Blog Disclaimer
The posts published in this blog are collected from different blogs or websites written by various famous bloggers/writers. I have just collected these posts only. These posts are not written by me. All collected posts are the great stuffs.
Blog Disclaimer
All content provided/collected on this blog is for informational purposes only, it is not used for any commercial purpose. At the end of any post, the visitor can find the link of the original source.
Blog Disclaimer
At the end of any post, the visitor can find the link of the original source. These posts are only for further reference to review/study latter. It’s a request to all visitors; please go through the original post by clicking on the source given below/above of every post.
January 26, 2011
January 23, 2011
5 Social Media Tools for Entrepreneurs
I would like my post would be useful for entrepreneurs. So that I just want to suggest some of the social media tool for them with small description. These tools have been used by the webmaster, Internet marketing geeks and startup companies. It will be definitely worth for entrepreneurs knowing about social media tools.
1. Monitter :
When we are in startup stage, we need to know that what people thinking about our business. Getting feedback is much important for our further business plans. Monitter is a social media tool that grabs the real time Twitter tweets about your services or company from twitter. Use this tool to get updates from your customers or from online geeks.
2. Youtube:
One of the powerful video streaming web sites. Videos are playing vital role in business promotion. A video can represent the message of 10 articles. You have thought about how youtube could help for business? Rather than text, visual demo, faq, marketing ads are more powerful for business. Getting targetted audience for your business or services is much simpler with youtube since it has huge viewers in various niches.
3. MailChimp:
Email Marketing is old but still effective for business when it done well. MailChimp is the web email list manager which will let us create mail list, campaigns, and final report statistics. It will allow us to send to 500 subscribers free mails per month. Mailchimp is having wonderful API which helps us to integrate it with our own tools, application, content management system or CRM system.
4. Get Satisfaction:
Business may be at preliminary level or top level, customers are always king and more valuable to any kind of business. Bringing them right support at right time is more important for business. Get Satisfaction provides a community forum where you customers can ask questions and get answers and can find solution their problem at right time. Get Satisfaction is must have community management tool for your business.
5. Linkedin Network:
Popular professional networking site with the slogan of “ Relationship Matters “ which is 100% true in every business. Without strong relationship with your customers and partners, no one can reach success. Linked in network will help us to make strong bond with experts in our fields, start up companies, end users and community related to our business. Linkedin is offering this kind of services in Free and premium paid platforms.
Read the original story here -
5 Social Media Tools for Entrepreneurs | WebAppRater
1. Monitter :
When we are in startup stage, we need to know that what people thinking about our business. Getting feedback is much important for our further business plans. Monitter is a social media tool that grabs the real time Twitter tweets about your services or company from twitter. Use this tool to get updates from your customers or from online geeks.
2. Youtube:
One of the powerful video streaming web sites. Videos are playing vital role in business promotion. A video can represent the message of 10 articles. You have thought about how youtube could help for business? Rather than text, visual demo, faq, marketing ads are more powerful for business. Getting targetted audience for your business or services is much simpler with youtube since it has huge viewers in various niches.
3. MailChimp:
Email Marketing is old but still effective for business when it done well. MailChimp is the web email list manager which will let us create mail list, campaigns, and final report statistics. It will allow us to send to 500 subscribers free mails per month. Mailchimp is having wonderful API which helps us to integrate it with our own tools, application, content management system or CRM system.
4. Get Satisfaction:
Business may be at preliminary level or top level, customers are always king and more valuable to any kind of business. Bringing them right support at right time is more important for business. Get Satisfaction provides a community forum where you customers can ask questions and get answers and can find solution their problem at right time. Get Satisfaction is must have community management tool for your business.
5. Linkedin Network:
Popular professional networking site with the slogan of “ Relationship Matters “ which is 100% true in every business. Without strong relationship with your customers and partners, no one can reach success. Linked in network will help us to make strong bond with experts in our fields, start up companies, end users and community related to our business. Linkedin is offering this kind of services in Free and premium paid platforms.
Read the original story here -
5 Social Media Tools for Entrepreneurs | WebAppRater
Link Building and the 6 Principles of Persuasion
Actually, everyone is willing to link to your website, article, page, post or whatever; you just have to influence them into linking to you. The only problem here is that not everybody can be persuaded with the same arguments.
However, there are 6 effective principles of persuasion (developed by Robert Cialdini, explained on both Fuelnet and Advisor Today) that you can use to influence your link popularity in a positive way.
1. Reciprocation
The concept: “I’m obligated to give back to you what you first give to me.” But there’s more to reciprocation than just swapping links. Offering something else, such as a service, a discount, a product or advertising space can work like a charm. Even pointing out an error, typo or other mistake on a website can be used as a ‘trading material’. A return link or money aren’t the only trading options you’ve got, use your imagination and creativity!
Example of use: “When I wanted to visit link X on your website, I noticed that the page where it refers to no longer exists. Perhaps would be a good replacement for this link?”
2. Commitment and consistency
If someone has linked to you before, they’re probably do it again. You don’t have to ‘prove’ yourself anymore, you’ve already passed that barrier. Getting a second link (to a different URL) is much more easier now, so a higher success rate is guaranteed.
Example of use: “You’ve linked to our website before here-and-here. Perhaps you might enjoy our latest article, so-and-so, as well?“
3. Social proof
People are like sheep; they need leaders to follow. Preferably leaders they can trust. To quote Fuelnet “The two situations where this principle is most powerful are similarity, when someone wants to follow the lead of others; and uncertainty, when someone is unsure of what to do. Laugh tracks on comedy shows exist for this very reason.” Testimonials and other references are similar examples.
Example of use: “Like you’ve probably already read at BBC.co.uk (link) and CNN.com (link), we published an article about…”
4. Liking
Networking really pays off. I’m pretty sure that most of your friends and family don’t have the online authority that can help you to reach the top of the SERPs, so this is just another reason why chatting with folks from your industry is a positive thing.
Also, complimenting others with their website can help, but this approach got killed when almost every single spammer started their link request with ‘You have great website!’.
Example of use: “Hey buddy, did you see my latest article about so-and-so? ;)”
5. Authority
When brand XYZ launches a new product, attention will be hard to get. When Apple launches a new product, they’ll get lots of attention without even having to put effort into it. Whether it’s an iPhone or iCrap, it doesn’t matter. With an authority level like Apple’s, everything is news and linkworthy.
Also, when you’re promoting a big brand, it’s much easier to get something done. Requesting a link to Apple.com is far more easy than asking if someone can link to XYZ.com.
Example of use: “Brand X, world wide market leader, just released their new product Y. Read more about it at.”
6. Scarcity
This is where the good content comes in. Good content is hard to find, that’s why lots of people are willing to link to you if you can offer this. If you can provide something interesting that no one else has, you can expect the links pouring in.
Example of use: “We’ve released world breaking research results, which you can find here-and-here.”
Of course, using these principles of persuasion alone aren’t enough. It’s just like the 9 out of 10 SEO’s said; you need good content, but this simply isn’t enough. It’s the appropriate mix of all different factors like content, approach, research and persuasion that brings in the links.
Source: http://wiep.net/talk/link-building/link-buildin-principles-of-persuasion-influence/#ixzz1BvQgVTz7
However, there are 6 effective principles of persuasion (developed by Robert Cialdini, explained on both Fuelnet and Advisor Today) that you can use to influence your link popularity in a positive way.
1. Reciprocation
The concept: “I’m obligated to give back to you what you first give to me.” But there’s more to reciprocation than just swapping links. Offering something else, such as a service, a discount, a product or advertising space can work like a charm. Even pointing out an error, typo or other mistake on a website can be used as a ‘trading material’. A return link or money aren’t the only trading options you’ve got, use your imagination and creativity!
Example of use: “When I wanted to visit link X on your website, I noticed that the page where it refers to no longer exists. Perhaps
2. Commitment and consistency
If someone has linked to you before, they’re probably do it again. You don’t have to ‘prove’ yourself anymore, you’ve already passed that barrier. Getting a second link (to a different URL) is much more easier now, so a higher success rate is guaranteed.
Example of use: “You’ve linked to our website before here-and-here. Perhaps you might enjoy our latest article, so-and-so, as well?“
3. Social proof
People are like sheep; they need leaders to follow. Preferably leaders they can trust. To quote Fuelnet “The two situations where this principle is most powerful are similarity, when someone wants to follow the lead of others; and uncertainty, when someone is unsure of what to do. Laugh tracks on comedy shows exist for this very reason.” Testimonials and other references are similar examples.
Example of use: “Like you’ve probably already read at BBC.co.uk (link) and CNN.com (link), we published an article about…”
4. Liking
Networking really pays off. I’m pretty sure that most of your friends and family don’t have the online authority that can help you to reach the top of the SERPs, so this is just another reason why chatting with folks from your industry is a positive thing.
Also, complimenting others with their website can help, but this approach got killed when almost every single spammer started their link request with ‘You have great website!’.
Example of use: “Hey buddy, did you see my latest article about so-and-so? ;)”
5. Authority
When brand XYZ launches a new product, attention will be hard to get. When Apple launches a new product, they’ll get lots of attention without even having to put effort into it. Whether it’s an iPhone or iCrap, it doesn’t matter. With an authority level like Apple’s, everything is news and linkworthy.
Also, when you’re promoting a big brand, it’s much easier to get something done. Requesting a link to Apple.com is far more easy than asking if someone can link to XYZ.com.
Example of use: “Brand X, world wide market leader, just released their new product Y. Read more about it at
6. Scarcity
This is where the good content comes in. Good content is hard to find, that’s why lots of people are willing to link to you if you can offer this. If you can provide something interesting that no one else has, you can expect the links pouring in.
Example of use: “We’ve released world breaking research results, which you can find here-and-here.”
Of course, using these principles of persuasion alone aren’t enough. It’s just like the 9 out of 10 SEO’s said; you need good content, but this simply isn’t enough. It’s the appropriate mix of all different factors like content, approach, research and persuasion that brings in the links.
Source: http://wiep.net/talk/link-building/link-buildin-principles-of-persuasion-influence/#ixzz1BvQgVTz7
January 20, 2011
Landing Page Optimization
Online Marketers spend a good amount of time and money designing websites and campaigns to drive visitors to the site. When a visitor clicks though from a banner, marketers need to ensure that the visitors just doesn’t remain a visitor but becomes a customer. In order for a visitor to become a customer the value proposition needs to be clear and the landing page, the page visitors enter the site from, needs to provide a compelling reason for visitor to stay on that site and become a customer. The actual process of becoming a customer might involve few more pages on the sites but the landing page is the first impression that a visitor has about the site.
Marketers need to constantly optimize their landing pages (and other pages) to ensure they can get more and more visitors engaged and drive them though the conversion funnel.
The key to any landing page optimization campaign is to ignore your own biases and listen to your customers. Your customers are your best landing page designers. Their actions on the site tell you how they feel about your it along with what is working and what is not. They will tell you which landing page design is best convincing them to become customers or do what you want them to do.
Everything that you have on a page impacts visitors actions. Every little thing contributes the page’s success or failure. Which means, you can test pretty much everything on your web page. After testing for while you will figure out things that do make impact and things that do not have any significant impact and are not worth testing going forward. Examples of things that you can test are:
If I told you that I recently increased the conversion rate by 65%, just with few minor changes, will that get you excited? Won’t you like to have that kind of increase in your conversion rate? Do the math and find out why you should be testing right now. (I will share the example a little later)
Convinced? Ready to know how we can start testing?
Get your web analytics tool in action. As I have written in past on my blog, don’t just do reporting, analyze the data and see what your customers are telling you. Start testing the landing pages which are bleeding the most visitors, say your home page for example. If it is the top entry page and you see that it has a bounce rate higher than 30% then that might be the low hanging fruit that you might want to go after first.
The Process of Testing
A/B Testing:
A/B (or A/B/C/etc.) testing is the simple and easy way to explore the world of testing. A/B testing is a process of testing multiple versions (version A, B, C etc) of a page to see which page is better than others (statistically significant) in driving user take action that you want them to take e.g. drive user to signup for email newsletter.
In A/B testing you (the tool you implement on your site) randomly sends the visitors to one of the various versions of the pages. The tool then tracks the number of visitors and those who take the specified end action as defined by you based on your business goals.
Once enough visitors have been exposed to the test to get a statistically valid result, the tool will declare the winning page version. (Note: Depending on the complexity and goals of your business there might be more data that you will need to look into to determine if the winner declared by the tool is actual winner or not and if there are additional test you will need to run before you can find the winner.)
Multivariate Testing:
Multivariate testing is powerful way of testing specific elements within each page that you are optimizing. When your optimization tool declares a winner of an A/B test, it tells you which version of the page is best. It does not, however, tell you which elements within the winning page caused the increase in conversions. This is where multivariate testing can help.
In a multivariate test, you test multiple elements on a page (headlines, buttons, text, images) against different versions and combinations of those same elements. I know it sounds confusing, so let me give you a simple example:
Say you are testing a headline and a button. Headline 1 says, “Sign-up to get access now.” Version 2 of this headline might say, “Become a Member and Get Instant Access.” You might have version 1 of your button say “sign-up.” Version 2 could say “Get Access.”
Your multivariate test would test Version 1 of your headline with Version 1 of your button against version 1 of your headline with version 2 of your button, and so on for each of the possible combinations of headlines and buttons.
One of the major drawbacks of the Multivariate testing is that you need to have a lot of traffic to get statistically valid (accurate) test results. Depending on which tool you use, you will need a different amount of traffic. A/B testing does not require as much traffic for valid results.
I hope this helps get you started with optimizing your website.
Ready for an Example?
Here is an example of the page that I ran on RoommateHub.com.
Original Registration Page
Version 1 of Registration Page (Can you spot the differences between original and this version)
Google Website Optimizer Declares the Winner. 65% Increase in registrations, how cool is that.
There are few good books, websites, and other resources on the subject. Here are two books that I recommend:
Further Reading
Marketers need to constantly optimize their landing pages (and other pages) to ensure they can get more and more visitors engaged and drive them though the conversion funnel.
The key to any landing page optimization campaign is to ignore your own biases and listen to your customers. Your customers are your best landing page designers. Their actions on the site tell you how they feel about your it along with what is working and what is not. They will tell you which landing page design is best convincing them to become customers or do what you want them to do.
Everything that you have on a page impacts visitors actions. Every little thing contributes the page’s success or failure. Which means, you can test pretty much everything on your web page. After testing for while you will figure out things that do make impact and things that do not have any significant impact and are not worth testing going forward. Examples of things that you can test are:
- Headlines
- Images
- Text Size
- Font Color
- Place of images and text
- Call to Action
- Buttons/Text/Images – Size, Color, Font etc.
- Promotions – example: Does 20% of $100 works better than $20 off on $100?
If I told you that I recently increased the conversion rate by 65%, just with few minor changes, will that get you excited? Won’t you like to have that kind of increase in your conversion rate? Do the math and find out why you should be testing right now. (I will share the example a little later)
Convinced? Ready to know how we can start testing?
Get your web analytics tool in action. As I have written in past on my blog, don’t just do reporting, analyze the data and see what your customers are telling you. Start testing the landing pages which are bleeding the most visitors, say your home page for example. If it is the top entry page and you see that it has a bounce rate higher than 30% then that might be the low hanging fruit that you might want to go after first.
The Process of Testing
A/B Testing:
A/B (or A/B/C/etc.) testing is the simple and easy way to explore the world of testing. A/B testing is a process of testing multiple versions (version A, B, C etc) of a page to see which page is better than others (statistically significant) in driving user take action that you want them to take e.g. drive user to signup for email newsletter.
In A/B testing you (the tool you implement on your site) randomly sends the visitors to one of the various versions of the pages. The tool then tracks the number of visitors and those who take the specified end action as defined by you based on your business goals.
Once enough visitors have been exposed to the test to get a statistically valid result, the tool will declare the winning page version. (Note: Depending on the complexity and goals of your business there might be more data that you will need to look into to determine if the winner declared by the tool is actual winner or not and if there are additional test you will need to run before you can find the winner.)
Multivariate Testing:
Multivariate testing is powerful way of testing specific elements within each page that you are optimizing. When your optimization tool declares a winner of an A/B test, it tells you which version of the page is best. It does not, however, tell you which elements within the winning page caused the increase in conversions. This is where multivariate testing can help.
In a multivariate test, you test multiple elements on a page (headlines, buttons, text, images) against different versions and combinations of those same elements. I know it sounds confusing, so let me give you a simple example:
Say you are testing a headline and a button. Headline 1 says, “Sign-up to get access now.” Version 2 of this headline might say, “Become a Member and Get Instant Access.” You might have version 1 of your button say “sign-up.” Version 2 could say “Get Access.”
Your multivariate test would test Version 1 of your headline with Version 1 of your button against version 1 of your headline with version 2 of your button, and so on for each of the possible combinations of headlines and buttons.
One of the major drawbacks of the Multivariate testing is that you need to have a lot of traffic to get statistically valid (accurate) test results. Depending on which tool you use, you will need a different amount of traffic. A/B testing does not require as much traffic for valid results.
I hope this helps get you started with optimizing your website.
Ready for an Example?
Here is an example of the page that I ran on RoommateHub.com.
Original Registration Page
Version 1 of Registration Page (Can you spot the differences between original and this version)
Google Website Optimizer Declares the Winner. 65% Increase in registrations, how cool is that.
There are few good books, websites, and other resources on the subject. Here are two books that I recommend:
Further Reading
Ways To Get Inbound Links Using Social Media
As most SEO professionals know, the main factors in off-page optimization are the number and quality of inbound links to your site. According to an article in New York Magazine, inbound links are an 80% accurate predictor of traffic to your site too. That means if you want to rank in the search engines for your primary keyword phrases, you should focus on getting as many quality inbound links as you can.
These days, social media is more important than ever for getting inbound links. With several companies focusing on real-time search results (Google, Twitter, OneRiot), you can’t ignore the social aspect of SEO any longer. Here are 12 ways you can get more inbound links using social media:
The author of this article is Monica O’Brien
Read original post here - http://www.shimonsandler.com/12-ways-to-get-inbound-links-using-social-media/
These days, social media is more important than ever for getting inbound links. With several companies focusing on real-time search results (Google, Twitter, OneRiot), you can’t ignore the social aspect of SEO any longer. Here are 12 ways you can get more inbound links using social media:
Network with Blogs in Your Niche
Blogs are still the bread and butter of the social sphere. Search for blogs about your topic on Technorati and Alltop and provide valuable content those groups can link to. But don’t expect people to find you - make it happen!- Submit your best articles to blog carnivals - Blog carnivals are lists of related links that a blogger (the blog carnival host) posts to his or her blog. Go to http://blogcarnival.com to browse subject listings.
- Start your own link round-up - Saturday is a good day to post the best links of the week along with short summaries. Not only do you look resourceful, but you are helping your busy audience.
- Provide incentive for backlinks - In your round-up, you can include a section about people who have mentioned you or your blog. If you don’t do a round-up, start a press page and put every legitimate blog on there, big or small.
- Comment on other blogs - Most comment systems use a ìrel=nofollowî tag which tells search engines not to count the link in determining page rank; however, a link is a link, and the more you have, the more traffic you can build for your site. Tip: Instead of linking to your main domain name, link to an article on your site that is about the same subject you are commenting on.
Use Social Networking and Bookmarking Sites
Many bloggers share links to their favorite articles on a blog, miniblog or social network. Social proof via social networks is now getting heavily factored into search engine algorithms. When you are a part of these communities, you also have a better chance of finding new readers and weak ties.- Build up your channels of distribution - Get a Facebook fan page, a Twitter profile, and make friends with people in your Google Reader. Who cares if you only have 10 fans on Facebook? That’s 10 more people who are interested in hearing what you have to say, who could share the information with others or link back.
- Add buttons for the three big social networks - Facebook, Twitter, and Google Buzz. All three of them have buttons that allow people to share, tweet, and buzz your post almost instantly to their entire networks. Put these buttons near the top of your post for social proof and easy access.
- Focus on the three big social bookmarking sites - Digg, StumbleUpon, and Delicious. Look at content from your topic area that has gone popular on these sites, and try to emulate the style and the formatting. Fake it until you make it never worked better here!
- Expand your network as much as you can - Weak ties will rule in the future of search. Google now displays results from it’s Social Circle on the first page (at the bottom). You can’t afford to be a loner on the web anymore!
- Create a group of like-minded bloggers to bookmark each other’s content - You can find bloggers in your niche who are interested and manage this with a Google Group where everyone can send out weekly requests.
Use Different Forms of Content for Social Pollination
- PDF your blog posts - Share the PDF on sites like SlideShare, Scribd, DocStoc, and Issuu and include a link back to the original blog post. You never know who might see them and choose to link back to your site.
- Turn your blog points into a video or a podcast - You can record a video in one shot with a webcam, and you can record and edit podcasts for free with Audacity. You already wrote the script, now create more content with it! Push it out onto sites like YouTube and services like iTunes with a link back to the original blog post.
- Publish your content on the iPad, the iPhone, and the Amazon Kindle - It’s completely free. The instructions are here, here, and here, respectively.
The author of this article is Monica O’Brien
Read original post here - http://www.shimonsandler.com/12-ways-to-get-inbound-links-using-social-media/
9 Step SEO Checkup Using Google Webmaster Tools
If you’re an SEO beginner, Google Webmaster Tools (also known as GWT, if my fingers get lazy) is a great place to start a site tuneup. If you’re buried in SEO minutiae and need to pull together some intelligent, actionable to-do items for your site, you could do a lot worse than signing in at Google.com/webmasters/tools. Here’s my quick guide to an SEO checkup, GWT-style:
Duplicate content is a long-standing SEO bugaboo. Use the HTML Suggestions report to help diagnose duplication problems.
Remember: Links are votes. Make sure the most important pages on your site are getting the most votes. If the ‘Terms of use’ page is the most popular, something’s probably wrong.
Read the full and original story here - 9 Step SEO Checkup Using Google Webmaster Tools
1. Go Looking For Trouble
First, fix what’s broke. Use the Crawl Errors report as a great way to get a head start.2. Find Duplicates Duplicates
Haha. Get it? Duplicates twice… it’s funny… sniff. I crack myself up.Duplicate content is a long-standing SEO bugaboo. Use the HTML Suggestions report to help diagnose duplication problems.
3. Find Crawl Depth Problems
In a perfect world, you want Google to crawl 100% of your site’s visible pages. Use the crawl stats report to see how close you’re getting to this ideal.4. Check Your Relevance
Now for some really neat-o stuff. Click Your site on the web::Keywords and you can see what Google thinks are the most common keywords on your site.5. Look At Rankings
Knowing what people type, and which searches get you clicks, is invaluable search intelligence. Use the Search queries report to gain great insight. Click Your site on the web::Search queries6. Gain Insight Into Link Strategy
Find out what links Google thinks are important: Click Your site on the web::Links to your site. Then:- Look at ‘How your data is linked’ to review anchor text and see if you need to diversify;
- Look at ‘Who links the most’ to see inlinking domains; and
- Check ‘Your most linked content’ to find the ‘stickiest’ cotent on your site.
7. Check Your Site’s Structure
Take a look at Your site on the web::Internal links. Review which pages are getting the most links from within your site.Remember: Links are votes. Make sure the most important pages on your site are getting the most votes. If the ‘Terms of use’ page is the most popular, something’s probably wrong.
8. Check Messages
Make sure you click Messages and see if Google’s alerted you to any big changes. Examples include a sudden increase in the number of URLs found by Googlebot or possible site outages. Google doesn’t go out of its way to tell you if there’s a problem. So, if you see a message from them, you need to pay attention.9. Check ‘Fetch As Googlebot’
Got a page that’s stubbornly refusing to show up in the Google index? Click Labs::Fetch as Googlebot. Type in the URL of the pesky page and run the tool.Read the full and original story here - 9 Step SEO Checkup Using Google Webmaster Tools
January 19, 2011
Identify Problems & Opportunities On Your Website by Using Google Analytics
I was getting to grips with another aspect of Google Analytics today, I was actually trying to see if you could profile customers based on their visitor data – I’ve not quite worked this out yet, but I did find some very useful insights which I wanted to share.
First up I was checking out the biggest client that I manage, I decided I wanted to get to grips of what their visitors are like, so I started by segmenting by location, whilst I was doing this I found the perfect tool for identifying significant differences in data, the comparison graph:
As you can see from above, visitors from the UK are more likely to convert. This wasn’t that useful really though, as I expected this to be the case, since they are UK retailer! So I decided to drill down to the city level…
Most Search Marketers will know that the location is unlikely to be 100% accurate – in fact, far from it. It appears as though Google is recognising two London’s, my theory is that one is actually visitors from London, and the other is more likely to be visitors from anywhere in England with an ISP in London – although I could well be wrong, for purposes of accuracy we’ll have to discount visitors in this instance. So the biggest opportunity we can see is that those from Edinburgh are 30% more likely to convert than average! This could be a good indication that the retailer opens an actual retail outlet in Edinburgh as demand there appears higher for their products.
Ok, so I had something interesting, but knowing which city they are from isn’t that useful at the moment, so I decided to look at operating system to see what kind of performance the iPad was getting on this website:
This brought some very interesting and useful stats, first up, Macintosh users are converting 25% better than the average site user, useful to know. Then I look at the iPad, not great, it obviously doesn’t have an iPad specific design, but since traffic from iPad users is less than 1%, this isn’t a big deal. Then you notice the iPhone, ok so iPhone is giving only 1% of traffic, but its conversion rate is significantly below the average – perhaps this means a mobile version of the site is worth creating?
So this got me thinking, perhaps I should check out other clients and see if Macintosh users generally convert better – this didn’t really give any correlation, I imagine because of all the different browsers, so I checked them out by browser type:
It looks like Safari, Chrome and IE are performing well, FireFox is underperforming a little, so I drilled down further to see what versions might be causing problems:
Now I’ll admit, I’m certainly no expert when it comes to design & usability, but I’d probably check out the site in version 3.6.8 and 3.6.6 to see if there is any problem. Next I decided to take a look at the connection speed:
Most of this looked fine, as you would expect dialup doesn’t convert as well – so perhaps the site needs speeding up a bit. But then I noticed that OC3 connections were 56% less likely to convert, why was this? I didn’t know what OC3, but James told me it was fibre optics, so we segmented it again by location – all in the UK, so then we change it to service provider and got this:
At this point we both sighed in aknowledgement. AOL. That explained a lot! (For those of you that aren’t familiar with AOL, they were marketed towards those who are unfamiliar with computers). So it seemed from this that we could conclude that those that are less able at using computers are less likely to buy – this may be because they aren’t comfortable ordering on the Internet or perhaps they are having difficulty using the website – certainly an area worth looking into.
Anyways, try going through your reports with the comparison graph, its a great way to begin to understand your visitors and you may find a useful opportunity such as an uncatered for market or a problems with a particular browser.
Combining Segments
Once you’ve done that you can combine segments – I’ve not quite worked out the best way to do this yet, but I’m working on it. I’ve created what I call a “Web Rookie” – this is basically a visitor running Windows 7 with Internet Explorer 8 (basically the default package you get when you buy a PC). This isn’t a great example of a segment or “persona” and I think once I get better at this I can develop better ones. This persona gets an average conversion rate of 0.51% compared to the site average of 0.47% – which means they are 8.5% more likely to convert:
If anyone has a lot of experience of creating persona’s from Analytics, I’d be very interested to hear your comments/opinions, I’m particularly interested in how people do it without making assumptions about their data (e.g. persona’s are data driven).
First up I was checking out the biggest client that I manage, I decided I wanted to get to grips of what their visitors are like, so I started by segmenting by location, whilst I was doing this I found the perfect tool for identifying significant differences in data, the comparison graph:
As you can see from above, visitors from the UK are more likely to convert. This wasn’t that useful really though, as I expected this to be the case, since they are UK retailer! So I decided to drill down to the city level…
Most Search Marketers will know that the location is unlikely to be 100% accurate – in fact, far from it. It appears as though Google is recognising two London’s, my theory is that one is actually visitors from London, and the other is more likely to be visitors from anywhere in England with an ISP in London – although I could well be wrong, for purposes of accuracy we’ll have to discount visitors in this instance. So the biggest opportunity we can see is that those from Edinburgh are 30% more likely to convert than average! This could be a good indication that the retailer opens an actual retail outlet in Edinburgh as demand there appears higher for their products.
Ok, so I had something interesting, but knowing which city they are from isn’t that useful at the moment, so I decided to look at operating system to see what kind of performance the iPad was getting on this website:
This brought some very interesting and useful stats, first up, Macintosh users are converting 25% better than the average site user, useful to know. Then I look at the iPad, not great, it obviously doesn’t have an iPad specific design, but since traffic from iPad users is less than 1%, this isn’t a big deal. Then you notice the iPhone, ok so iPhone is giving only 1% of traffic, but its conversion rate is significantly below the average – perhaps this means a mobile version of the site is worth creating?
So this got me thinking, perhaps I should check out other clients and see if Macintosh users generally convert better – this didn’t really give any correlation, I imagine because of all the different browsers, so I checked them out by browser type:
It looks like Safari, Chrome and IE are performing well, FireFox is underperforming a little, so I drilled down further to see what versions might be causing problems:
Now I’ll admit, I’m certainly no expert when it comes to design & usability, but I’d probably check out the site in version 3.6.8 and 3.6.6 to see if there is any problem. Next I decided to take a look at the connection speed:
Most of this looked fine, as you would expect dialup doesn’t convert as well – so perhaps the site needs speeding up a bit. But then I noticed that OC3 connections were 56% less likely to convert, why was this? I didn’t know what OC3, but James told me it was fibre optics, so we segmented it again by location – all in the UK, so then we change it to service provider and got this:
At this point we both sighed in aknowledgement. AOL. That explained a lot! (For those of you that aren’t familiar with AOL, they were marketed towards those who are unfamiliar with computers). So it seemed from this that we could conclude that those that are less able at using computers are less likely to buy – this may be because they aren’t comfortable ordering on the Internet or perhaps they are having difficulty using the website – certainly an area worth looking into.
Anyways, try going through your reports with the comparison graph, its a great way to begin to understand your visitors and you may find a useful opportunity such as an uncatered for market or a problems with a particular browser.
Combining Segments
Once you’ve done that you can combine segments – I’ve not quite worked out the best way to do this yet, but I’m working on it. I’ve created what I call a “Web Rookie” – this is basically a visitor running Windows 7 with Internet Explorer 8 (basically the default package you get when you buy a PC). This isn’t a great example of a segment or “persona” and I think once I get better at this I can develop better ones. This persona gets an average conversion rate of 0.51% compared to the site average of 0.47% – which means they are 8.5% more likely to convert:
If anyone has a lot of experience of creating persona’s from Analytics, I’d be very interested to hear your comments/opinions, I’m particularly interested in how people do it without making assumptions about their data (e.g. persona’s are data driven).
About writer - David Whitehouse
David has honed his skills as an SEO and has become the "go to guy" for Google Analytics. He's a passionate Internet marketeer and he enjoys helping clients maximise their potential.» Read more by David Whitehouse
Original post here -
Using Google Analytics To Identify Problems & Opportunities On Your Website
Google Analytics Metrics
Using Google Analytics reports requires you to understand Google Analytics metric defintions. However, when using web analytics you should not focus on useless web site metrics. Google Analytics Metrics include:
Google Analytics measures visits and visitors to your site.
Visits (or session) are the unique sessions initiated by all the visitors. Google Analytics’ time-out period for a visit is 30 minutes.
The difference between a visit and a visitor in Google Analytics’ definitions is:
Google Analytics reports visits and visitors to your site.
Pageviews are the number of times a web page (an analyst-definable unit of content) is viewed. Additional pageview counts can be triggered via visiting the same web page multiple times by the same visitor, when the visitor:
Visits vs Pageviews
Visits are the number of times your visitors has been to your website, while pageviews are the number of times web pages are viewed.
Visits and pageviews form the pageviews per visit metric: The number of page views divided by number of visits in a given time period.
New Visitors vs Returning Visitors
Google Analytics can identify new visitors and returning visitors.
Google Analytics records bounces and exits.
What are exits, exit pages and exit rate?
Time on Page is the time a visitor spent on a particular web page or set of pages. It is calculated by subtracting the initial view time for a particular page from the initial view time for a subsequent page. So time on page does not apply to exit pages of your website.
Time on site is the time a visitor spends on your site.
Clicks vs Visits
Clicks are the number of times a user has clicked on your ads, for example your Google Adwords ads. In Google Analytics reports, often the number of clicks do not match the number of visits.
Google Analytics reports more visits than Adwords reports clicks, when:
Other Resources to Google Analytics Metrics Definitions
Google officially explains the web analytics metrics definitions of visits, clicks, visitors, page views, unique page views, bounce rates, exits, new visits, time on page and time on site.
You can read original post here - Google Analytics Metrics
- Visit
- Pageview
- Unique Pageview
- Pageview per Visit
- Visitor
- New Visitor
- Returning Visitor
- Bounce Rate
- Exit Rate
- Time on Page
- Time on Site
- Click
Google Analytics measures visits and visitors to your site.
Visits (or session) are the unique sessions initiated by all the visitors. Google Analytics’ time-out period for a visit is 30 minutes.
- If a user leaves your site and returns within 30 minutes, the user’s subsequent activities on your site will be attributed to the original session.
- If a user is inactive on your website for 30 minutes or more, the original session will be terminated.
The difference between a visit and a visitor in Google Analytics’ definitions is:
- The initial session by a user regardless of date range is an additional visit and an additional visitor.
- Any future sessions from the same user during the selected time period are counted as additional visits, but not as additional visitors.
Google Analytics reports visits and visitors to your site.
Pageviews are the number of times a web page (an analyst-definable unit of content) is viewed. Additional pageview counts can be triggered via visiting the same web page multiple times by the same visitor, when the visitor:
- Reloads after reaching the web page.
- Navigates to a different webpage and then returns to the original webpage.
Visits vs Pageviews
Visits are the number of times your visitors has been to your website, while pageviews are the number of times web pages are viewed.
Visits and pageviews form the pageviews per visit metric: The number of page views divided by number of visits in a given time period.
New Visitors vs Returning Visitors
Google Analytics can identify new visitors and returning visitors.
- A new visitor is a user that visits your site for the first time.
- A returning visitor is a user that has previously browsed your website.
Google Analytics records bounces and exits.
What are exits, exit pages and exit rate?
- Exits are the number of users that leave your site.
- Exit page is the last page on your site accessed during a visit.
- Exit rate is the percentage of site exits that occurred from a webpage or set of webpages. Exit rate will always be identical to the number of visits when applied over your entire site.
- Bounces are the number of single-page visits to your site, regardless of the number of times the page is viewed.
- Bounce rate is the percentage of single-page visits to your site – Visits in which the user leaves your site from the entrance page.
Time on Page is the time a visitor spent on a particular web page or set of pages. It is calculated by subtracting the initial view time for a particular page from the initial view time for a subsequent page. So time on page does not apply to exit pages of your website.
Time on site is the time a visitor spends on your site.
Clicks vs Visits
Clicks are the number of times a user has clicked on your ads, for example your Google Adwords ads. In Google Analytics reports, often the number of clicks do not match the number of visits.
Google Analytics reports more visits than Adwords reports clicks, when:
- AdWords automatically filters invalid clicks (due to Adwords click fraud), but Analytics reports all visits to your website.
- A visitor clicks on your ad, and then during a different session returns to your site through a bookmark or visits your site directly. Google Analytics reports multiple visits as the referral information from the original visit is retained, but Adwords reports one click.
- A visitor may click your ad multiple times during a session, AdWords records multiple clicks but Google Analytics reports the separate pageviews as one visit.
- A visitor may click on your ad, but closes his browser before your web page fully loads, Google Analytics does not recognize the visit, but Adwords records the click.
- A visitor with either javascript or cookies disabled clicks on your ad, Google Analytics cannot record this visit, but AdWords reports this click.
- Redirects in landing pages prevent Google Analytics tracking code from loading, but Adwords records the click.
- Adwords auto-tagging is turned off and the destination URLs do not contain manually tagged campaign tracking variables, the visits (that come through Adwords) are recorded as Google Organic visits instead of Google CPC visits.
Other Resources to Google Analytics Metrics Definitions
Google officially explains the web analytics metrics definitions of visits, clicks, visitors, page views, unique page views, bounce rates, exits, new visits, time on page and time on site.
You can read original post here - Google Analytics Metrics
