It's Monday again, and the snow is not falling on the trees; largely because the city just cut down all the trees to ease the rebuilding of Granville street. Oh, and the rain.
This week we have some cool news about custom built online ads targeted at user behaviors, Google and whether its a monopoly, the release of MySQL5.1, and a load of design tips. Enjoy.
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First things first. Before you can become a GA power user you need to have created a GA account and set it up properly on your website. This blog post will outline a step by step process to implement GA on your site. This in not an exhaustive checklist, but one that will get you up and running so that you can become a power user. If you are a marketer reading this post you may want to quickly read this post and then schedule some time with your IT person to go over the list and see if anything was missed.
Step 1: Understand the Website If you like this post then please consider subscribing to our RSS feed.
Shopping online is often frustrating, especially for those who don't live in the USA. One of the main reasons: it's too hard to determine shipping costs.
I can't count the times I've had to dive well into the checkout process -- filling out my name and address, entering my email address, creating a password, etc. -- just to find out whether the shipping costs to Canada are prohibitive. In fact, it's often not clear whether the retailer will ship outside of the USA at all!
I'm really growing to love websites that offer "Shipping Cost Previews" right up front. A nice example is www.GreenBeanery.ca, online retailer of everything coffee-related, including green (unroasted) coffee beans.
As soon as I add a product to my cart, I'm presented with a nice big green button offering me a chance to preview my shipping costs:
If you like this post then please consider subscribing to our RSS feed.A short while ago our own DavidF scored an interview with Eric Peterson of webanalyticsdemystified.com. For those who dont know him, Eric Peterson is an analytics consultant, keynote speaker, and author of numerous books on web analytics, such as: Web Site Measurement Hacks, The Big Book of KPIs, and of course Web Analytics Demystified. When not writing he acts as a consultant for the likes of PBS, the New York Times, Cnet, and The Wall Street journal. He is also a major proponent of free information, giving all of his research, his presentations, and his white papers away for free on his website.
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If you are reading this blog post you probably already know the huge potential that exists with paid search marketing. Running PPC campaigns is not a simple task and it is getting more and more competitive. Jupiter Research predicts marketers will be increasing their paid search budgets by 15% year over year for the next 4 years. If they're right, you and your competitors are likely going to be part of this growing trend.
If you are going to be spending more money on paid search what are you doing to ensure that you are getting the biggest bang for your buck?
If you like this post then please consider subscribing to our RSS feed.Original posted on Erik Vold's Blog
PageRank is built on links, so search engine optimization is centered around them, and people link to the entities that they support. But many times, I see people increasing their own bounce rate by linking to an external page they support without using the target="_blank" attribute+value pair on the anchor tag.
This especially does not make sense most of the time, because most of the time, the external link is really a side note to the website and webpage at hand. So, using target="_blank", which forces the link to open in a new tab or window, is exactly what you should want, for the simple reason that it makes sense, and that it will reduce your bounce rate.
Don't be a fool, use target="_blank"!
If you like this post then please consider subscribing to our RSS feed.This is a quick, short update to my previous blog on the WASP.
Stephane Hamel's Web Analytics Solution Profiler ver. 0.73 now exposes Google Analytics __utma, __utmb, __utmc, __utmv and __utmz cookies as well as Google Web Optimizer's __utmx and __utmxx cookies.
For more details and the download link check out the previous blog post.
The anatomy of Google Analytics cookies is discussed here with the next installment due next week.
If you like this post then please consider subscribing to our RSS feed.Its Monday roundup time again. Of note this week is the announcement of the shutting down of Alexa Web Search, NASA's Extra-Terrestrial web protocols, and the head of the FCC announcing that he wants a free publicly owned wireless network for the US. Come on Canada, if there has ever been a time to follow in the US's footsteps.
If you like this post then please consider subscribing to our RSS feed.Over the coming weeks I will be creating a series of blog posts and screencasts to help users of Google Analytics become power users by getting more actionable data out of their analytics.
The first series of blog posts and screen casts will cover the most valuable GA reports and how to use them.
Some of the reports that will be covered are:
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On Novemeber 18th Google released its new search based keyword tool. This new tool is not to be confused with Googles "Keyword Tool" in AdWords that many of you might be familiar with.
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