Web Usability Project: Marriott Resort Vacations Landing Page Optimization
May 12, 2008
The Problem: The customer wants to be able to show different pages of content on the same page without reloading and make it a seamless experience for the user.
The Solution: Loading different pages of content using a javascript slider effect so that the page never needs to be reloaded and also making it a much smoother customer experience for users.
Live Site: http://www.ctravelhosting.com/marriott/
Multi-page Checkout vs. One Page Checkout – Time is money
May 7, 2008
In the e-commerce world, much like any other world, time is money. A great deal of e-commerce sites are built in such a way where you search for a product, click to “proceed to checkout” and then you enter the checkout process where you sometimes have to create a profile before you are able to buy the product you are interested in and then you have to enter your delivery information, what type of shipping you would like and then you credit card you would like to pay with and then lastly process the transaction.
Sounds tiring and I wonder if customers give up at certain points during the checkout. I can personally say that I have decided not to buy a product online before because they made it too hard to buy the product so what makes your customers so different? It’s just a little “food for thought” when you are viewing your sales funnels and cart abandonment rate and wondering why are customers dropping off at certain points in the online sales process. Check out the One Page checkout…
Luc
Using Internal Site Search in Google Analytics
March 27, 2008
In an article that I wrote back in February of this year entitled “Calculating Internal Site Search Metrics in Google Analytics” I talked about various metrics that Google Analytics uses for its Site Search feature. I decided to write a follow up article to discuss actually creating an internal site search that Google Analytics can track.
Internal Site Search is an interesting concept that allows, you, as the website owner to view the behaviours of visitors to your website when they search on your web site. It’s another useful tool that is open to anyone who has the time and wants to understand how their customers, visitors and audience in general use their website’s search capabilities.
In order to use internal site search you need to enable this feature in Google Analytics by taking the following steps…
- Login to your Google Analytics Account
- Click “Edit” beside the website profile you’d like to add internal site searching on
- Select “Do search my website” option on the following page and leave the other options as they are defaulted to.
- Set a query parameter
- Click Save
In your results page without setting up internal site search you cannot segment the search traffic on your website. Wouldn’t it be nice to know what your customers searched for when they were on your website.
By choosing, “Yes, strip query parameters out of URL” this tells Google Analytics to remove your search results from showing up in the Content Reports of your Google Analytics account
Or by choosing, “No, do not strip query parameters out of URL” this tells Google Analytics to include your search results from the internal site search into your Content Reports in Google Analytics. By default this option is set for you when you enable Site Search in your Google Analytics account.
When using Google Analytics method for doing internal site search it is important to understand just how and where Google Analytics pulls the data from to calculate internal site searches.
Luc
How Do SEO, Web Design, Web Development Web Analytics and Web Intelligence work together?
March 18, 2008
You hear a lot about SEO (Search Engine Optimization), Web Design, Web Development, Web Analytics and a little bit even about Web Intelligence. But how do they all work together to improve your business?
- Web Property (aka ‘Presence’) Management – Similar to the idea of property management that real estate companies use. This where all things related to your web site, web store, portal and anything “web” begins. Keep in mind this is a simplified article that discusses how all these practices work together
- Web Design and Web Development – These two terms go hand in hand in the world of the web. Web Design is the initial creation of an online presence whereas web development is the ongoing development of that online presence. Before you can have SEO and web analytics to drive web intelligence you must first have a website.
- Search Engine Optimization – After the site is built you usually need search engines to pick it up, index it and rank it and continue to do this. This is also related to search engine marketing (aka SEM)
- Web Analytics – Once you have the site optimized and running you can then start to track your visitors. Many people track visitors simply based on click stream analysis (the process of measuring a site’s worth in clicks) but lately organizations and individuals are moving away from this form of measure because it is not effective in understanding the needs of your customers online and it offers no insight into customer’s activities and behaviours.
- Web “Business” Intelligence – Lastly, Web Intelligence allows you to then make improvements actionable for future business decision making by analysing trends on your web property to improve and drive the success of the online business.
This general overview of how SEO, Web Design, Web Development, Web Analytics and Web Intelligence work together should give you an understanding of where you are at in the development process and what you should think about as you progress and your web presence develops more and more into a long term business system or sales channel for your operations.
Luc
PureWebAnalytics gets a New Contact Form
February 26, 2008
I’ve noticed in the last little while that my goal for the “Contact Us” page was recording results but I wasn’t receiving any emails from the website itself. This brings forth a good question “If you aren’t tracking goals, sales funnels, conversion paths, etc. then how can you be sure that your site is working as designed?” I decided to install a WordPress plugin, Contact Form ][, that was easy to install in the meantime while I find a good replacement or write one myself but I am already receiving emails from customers and interested people. So how do you know your website or online business is working if you aren’t analysing your website’s data?
Luc
