what is the secret about pop-ups that nobody tells you? It’s that using pop-ups on your website is guaranteed to impact your user experience and your website’s accessibility negatively. In turn, that can seriously plummet your SEO, average page duration, and overall brand reputation. If you want inspiration on how to get it right, just look at Apple’s website. They don’t use pop-ups and absolutely nail the balance of web design, user experience, and accessibility.

So stop with the FOMO and ignore the horde of digital marketers telling you to buy your way to the top with pop-ups. There is no shortcut. Instead, focus on good quality, authentic content, good design, and accessibility. 

If you want a hand governing your website’s content, user experience, web accessibility, and more, then fill out this form and we’ll give you a tour.

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Most website evaluation platforms are fundamentally similar – they read the code that a website is made from, and test it as written. Silktide differs because we don’t just read the code, we actually run it, and can therefore evaluate a web experience just like a person can.

How do we do this? With awesome technical magic-ery, of course! First, let’s talk about how traditional website evaluation platforms work.

What do other platforms do, and how does Silktide compare?

When a computer looks at a webpage it only sees the code – the HTML that makes up the page. You can see this for yourself on any page by right-clicking and selecting “View Page Source” in any of the main browsers.

Now, a web page is more than just its HTML. It’s a dynamic, changing, visually appealing construct of a combination of pieces of code, including JavaScript (code that makes elements on the page ‘do things’) and CSS (code that affects the styles and layouts of the elements on the page).

Without CSS (Cascading Style Sheets), your website will just look like an ugly mess. Without JavaScript, buttons, forms, animations, and any other dynamic elements won’t work.

Why is any of this important? Well, the main reason is that if a website testing tool is only looking at the HTML, it cannot experience a website with all dynamic elements and visual styles intact.

This is the fundamental way in which Silktide differs.

When Silktide tests a web page, it downloads the code and runs it in a browser, with all JavaScript and CSS. What we see, therefore, is the resulting page. All the information that’s in your browser is available to Silktide for evaluation.

We can see how big an image is. We can tell you if it has rounded corners, drop shadows, or any other styling applied to it.

More and more websites rely on JavaScript to even exist. Let’s take Twitter as an example. If you load any Twitter URL (try our Twitter feed), you may notice that some elements on the page load before others. This is because Twitter relies on JavaScript to work – it loads dynamic information in real-time and allows infinite scrolling.

Scroll down a bit, you’ll eventually get a spinner as it loads more Tweets. That’s JavaScript at work.

Now, what happens if we turn JavaScript off on Twitter?

We’re presented with an error message. If you look at the page source, you’ll see that there’s just this error message and no other content. Twitter simply doesn’t work without JavaScript enabled.

Now, let’s assume you’re using a computer to evaluate Twitter. All it will see is this basic HTML without content. That’s no good to you.

So, because Silktide can see the page after it’s fully rendered, it’s able to test it comprehensively.

Silktide uses real browsers to test on mobile devices

We talk about mobile accessibility testing elsewhere on our website, but it’s important to understand the limitations of other platforms. Part of the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG 2.1) requires that web pages do not scroll in two dimensions on small screens.

That is to say, you should be able to scroll up and down, or side to side, but never both. You’ve probably experienced this on websites that are not mobile-friendly.

Usually, this happens when there is an image, a table, or some other element that is too wide for the screen width.

How does it work?

If you open Developer Tools in Chrome, you can choose to view your website as it would look rendered on a mobile device. You can change the size and choose different pre-made devices, or create your own.

The result looks like this:

Because Silktide can see this rendered, mobile version of a site, we can find issues like elements that are too large for the screen (remember, we said earlier that we can detect how big images and other elements actually are).

Again, other platforms would see the HTML code, but they’d not be able to figure out ‘this is too wide’.

The only way to know it’s too wide is to render the page in full, in a real browser, and evaluate it.

This picture shows the result of testing a page that found an issue with two-dimensional scrolling. In it, you can see the page content scrolls left and right, as well as up and down.

How else does Silktide’s technology help?

The advantage of testing a page once rendered carries a lot further than you may realize. For example, we know if part of a page is hidden, what colors are present on overlapping elements, and whether focus states are correctly implemented.

Hidden and visible elements

Take a menu bar that appears when you hover or click on it. Usually, that is accomplished with a piece of JavaScript that detects where the mouse is and changes the CSS to show or hide it.

The HTML doesn’t do this by itself, it needs JavaScript and CSS. If you’re only looking at the HTML, you cannot detect whether elements are hidden or visible.

Colors

Silktide can tell what color individual parts of a page are. The code doesn’t tell you that unless you run it along with the CSS.

This is especially useful for giving actual, accurate color contrast results between elements. Silktide doesn’t guess, it can tell you.

Silktide understands gradients, drop shadows, and stacked elements, while other platforms simply cannot because they don’t run the code.

Focus states

When navigating with a keyboard, it’s a WCAG requirement that elements become distinguished, so you know where your current focus is.

This is usually achieved by drawing a contrasting box around elements such as links when tabbing through a website with a keyboard.

Try pressing the Tab key on your keyboard now and you’ll see links become highlighted in turn. Silktide can detect these and tell you if you have implemented them or not.

Part of the upcoming WCAG 2.2 specifications actually goes further and requires specific contrast and sizes to be defined for focus states.

WCAC 2.2 also specifies that if an element is clickable, it must be at least 24 CSS pixels square in size, so it’s large enough that users don’t click on the wrong thing by accident.

Silktide will be able to test these accurately and let you know if they are big or contrasting enough. We’ll add that once the WCAG 2.2 spec is finalized and released.

Silktide can test complex user journeys

Because we’re running a real browser, we can talk to it. For example, we’re able to do things like click on cookie banners to dismiss them before we test a page. Cookie banners don’t even appear unless JavaScript is run, so other web evaluation software won’t even see them. We not only see the banners, but we teach our systems to dismiss them.

This also means we can teach our systems to do anything a human can.

For example, the way a traditional tool would work is to check each link in the code and visit them. But with that approach, things are missing.

Let’s say you fill in a search form on a website, press submit on the form button, and get a list of results. There’s no way ordinarily to visit the results page link. If you go to it directly (it might be something like ‘search.php’), nothing will happen, or you’ll get an error message because you didn’t submit the form.

Another example is once you have the results, you can use sliders and checkboxes to apply filters. So let’s say you have an e-commerce site with products listed. You can move a slider to change the price bracket or select to show only the blue products.

How would a computer know what to type in a search box? How would it know what to set the sliders to, or which filters to apply? A computer has no way, ordinarily, of filling in forms and seeing what’s behind them.

But with Silktide’s user journeys, we can teach it.

How user journey testing works

You can set up a journey of as many steps as you need. Let’s take a simplified version.

• Load the Search page, and wait 15 seconds
• Fill in the form with the word ‘t-shirts’
• Check that the results page contains products with ‘t-shirts’ in the title

What Silktide users see is a list of steps and their results. There’s a screenshot of what Silktide saw when it ran the step, a status (whether it worked or not), the uptime (amount of time it’s been working), and when it was last tested.

In the Inspector, you can actually see the results of each step. We test for accessibility, content, and all the other things Silktide can do for each step in the journey.

If any step in the user journey is found to be broken, it appears as a high priority error in the Silktide dashboard.

This essentially means that Silktide can find many more issues with a website than some other platforms. We think we’re fundamentally unique in this regard.

Silktide shows you where each issue is on each page

Silktide was built with usability in mind, and one of the main goals was to allow people to find and fix issues quickly. Silktide was designed from day one to show you each issue right on the web page where they occur.

For every single test in Silktide, across all our modules, you can see in the Inspector where they occur. Not just on the desktop version of your site, but also on mobile, and within the HTML.

You also get the explanation for each issue we find and a plain-English explanation of how to fix it.

Retest single pages immediately

Silktide gives you a number of ways to test your pages.

• Test your entire site automatically and on a schedule
• Integrate with your CMS and test each page automatically when you make a change
• Test pages before they go live in your browser using our browser extension

Most single-page tests take under 30 seconds, and your scores are updated in real-time. You also get progress bars for each retest you perform, so you can see how it’s getting on.

What does all this mean?

Silktide can:

• Test more things
• Present more accurate results
• Cover more aspects of WCAG
• Evaluate complex user journeys
• Test on mobile devices
• Show you every issue on each page
• Perform quick retests so you can see the results of your work almost immediately
• Change the way you think about automated web testing

So, I appreciate this article is somewhat long and a bit sales-y, but genuinely, this technology is really awesome, and we think you should take a look for yourself!

Questions? Request a demo of Silktide and tell us what you’re trying to achieve.

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Exciting news for us. We’re in the Top 50 in G2’s award category, “Content Management Software”.

For those of you who don’t know, our mission is to help make the web a better place. We do this by helping large organizations find and fix website problems with web accessibility, content, marketing, privacy, user experience, and more.

In fact, I’ll let Jess explain it in this wonderful video.

Suffice it to say, receiving this award is a great honor and we thank all of our lovely customers for saying lovely things about us over the last few years over on our G2 page.

Why not head over to our web accessibility page and find out how we can help you make your websites more accessible too?