Get to Know a Solutions Developer

Takoda Register has been a Solutions Developer at SiteSpect since January 2018. He works with customers to build the campaigns they want to see on their sites. That might mean making recommendations, taking an outline and turning it into a reality, or managing an already built set of variations. He’s one of the guys you go to when you have an idea and you want to see it built. I sat down with him this month to learn more about what he does.

What do you do at SiteSpect?

I am a solutions developer on the customer success team, so I work with clients to help them build out their A/B tests. Right now I have 10 different clients that I work with. Sometimes they’ll come to us with a design guide and I’ll take over everything from there — including all the coding, all the analytics set up, all the metrics set up, and any segmentation and targeting. Sometimes clients will have campaigns already built, and then I’ll help them activate and run their campaigns. I also help clients integrate Sitespect with their other third party tools, like Google Analytics, Adobe Analytics, and Clicktale.

How did you end up becoming a Solutions Developer?

I went to school for IT. I took a web class in high school and I’ve loved websites ever since then. Once I got a taste of that I knew it was what I wanted to do. I love being challenged everyday, coming up with solutions to complex problems, and I love working with new technology.

What’s your favorite thing about being your job?

Everything I build for a client is about bringing in a new feature, a new implementation, or a new update to the look and feel of their website. Everything is about innovation and keeping sites on the cutting edge. That’s really exciting to work on.

What are some guiding principles you follow when working with clients or developing solutions?

Always supply a level of effort to the client first, so they know how long something is going to take to build, and when they can expect to launch their new campaign. Then I start development on the campaign, which is where the fun coding part comes in. Best practice after development is complete is that I’ll do my own QA, then a SiteSpect Optimization Consultant performs additional QA, and then finally the client does their own internal QA. At that point you may have feedback or changes to make, and we will repeat this process until the client is fully satisfied with the end result.

What skills do you think you use the most on a daily basis?

HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and Regular Expressions.

Is there anything upcoming that you’re excited about working on?

One of our clients is redoing their entire site navigation, and I have the pleasure of building this out for them. The navigation is a huge part of any website, and on their site it’s especially prominent. This is a very important project for their company, and for them to rely on us to do it is pretty big. I’m excited to see the impact it makes.

Is there anything surprising about your job?

Sometimes in addition to building campaigns I end up helping clients with a “hot fix.” Because of the way SiteSpect integrates with your website we are able to inject HTML directly into the page source, and we don’t require any additional tagging or JavaScript code to run on your website. A common scenario that I see a lot is a client will push a new code release and it will inadvertently break something on their website that could take months to fix due to their own internal code release schedule. We can fix a problem like this in a matter of minutes, and that’s always a big relief for everyone.

It’s also exciting that I get to see how much money we make the companies we work for. They’ll use us to implement a sale, for example, and we’ll get to see how the control versus the variation plays out — meaning we see the difference of hundreds of thousands of dollars in days.

What’s something that most people would be surprised to know about you?

My name Takoda means friend to all.

And, I love hiking — my favorite hike of all time was the Flume Slide Trail up Mount Flume. “As the name implies, a Slide is an avalanche path or land-slide. These trails are generally quite steep and treacherous with loose rock that can shift under you as you climb. The Flume Slide Trail is so treacherous that you should only climb it going uphill. Climbing down this trail is strongly discouraged.”

I also have a passion for podcasts, especially the Joe Rogan Experience, where he interviews leading experts about various topics, including, Egyptology, nutrition, economics, cryotherapy, ultramarathons, cryptocurrencies, and a ton of other cool cutting edge technologies.

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