As we mentioned a while back, AuthorityLabs is our favorite new rank-checking software, and the most effective agency solution we’ve seen on the market. AuthorityLabs is great for a number of reasons, it’s reliable, doesn’t hide the reality of localized SERP results, and doesn’t bog down your company (or home) networks.
But we’ve talked about all that before, what’s new that deserves a second post?
Web Analytics is a software that, once implemented into the code of a website, allows a website owner to track visitor movement such as pageviews, ecommerce transactions, pages visited, and time spent on site. It also allows website owners to track which online marketing mediums are driving traffic to their site. These are just some of the capabilities that an analytics software can offer. There are many Analytics software programs available; some more robust than others. Read More
Two weeks ago, Google held its annual GAAC, WOAC and USAC Summit in Mountain View, California. Two representatives from 6S attended and got the scoop on all of the new features being rolled out for Google Analytics and Website Optimizer.
First a little bit of background. Back in 2007, 6S Marketing was the second company in Canada to be designated as Google Analytics Authorized Consultants (GAAC). Then in October 2008, 6S was appointed as official Website Optimizer Authorized Consultants (WOAC). Today, we are one of five Canadian companies who have the dual certification.
It’s all change at Google Analytics. Today saw the roll out of a range of new features. These new updates have been released under the catchy tag line of Powerful. Flexible. Intelligent. However what does this fancy marketing speak really mean? Is it possible that we are seeing a re-positioning of Google Analytics?
Well maybe. Originally aimed at the low level user who wanted to have free easy to use site statistics, Google has always positioned GA as the solution for the small to medium level user. However with the roll out of these new features Google may just be looking to capture the bigger fish! And who would blame them? With the acquisition of Omniture by Adobe earlier this month maybe they see an opportunity to attract the more enterprise level users. Read More
Tired of having a huge amount of data in your Analytics program and not knowing what to do with it? Join leading Analytics author and evangelist Avinash Kaushik for his upcoming webinar: 3 Things To Die For: Web Analytics Unleashed taking place on Thursday, July 17th at 9 am PDT.
In this webinar, Avinash will cover three specific areas you need to focus on to get the highest possible ROI from you Web Analytics investment, including:
An added bonus: All attendees qualify to win 1 of 5 autographed copies of Avinash’s top-rated book, “Web Analytics: An Hour a Day”.
Avinash Kaushik is Google’s analytics evangelist, and is also the co-founder and chief education officer of Market Motive and is on the board of directors of University of California Irvine and several companies.
So make the most of your Analytics investment and register for the Web Analytics Unleashed Webinar!
Do your website visitors know how to easily navigate your website?
Are potential customers dropping off and going elsewhere because your site is confusing?
Our Website Usability Services will give you these answers and more about what visitors are actually doing, or not doing, on your website.
A Website Usability project focuses on two factors:
• The actual audience of who is using your site and how they are interacting with it;
• And how user friendly your site is for your audience.
Focusing on these two factors helps us to better understand, or help you develop, clear and measurable goals for your site, undercover what challenges users are facing, and find ways to optimize your site’s design, interface, and architecture.
Many of our clients have been working on their website long before we come on board. They know every link and every page of their website. They think their website is perfect and users should be able to find exactly what they need easily. However, sometimes they forget that the users of their website do not know the website inside-out like they do, and may have difficulty navigating the site. This can result in potential customers leaving the site before making a purchase.
This is where website usability with our client’s is important. We can use it to uncover which parts of the site are most/least used pages of the site, where users have trouble with navigation, and any design flaws that may have been overlooked. It’s cheaper to correct these problems earlier rather than later.
After we know who the site’s audience is, we can begin looking at the best ways to target them. There are so many ways to market your business online, including pay-per-click services, Google AdWords campaigns, and viral marketing sites like Facebook or YouTube, to name a few. Not every online marketing strategy will work for every business, so it’s our job to determine which techniques will effectively engage your website users and convert them into customers.
Visit our website usability services page to find out more about how we can help your website convert more customers.
There is so much data available in Google Analytics (GA) that it can be difficult to decide where to start with exploring the metrics. Traditionally analytics focus was placed upon the more commonly measured metrics such as visitors, page views and subsequent conversion for those visits to action. In my opinion it is completely ambiguous to measure conversion against “industry standards”. How do you ever compare the loose term “conversion” to other category websites when marketing efforts always differ, brand awareness comes into play, and there is a multitude of conversion funnels that can occur from one web property to another? For example, conversion to form submission, conversion to sale, conversion to pdf download, conversion to login etc… the list goes on…
Recently Google released benchmarking functionality within GA. Benchmarking is still in beta, but is accessible through all Google Analytics Accounts under the visitors tab in the GA interface. Benchmarking allows users to compare their core site metrics with websites of similar size and content categories. Finally a legitimate “industry standard” to measure against! Here at 6S Marketing in Vancouver we have found this quick reference ability invaluable. 6S Marketing works with many great clients in the hotel and accommodations industry throughout the region. It is so refreshing to now have the ability to measure the performance of our client sites against the other websites in the industry. Comparison metrics include “visits”, “bounce rate”, “page views”, “average time on site”, “pages per visit” and “new visits”.
My personal favorite is “bounce rate”. I have traditionally found this metric difficult to gage and act upon as it so very dependant on industry and the nature of the site. For example – How interactive is your home page? Is the content fresh and engaging? Are you driving completely qualified visitors to your site? Do your landing pages cater specifically to the content needs of your audience? Etc…
The benchmarking beta is a fantastic way to dictate if you need continued focus on improving bounce rate on site, or if you are meeting the potential of your site.
As Google Analytics evolves we are seeing more and more quick reference functions being built into the tool. Many of my favorite functions are still in beta, namely the Graph By [fig 1 below] functionality where you can view trends by day, week or month (such a seemly simple feature but has made life much easier since it came along). Another really cool feature worth checking out is the metric comparison feature [fig 2 below]. More and more we are seeing features coming out of beta. Thank you to Google for continually innovating and becoming increasingly responsive to the feedback from the Google Analytics Authorized Consultant (GAAC) community.
Good reading:
Avinash Kaushik (Google Evangelist) talks realistically about bounce rates in his blog Occam’s Razor. http://www.kaushik.net/avinash/2007/08/standard-metrics-revisited-3-bounce-rate.html
Also Wikipedia as ever is a good resource to start research in and around any topic http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bounce_Rate
