We've been looking at how people can make best use of the Immediate Test feature and have changed the way the screen is laid out so that from a single screen you get the option to test a single URL or up to 10 individual URLs.  In either case clicking on the GO button kicks off the test immediately and the next thing you see is he Summary Page for the report.

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 Immediate Reports are part of your Page Credits which are a part of your subscription.  For further info on the use of Page Credits please see the following Blog posts  http://blog.sitemorse.com/2008/06/page-credits.html

http://blog.sitemorse.com/2008/06/subscription-vs-page-credits.html

The Immediate Test request screens have changed slightly.

Previously when you clicked on the request new test link the screen had a box for the URL and a drop down box to select how many pages you wanted - 1, 5 or 10.  Because you can not be sure which 5 or 10 pages Sitemorse would check we have removed the drop down box.  So now there is a choice of running a test on a single, specific page and up to 10 specified pages.

This should improve the predictability and repeatability of tests where you add, amend or correct a page and want to test and retest a page or pages.

Feedback on this change would be very welcome.

All customers with a subscription are allocated a number of Page Credits to be distributed amongst those people with Sitemorse accounts.  The number of Page Credits varies depending on the type of subscription.

Page Credits can be used to run ad-hoc reports against the site that relates to the subscription and any other sites owned by the organisation.  The reports are exactly the same format as the scheduled reports, just shorter.  There are a number of ways that our customers benefit from Page Credits.

Customers often use their Page Credits to run quick reports against their website in-between the scheduled reports when the make changes to the site and don't want to wait for the scheduled report to run before testing the new content.

We have several customers that use their Page Credits, almost exclusively, on the development site where all updates to the main site are tested before going live.  This gives them the confidence that changes, updates and new content are OK before they are deployed on the live site.  The scheduled reports run of the live site giving them the reassurance that everything is fine of the live site.

Some customers use their Page Credits on their micro sites or small, relatively static sites that don't warrant a full subscription.  This means that the benefits of Sitemorse can be economically extended to these sites.

The use of Page Credits is, of course, limited to those people that have accounts.  It's difficult to know how best to divide up the Page Credits amongst a number of people as you can't be sure how many each individual will need.  Once allocated to individuals they can be moved around if necessary.  Just raise a Support Request on the system.  Alternatively, a number of customers have found that creating a group sign-on with all the Page Credits allocated to that account that anyone that needs to use Page Credits can use.

Page Credits can be used in two ways.  Either by the Immediate Reports (1-10 pages) feature or by scheduling a report request. (as many pages as you have Page Credits)

Immediate Reports are useful for testing the odd few pages that you just created or updated.  As the name implies the reports are run immediately.

The larger reports are popped into the scheduler and run in the first available slot.  typically these reports are run within 30 mins.

In the early days of Sitemorse a number of clients bought Page Credits rather than a Subscription and ran their tests on a ad-hoc basis around the time of any substantial changes to the site.  Not necessarily a bad approach but times have moved on.  Many organisations have greatly expanded the number of contributors to the site and decentralised control of the content.  So now there is often no detailed control of what content is added or when just an overarching policy or standard.

In this context taking just Page Credits isn't an effective way of keeping the quality of a website at an acceptable level.  Where as a weekly or monthly subscription runs regular reports that will maintain a consistent view of the key pages of the site identifying issues arising.  As part of a subscription clients get an allocation of Page Credits and a number of Full Tests to call off when appropriate (and the monitoring of a number of URLs) so that the combination gives a greater level of coverage and therefore a greater level of confidence in the quality of their web presence.

Several of our clients use some of their Page Credits on their test site which is also Internet facing.  In their cases all changes to the live site have to be made to the test site first, where they are tested and then made live.  So they run a lot of small or immediate tests as the changes are made to the test site.  Once they are happy with their testing and the changes pass the Sitemorse tests they are loaded onto the live site.  Their weekly reports test them again on the live site and they use Page Credits to do any additional testing on the live site where necessary.  In addition they have their key "landing" pages monitored.  Not surprisingly they are always at the top of their respective Sector Surveys each month.

I do accept that a subscription is not always economically viable.  A small number of our clients have sites under their control that are very small and have a very infrequent changes.  In these cases they use their allocation of Page Credits to run ad-hoc tests as and when necessary and this proves to be a very effective way of managing this type of site.

Oh and the other reason for choosing a Subscription over just buying Page Credits is that page for page a Subscription is the more cost effective.