Archive for the ‘Google Analytics’ Category:
Google recently released a new feature to their Web arsenal to assist businesses become more competitive and their customer service more transparent – Google SideWiki.
Google SideWiki http://www.google.com/sidewikiallows users to sign into their Google account and leave unmoderated comments and various other information about your company and staff. In turn your Google search rankings will be affected by the quality of comments.
The negative side to Side Wiki at the moment is the lack of ability to moderate spam and malicious comments in a timely fashion. Users also have the ability to send thier comments via Twitter, FaceBook and email.
Whilst there is a Google Terms and Conditions to make comments, there is no automated manner to see comments in real time. Organisations should check for new comments at least once a day. If your site has heavy traffic then you should adjust the amount of times per day accordingly.
Within days of Side Wiki being released users are making malicious and rude comments on some of the larger more well known brands such as Microsoft, Apple and WalMart.
Our advise is to sign up to the Google Webmaster Tools and make an introduction comment on your SideWiki thus allowing your comment to always be at the top of all the other comments. You should also update your Google Profile and add as many details as possible.
Google is offering businesses the opportunity to get $75 of free advertising on Google sites. The offer is only open to new Google advertising accounts.
To see if the offer is available in your country and for further details, visit the default Google page for your country then follow it with a /stimulus .
For example, New Zealand businesses visit http://www.google.co.nz/stimulus .
To fully make the most of this great opportunity to experiment with online marketing we sugest you use all of the Google tools available to select key words and tips on writing your adverts. We also advise to use Google Analytics on your web site.
Once you have the free advertising running on Google, you will need to proactively manage adverts to ensure you can adjust to changes in behaviour.
Some web companies consist of individuals or teams of people with only one skill set. This skill set is usually web site design. By this we mean individuals or teams who can make a site look visually appealing without any consideration for security, search engine rankings, who visits your site and where/why they leave and sometimes even navigation of your site.
While the look of your site is important, there are also a number of technical considerations to ensure you gain maximum benefits from a web site. There is no point having a nice looking web site if no one can find it on the Internet and you have no idea about how many visitors your site receives.
A web designer should not be responsible for the technical tasks and likewise the technical team should not be responsible for the visual design of your site. There should also be a search engine optimisation/online marketing person in the team.
Typically a web design company will tell you that you must host your web site on their servers for maximum returns. They neglect to inform you that the maximum returns are not for you the customer but for the web design company itself in terms of revenue gathering.
If your design company use a proprietary system that allows you to make updates to your web site, then you will essentially be stuck with your company for ever. Make sure your design company use an open source system that can be moved from one server to another.
An example of the need to move will be if your web design company cease to exist, prices are raised high due to the monopoly or you become unhappy with the customer services provided.
Often Web design companies resell hosting space on behalf of a dedicated web hosting company and usually at a greater price than you could pay directly for the service from the hosting company. If this is the case, be aware that there could be long delays in gaining customer support – if any support at all. Many resellers offer no or very little technical support.
The same is true for your domain name. Many web design companies offer to register your domain name so you do not have to worry about the technical issues. If you can read and write English then there are no technical issues except maybe writing the name of the server where your web site is at. Something like ns3.netmania.co.nz . Reputable hosting companies have this information available on their web site or freely offer the information.
Some companies whom register your domain name will add their contact details to your domain name in the technical, and admin fields. But some will also add their details to the registrant (domain name owner) field. Hence you will not own your company domain name.
To check your .nz domain name visit http://www.dnc.org.nz . If you do not own your own domain name our advise is to talk with the company that registered your domain name first. If you can not solve the issue there, there are solutions at the www.dnc.org.nz web site.
With the current recession we have seen a large increase in small businesses creating an online presence with e-commerce web sites often selling products which would be better suited to having an information web site as opposed to directly selling products online, or at least set up to do so.
A great deal of small business e-commerce web sites are built in a pre packaged system – more often then not it is oscommerce because of its powerful features and simplicity to install and customise.
More often than not, installing such a system such as oscommerce and making it visually appealing is where the web developer stops.
As a customer you should know prior to any work commencing:
- Is your product sellable online or is it better with an information web site
- Does the site comply with local laws
- What “Ecommerce Best Practice” steps have been taken, ie Returns, Payment methods etc
- Will each page have a unique Title ?
- How will each product appear in search engines
- Are the sites links human readable ?
- What are the benefits of the SEO add ons ?
- Advertising strategies if any
- Social Media strategies if any
- How is customer feedback and complaints handled ?
- What directories will your site appear in ?
- What other SEO tasks will be implemented that ensure your site and products will appear in search engines.
- How will you know where your visitors enter and exit your site?
- What analytical software will be used for your site ?
About two weeks ago Microsoft launched their new new search engine called Bing – http://www.bing.com. One the surface it is simple and attractive to look at. It also has some familiar search options that we see in Google. It is still not yet scientifically proven how effective Bing is, nor if it will be a real competitor to Google. We do know that Bing is already taking a sizeable part of the market share away from Yahoo!.
As web site owners and especially if you have an ecommerce site, you need to know where your traffic is comming from to assist your strategy of investment, adverts, Search Engine Optimisation etc. This is usually done with software such as Google Analytics or default software in your CPanel of your web hosting.
Within the popular Google Analytics, Bing will appear in your statistics only as a referring site. We want to share with you this quick fix so that Google Analytics can incorporate traffic from Bing under the Default Search Engines list.
In your code on your site you will need to add this line
pageTracker._addOrganic(“bing”, “q”);.
The Google Analytics page and further details are here. When Google release the completed patch we will notify you and give any tips and instructions that are required.
