Facebook your Blog
October 31, 2007
I’ve been running a facebook account for months now and some plugins that Facebook offers really are very cool and interesting. Recently I added “Blog Friends” to my facebook account that allows your facebook account to syndicate your blog feed so that any postings made by your network of friends and your own blog can be viewed on facebook. As another way to get the word out about your Blog, Blog Friends is well worth looking at in order to grow your blog’s readership.
Blogging for a Niche: Rethink your Blog Categories
October 24, 2007
Since I started the PureWebAnalytics blog portion of this site the number of categories has grown from a couple to about 22 or 23 categories. I realized that a lot of truly great blog like a truly great restaurant doesn’t have a menu of 50 different items but rather a smaller menu that follows a central theme.
So when you think about your blog and the impact that you want to have you need to focus it in a specific way that benefits your audience, their needs and your ability to produce ongoing content. The last thing you want to do is have a blog about everything. First off, you’ll confuse your audience because they won’t know what to expect from you on a daily basis and secondly you won’t retain readers because of the first point
I’ve managed to streamline PureWebAnalytics Blog down to…
- General
- SEO
- Tips, Tricks and Tools
- Usability
- Web Analytics
- Web Design Resources
- Web Development
- Web Intelligence
- PureWebAnalytics News
Happy Blogging and remember to “keep it simple” when you are writing your blog.
Luc
Google Analytics plugin for Your WordPress site
October 23, 2007
Analytics is all about knowing your visitors, their actions and behaviours and what you plan to do to optimize the website for them. Because so many people today run blogs of various genres it only makes sense that someone would develop a plugin for a standard blog platform like WordPress. PureWebAnalytics is built using WordPress and PHPList currently and I’ve been using WordPress for about the last year and a bit.
As you may or may not know WordPress has some excellent plug-ins to enhance your individual experience with WordPress. If you’ve used Google Analytics in the past and run a WordPress site then you will want to have a look at the Google Analytics for WordPress Plug-in developed by Joost de Valk. It’s worth a look if you are looking to incorporate Google Analytics into your WordPress site. Happy Analysing!
Luc
New & Improved Google Analytics Features
October 18, 2007
I was reading Avinash’s Blog today about a great little article that he wrote called “Kick Butt with Internal Site Search Analytics“. Avinash wrote a book a short while ago that explains everything you need or ever wanted to know about Web Analytics called “Web Analytics: An Hour a Day” and he is a leading authority in the Web Analytics field.
So what is “Internal Site Search Analytics” anyways? Well simply put, it is the analysis of searches that people do on your website. With more sites being dynamic these days searching is a common main function that allows users to get the information they need quicker. Naturally building intelligence about what your viewers/customers want allows you to better optimize the site to their needs and wants. Google Analytics now allows for this. Enjoy the article!
Conversion Paths and Funnels Explained
October 17, 2007
Anything that a user does on a website is concerned an “Action”. If a website or a function on a website is poorly designed then the website owner pays for it in a number of ways most notably conversions. A few years ago it was okay to say “my customers will find their way on my website” but websites are really the applied study of how the general public uses technology or the study of human behavior that allows you to develop intelligence and improve the website through a series of optimizations.
From Paths to Funnels and how they convert
A Conversion Path can most easily be explained like this. It is a path from the landing page to the target action that is to be performed by your customer.
So let’s say that you want to sell someone the latest Monster Truck DVD, you’ve setup your ad campaign promoting the sale of this wonderful DVD and now you’ve got traffic coming to your website. Like a traffic cop, how are you going to direct them quickly and easily so that they get your special offer and you get their business? Well you can try to learn HTML, PHP, CSS, and other fun languages to rebuild and optimize your website or you’ll hire someone to do it and maybe they’ll understand this then again who knows. Most web designers may put a little thought into how their design is used but if you are running an online business then you are not just worried about the design but also satisfying your customer’s needs, suppliers orders, paying the bills, and that’s not even figuring into the management of the PPC campaign you used to get the visitors to the site.
A Conversion Funnel is the overall view of the success or failure of how people navigate and use your web pages, where they abandon the action and from there you can develop your thoughts as to why they left your site and went to your competition’s website and the numbers (statistics) related to the process.
This is why web design, development and optimization become an ongoing issue because as you build intelligence about your customers you need to fix and optimize your website so that you can increase ROI, profits and revenues.
