You can ignore this message. I’m testing the schedule post function because there seems to be a conflict with the server time and the localization settings. Dreary, I know. Skip down and enjoy the AT&T post instead.
Posted by Monique Trottier | Email to a Friend | Of course, you should follow me on twitter here
This montage of AT&T ads came from a 1993 Newsweek CD-ROM, when Newsweek thought that one day, magazines would be sent to you in CD-ROM form, sponsored with ads. It’s an interesting view of the future.
What is your business promising?
Posted by Monique Trottier | Email to a Friend | Of course, you should follow me on twitter here
It’s August and, albeit reluctantly, we are busying preparing for Fall. What better time than now to review your website’s usability?
Todd Sieling of Corvus Consulting recently presented at the SFU Summer Publishing Workshops on usability and outlined his three golden keys to creating better online user experiences. He’s been kind enough to share them with us:
The Three Golden Keys of Usability
See Through Your Audience’s Eyes
Usability is about walking in the steps of your audience and understanding their needs and wants. Todd uses the example of Walt Disney walking around his theme park crouched down so that he could see things from a child’s height.
At Boxcar Marketing, we try to walk in the steps of our audience by creating personas. Personas are character sketches of individual audience members that outline their demographics, likes and dislikes, lifestyles, technical abilities and their needs and wants when using a site. Personas are helpful because they move you away from thinking about what the project team wants and towards what the website visitor wants.
You May Need to Give Something Up That You Love
The user experience trumps design. It doesn’t matter how mind-blowing your design is, if it gets in the way of what a user is trying to do (or what you want the user to do) it needs to go. People are busy on the web and don’t have time for flashy designs that get in their way.
Todd uses the example of Apple’s new remote. Apple loves simple design but, on their new remote, they’ve added an additional button. Todd believes that, in this case, Apple had to give up their love of simplicity for ease of use. Good designers know when to comprise.
Don’t Make People Think
Building on the ideas from Steve Krug’s book on web design and usability, Don’t Make Me Think, Todd says that your site should make it clear what you want people to do. Anticipate your users’ confusion. Make your instructions and guidelines as clear as possible. Clear calls to action need to be present throughout your site.
Steve Krug says to imagine your users are whizzing by on the freeway. This metaphor is closer to the truth of how users interact with your site than the closely scrutinized treasure map we generally believe that we’ve created and they are following.
The Reservoir of Goodwill
In Don’t Make Me Think Steve Krug talks about the reservoir of goodwill. Website visitors start out with a reservoir of goodwill. Each problem they encounter on a website lowers the level of that reservoir.
When reviewing your site’s usability, the questions to ask yourself are:
How would users see/perceive this?
Is this element needed for users to complete a task?
Are the calls to action obvious?
Overall, website usability is about designing from the users’ perspective to create the best experience possible. If a user has a good experience on your site they are more likely to return and think positively about your organization.
Posted by Crissy | Email to a Friend | Of course, you should follow me on twitter here
Marketers know that the ability to measure success online is far more accurate than measurements offline. Tracking, analyzing and responding to the data is your key to success. Begin by defining the key performance indicators, or KPIs, for your campaigns.
With your marketing goals in mind, what is measurable? As Friends with Benefits: A Social Media Marketing Handbook notes, social media’s goals are about increasing online visibility. This means creating awareness about your products, services and brand. When determining metrics, think of actions that indicate people are aware of your brand and, from these actions, what is measurable.
The development process for KPIs can be visualized as a funnel:
Goal > Action > Measurement (KPI)
Web Stats To Measure
KPIs linked to product and brand awareness should focus on visits your website and how they found it. Are people aware of, and visiting, your site? If they are, how did they get there and were they aware of your brand before they visited? The following is a list of web stats that can help gage awareness about your product and brand.
Unique Visitors. This shows how many people are visiting your website.
Direct Traffic. This shows how many people are coming directly to your site by typing the URL in their address bar. These visitors are coming to the site having already heard about your product or brand.
Referral Traffic. This shows where your visitors are coming from. This is important because referrals are like recommendations. You will want to build a relationship with the sites that are directing traffic to your site.
Keyword traffic. This shows how people are finding your site. Are they using your brand’s keywords? This shows that they already knew about you before they visited your site. What other keywords are visitors using? If familiar keywords are seen month over month, then it shows a strong interest in a topic or category, which you may want to profile on the home page. Trending keywords should also be used in your site’s content, for example, as blog posts and page titles, in order to capitalize on new traffic sources.
With these KPIs, you can create a KPI scorecard. Fill in the scorecard monthly and go back over previous months to determine a baseline. Looking at the numbers month over month, are they the same? Where do they fluctuate? What does this mean in relation to your marketing activities? What should be repeated, modified, or discarded for something new?
Posted by Crissy | Email to a Friend | Of course, you should follow me on twitter here
One of our clients, BC Book Prizes, is holding their Summer 2010 Online Auction. They have some amazing prize packages that are open to bidding and the proceeds go to supporting the achievements of British Columbian writers and publishers.
Prizes Include:
The Illustrator Pack. Bid on an original, framed, gouache illustration on watercolour paper by Kathryn E. Shoemaker entitled “Snowy Eye” as well as four children’s books (Good-bye Marianne, Floyd the Flamingo, A Telling Time, and My Animal Friends) that feature the illustrator’s work. Value: $950. Bidding ends: July 28th at 11:00am.
Betsy Warland Writer’s Retreat. Bid on admission to the upcoming writer’s retreat with Betsy Warland at Annie’s Acre Bed and Breakfast in Nanoose Bay. Value: $250. Bidding ends: July 28th at 11:00am.
The Heart of Vancouver. Bid on a one night stay for two in a one-bedroom deluxe suite at the Rosedale on Robson Suite Hotel (valid after October 1st), a voucher for two tickets to the Vancouver Opera’s December 7th or 9th production of Lucia di Lammermoor, and a gift certificate ($50) to book’mark, The Library Store at the Vancouver Public Library. Value: $540. Bidding ends: July 28th at 11:00am.
Bidding ends in August. As the auction progresses, prizes will be added and removed weekly, so check back for updates.
How Bidding Works
Send an email to cody[at]rebuscreative[dot]com with your name, address, phone number, email address and your bid for the package you’re interested in. The minimum bid increment is $5.00. Bids and bidders are updated as frequently as possible. Additionally, most items can be shipped worldwide. (Note: Additional costs may be incurred to cover shipment of item(s) when necessary.)
Back in April we talked about How to Understand a Google Analytics Report and since then we’ve been providing a lot of Google Analytics tips. Since it’s handy to have all of our tips in one place, here is a roundup of our Google Analytics guidelines and how-tos. Following these best practices will bring you one step closer to becoming a Google Analytics pro.
Technical Basics
How to Filter Out My Internal Traffic in Google Analytics
Nothing skews your website analytics more than including your internal traffic. Employees’ behaviours on the site are different than visitors’ behaviours because your employees (and subcontractors) spend more time on the site and are less likely to bounce. Because Google Analytics shows many traffic behaviours as an average value, excluding your internal traffic is one way to avoid distorting your data.
How to Give Someone Access to Your Google Analytics
Google Analytics gives you the ability to add users to your account and to grant them different levels of access. This is useful for when you want to share access with others in your company or when you hire an outside consultant who would benefit from looking at your web stats (like us).
Techniques for Tracking Campaigns
How to Use Analytics Annotations to Track Your Marketing Campaigns
Google Analytics’ Annotations feature is a really useful tool that doesn’t get used as much as it should. It’s an easy feature to apply and it’s great for measuring the success of your marketing campaigns because it creates an activity timeline that positions your marketing activities in relation to your website traffic. Annotations are extremely useful for creating benchmarks and measuring and tracking your marketing campaigns.
How to Use Google’s Advanced Segments
Analytics’ Advanced Segments tool allows you to segment your website users into separate, defined channels to see how different audience groups are interacting with your site. The ability to analyze your reports by particular user groups and compare one traffic channel to another is extremely useful and helps to make your Analytics reports more meaningful.
Nothing skews your website analytics more than including your internal traffic. Employees’ behaviours on the site are different than visitors’ behaviours because your employees (and subcontractors) spend more time on the site and are less likely to bounce. Why? Because they are busy working on the site, doing programming maintenance or adding content. Because Google Analytics shows many traffic behaviours as an average value, excluding your internal traffic is one way to avoid distorting your data.
To get accurate analytics data, you can filter out your IP address.
How to Exclude Your IP Address From Google Analytics
Go to your Account Overview and click on Filter Manager.
In the Filter Manager screen, click Add Filter on the right hand corner.
In the Create New Filter page, enter a name for your filter.
Under Filter Type, choose Exclude > traffic from the IP addresses > that are equal to
Enter your IP address.
Under Apply Filter to Website Profiles, select the website profile that you want to block your IP address from and click add. This adds your filter to that website.
Click Save Changes.
Now in the Filter Manager screen, your filters will be listed.
If you need to edit your filter, you can do so from this screen.
Finding Your IP Address
There are a number of free sites that will help you find your IP address:
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Vancouver internet marketing strategists James Sherrett and Monique Trottier are experts in online marketing strategy. Talk to us about internet marketing, web design, search marketing
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