Tag: digital

Website Tracking Tools Are Crucial

Website tracking tools are crucial to any digital marketing team (small & large businesses). You have to know what is working, what isn’t, and what trends will make your site the next stop for visitors each day. 

I recommend the following two:

  • Google Analytics. The most popular analytics package available for individual site owners and FREE. GA allows you to dig down deep into your stats to see breakdowns of individual regions, states/provinces, cities and numerous other items to better identify your site visitors. The GA tool can break out data by the day, week, month, or year. Google Analytics uses clearly marked charts and graphs so that even the least tech savvy individual can feel confident with understanding their information.
  • Crazyegg. The definitive heat map visual analytic tool. After collecting at least 1,000 clicks, evaluate whether or not visitors are utilizing main navigation and calls to action, or getting distracted by errant site features. Its a visual A/B testing tool in a sense. Crazyegg is a javascript-based, add-on analytics tool that creates heat maps from website visitor data. It’s important to note that the “heat map” Crazy Egg generates is really more of a click map. Google Analytics has a similar feature but I prefer Crazyegg. Who uses Crazyegg? Ebay, Dell, Hilton, Yahoo, just to name a few. Crazy Egg starts at $9 per month and you get to track 10,000 visits.

Why HTML5 ?

Real simple. It (HTML 5) renders web pages identically across all web browsers, devices and operating systems and it works on both smartphones and desktops creating the same user experience on all platforms. HTML5 is great for digital content and ads. HTML5 ads have decreased to less than $10 on a cost-per-thousand basis from $35 in 2009.

More Landing Page Optimization Tips

Make sure there is white space. This improves the user experience and makes your call to action stand out. Your call to action button (link) should be 20% larger than your logo (depending on the size of your logo). Place button at top of page (left). Web readers tend to track through content in a rough “F-shaped” pattern. So format important images flush left. Display the secondary action below the primary action. Make it obvious which button to click to complete an action.

What the Heck is Bluetooth Smart Ready?

Think smartphones, notebooks, and tablets—that can receive and share Bluetooth signals from such accessories as speakers, headphones, fitness accessories, and even medical tools such as heart-rate monitors and electronic thermometers.

But never fear! Newer laptops, phones, and slates with Bluetooth Smart Ready radios built in will work with previous-generation Bluetooth peripherals. Essentially, if you have a Bluetooth Smart Ready smartphone or notebook, you can still use it to stream podcasts to your Bluetooth 3.0 wireless speaker system or headphones. So no need to throw out those headsets or portable speakers. 

Mobile Marketing Tip. Sitemaps!

Generate a mobile sitemap of your website. Once completed, submit to Google Webmaster Tools. Simple. For WordPress blogs, you may not need a separate mobile sitemap IF your incorporating a “Responsive Web Design” where the same page is served to both desktop and mobile screens.

What are sitemaps? sitemaps are a way to tell Google, Bing and other search engines about web pages, images and video content on your site that they may otherwise not discover.

How do you create a mobile sitemap? There are numerous Sitemap XML generators on the web. Most are free. Just google “sitemap generator” and it will bring up a list. WordPress has mobile sitemap plugins to help you as well if your using that platform.

Why HTML 5 ?

Whats the advantage of writing in HTML 5? Write once, deploy everywhere.

Its open source, scalable and will run anywhere. HTML 5 developers with the opportunity scale their apps to reach more users faster. Device agnostic. HTML 5 runs independent of environment, display or technology. Whats the difference between Native Apps? Native applications need to be written for every single device and every new platform from scratch whereas an HTML 5 Apps allows you to support mobiles, tablets and desktops with the same product. Another reason? Sharing! HTML 5 apps have a URL they can be shared over the web and found when you search the web. You don’t need to go to a market place and find it amongst the crowded, limited space but the same tricks how to promote other web content apply. The more people like and link to your app, the easier it will be found.

Social Media Analytics is Essential

Social Media Analytics tracks your progress, helps you better allocate your time, and you get to see a bigger part of the whole picture. Social Media Analytic tools such as Google Analytics, Hootsuite, Hubspot, Sprout Social, UberVU measure exactly what the ROI is of some of your social media outputs. If your not measuring your Social Media efforts, your wasting valuable marketing time.

When Optimizing Your Mobile Site….

First thing to do is ask whether mobile visitors are interacting with your site differently than desktop users?

> Go into Google Anaytics and segment out the mobile traffic. The mobile segment might include Tablet traffic so be aware of that figure. Once you have the data, focus on landing pages, conversion rate, and where people leave the conversion funnel. Optimize accordingly.

Best practice tip: Its always a good idea to add a mobile XML site map and submit it to Google and Bing.