Stop guessing whether your website is properly designed for maximum conversions and start getting real answers!
This week on “Fathom That?!,” Brinton, a design and usability expert at Fathom, explains how running a website usability test can tell you what works and what doesn’t straight from the source: your site’s visitors.
Thanks for checking out this week’s episode! Let us know what you’d like to see us cover next by leaving us a comment below.
No Comments yet, your thoughts are welcome. »In a time where Yelp, Facebook and others have been slicing and dicing their deals functionality, Google continues to speed up. Just yesterday, Google announced that Google Offers has lanched in Denver, Austin, DC, Boston, and Seattle, bringing the grand total of Google Offers locations to 11.
Clearly not content to stay still, Google has been kind enough to provide a handy list of cities that will be joining the Google Offers game in the near future right there on google.com/offers. You can see that list of 27 "Coming Soon" locations in the graphic below.
While our native Cleveland isn't on the list (yet), our new friends at Webbed will be able to play with Google Offers in Columbus in the near future. I think its safe to assume that Google Offers will be expanding to an even broader list of locations by the end of the year.
If you happen to be in one of the 5 new locations, then enjoy your Offers! The rest of us will just sit here quietly and wait to join you.
No Comments yet, your thoughts are welcome. »This news is actually a few weeks old, but in all the hullabaloo around the GA session tracking change and the Panda 2.4 rollout, I never got around to posting about it. But considering my overall analytics nerdiness, I figured I'd get the info out for anyone who missed it.
Visits from links on Twitter have always been notoriously difficult to track with any accuracy in Google Analytics. Links shortened with Bit.ly would get their own attribution, some visits would show as referrals from twitter, others would track as direct traffic, etc. All of that has now changed.
Like a gift from the attribution tracking gods, Twitter has updated their t.co URL shortener to always appear in GA as a referral source. And now all URLs used on twitter are filtered through t.co. All of them!
Now you can track Twitter traffic in Google Analytics with considerably more certainty and accuracy. Just look for t.co as a source in your referral reports, starting on August 17th. It sure will be nice to easily track all of your twitter conversions by looking at a single source, instead of having to look at a few areas, or just flat out guess. You've now gained the ability to see the direct value of your Twitter traffic.
Thanks Twitter!
No Comments yet, your thoughts are welcome. »Late last week, Google made some tweaks to the way Google Webmaster Tools is reporting links. In a move that has both please and confused webmasters, Google is now considering links from subdomains (as well as non-www and www versions) as internal links instead of external links as they were previously considered.
Webmasters are happy with the change because it means their internal links in Webmaster Tools are just a little bit cleaner and more accurate. Google had the following to say about the change:
Most people think of example.com and www.example.com as the same site these days, so we’re changing it such that now, if you add either example.com or www.example.com as a site, links from both the www and non-www versions of the domain will be categorized as internal links. We’ve also extended this idea to include other subdomains, since many people who own a domain also own its subdomains—so links from cats.example.com or pets.example.com will also be categorized as internal links for www.example.com.
The confusion was caused by an unclear answer as to whether or not this change only had an effect on Webmaster Tools data, or if it affected the ranking algorithm as well. Luckily, in a Google+ post yesterday, Google employee Pierre Far clarified that the change only affects the way data displays in Webmaster Tools. The start of his post was worded in an entertaining manner to be sure:
Dear webmasters: A lot of people have seen the recent announcement about the recent reorganization of backlinks in Webmaster Tools and are saying it's a reflection of a new way that Google handles links for ranking purposes.
Wrong.
So there you have it. More accurate linking data display in Google Webmaster Tools, and absolutely no effect on rankings due to the change. Have fun reviewing your updated reports!
No Comments yet, your thoughts are welcome. »
LinkedIn Advertising is another social media pay-per-click platform that allows you to reach your target market by using demographic targeting (similar to Facebook Advertising). LinkedIn’s self-serving advertising platform I am referring to is called LinkedIn Direct Ads. Where Facebook Advertising is typically more successful for ‘business-to-consumer’ (B2C) business models, LinkedIn Advertising is usually most successful with ‘business-to-business’ (B2B) business models.
Just like any other social media pay-per-click advertising model, it is very important to have a specific goal in mind before running a campaign. It is also just as important to understand your target market and the characteristics they have in common.
You are able to target any of the following demographics using LinkedIn Direct Ads:
- Company Size
- Job Function
- Industry
- Seniority
- Gender
- Age
- Geography
Obviously, the more granular you get, the fewer potential users you will reach!
The ads themselves are similar to Facebook, where you have text and can use a 50 pixel x 50 pixel image. I’d recommend using the image, as it will help your ads stand out and catch a user’s interest.
It’s important to track your LinkedIn advertising efforts. Since LinkedIn does not provide conversion tracking, make sure you create goals in Google Analytics and append the ads to track the traffic.
If you’re interested in testing out LinkedIn Advertising or other Pay Per Click Advertising options, contact Fathom today!
No Comments yet, your thoughts are welcome. »
