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> <channel><title>1upDigital &#187; Ian Howie</title> <atom:link href="http://www.1updigital.com/author/ian-howie/feed/" rel="self" type="application/rss+xml" /><link>http://www.1updigital.com</link> <description></description> <lastBuildDate>Mon, 28 Feb 2011 17:23:36 +0000</lastBuildDate> <language>en</language> <sy:updatePeriod>hourly</sy:updatePeriod> <sy:updateFrequency>1</sy:updateFrequency> <generator>http://wordpress.org/?v=3.1</generator> <item><title>Why Social Media is bad news for BAA</title><link>http://www.1updigital.com/twitter-blog/social-media-bad-news-baa/</link> <comments>http://www.1updigital.com/twitter-blog/social-media-bad-news-baa/#comments</comments> <pubDate>Wed, 22 Dec 2010 09:26:29 +0000</pubDate> <dc:creator>Ian Howie</dc:creator> <category><![CDATA[Analytics]]></category> <category><![CDATA[Facebook]]></category> <category><![CDATA[Social Media]]></category> <category><![CDATA[Twitter]]></category> <category><![CDATA[social media]]></category> <category><![CDATA[twitter]]></category> <guid
isPermaLink="false">http://www.1updigital.com/?p=7099</guid> <description><![CDATA[Simple question: why can't the UK deal with snow?! Or rather why, as BAA owner of Heathrow Airport have demonstrated this week, is snow an online PR disaster waiting to happen]]></description> <content:encoded><![CDATA[<h2>Why are communication strategies still behind the social media times when a crisis hits?<a
href="http://www.1updigital.com/wp-content/uploads/Heathrow-T3-5.30-am-Sunday-19th-Dec-2010.jpg"><img
class="size-medium wp-image-7108 alignleft" title="Heathrow T3 5.30 am Sunday 19th Dec 2010" src="http://www.1updigital.com/wp-content/uploads/Heathrow-T3-5.30-am-Sunday-19th-Dec-2010-300x225.jpg" alt="Heathrow T3 5.30 am Sunday 19th Dec 2010" width="300" height="225" /></a></h2><p>Simple question: why can&#8217;t the UK deal with snow?! Or rather why, as BAA owner of Heathrow Airport have demonstrated this week, is snow an online PR disaster waiting to happen.</p><p>Whilst the snow has had an adverse affect on trains, buses and cars, there has been acute misery at London’s Heathrow, with over 2,000 arrivals and departures cancelled in the run up to Christmas.</p><p>BAA has dropped the ball. Big time.</p><p>BAA has coped with the current weather crisis in an old school, pre-social media kind of way. The majority of passengers aren’t complaining that their flights haven’t been able to take off. You’ll find that most of them don’t mind the wait in the interest of safety. What most passengers are complaining about is the serious lack of information and communication.</p><p>Hindsight is a wonderful thing. So what could BAA have done differently?</p><h3>1. Snow Desk</h3><p>There could and should have been a dedicated &#8220;snow desk&#8221; that kept in contact with the airlines, the ground team and air traffic control. This team could then have fed information to their online and social media teams to publish, as well as Sky and the BBC. Having the snow desk in place would have cost a fraction of what BAA lost in bad PR coverage.</p><h3>2. Heathrow Website</h3><p>The latest snow crisis hit on Saturday (18th), yet it wasn’t until Monday (20th) that the primary Heathrow Airport website was updated. Up until then it was displaying an ad for holiday car parking. Finally, on Monday, a static message panel was added with a generic message about contacting your airline before travelling. There were no real-time updates, only general updates every few hours.</p><p>This only demonstrated that BAA value their website as a sales tool, not as a communication channel. The Snow Desk could take over the website and turn it into a communication hub, linking to the official Twitter feed, linking to the Met Office weather website, as well as the major broadcasters.</p><h3>3. Free Wifi at the Airport</h3><p>With no information at the airport many passengers used their smartphones to try and find out what was going on, only to discover that mobile networks where swamped. The simple answer would be to increase the number of Wifi points which could be charged at a normal rate at any other time of the year, but free in times of crisis. Such a simple thing would make people feel more warm and fuzzy towards BAA.</p><h3>4. Make Twitter and Facebook Social</h3><p>Twitter and Facebook are Social Media, not broadcast media. BAA have managed to update their Twitter feed, but it needs to be integrated with their website, and be more helpful.<br
/> BAA doesn’t have a Facebook page, and has even stopped people from uploading photos of the travel chaos to Facebook, having had some photos already picked up and used by some of the news networks, further fuelling the fire and causing negative feelings towards BAA.<br
/> A well-managed Social strategy could have worked in BAA’s favour. If they worked with passengers, they could have encouraged positive Tweets and Facebook messages. The cost would have been free food, water and helpful staff.</p><h4>5. Use Search</h4><p>A well thought out online strategy should involve creating timely stories and working to make them appear in both the organic and paid search results. This would have made BAA look proactive, but instead it was individual airlines that had to do this, albeit hampered by the lack of information from BAA.</p><h3>Salt!</h3><p>To rub salt into the wound, the BBC posted a story about Helsinki airport that went viral on Twitter and Facebook. Helsinki airport had six feet of snow last winter but did not have to close. The last time it was forced to close because of the weather was in 2003 and then only for half an hour!</p><p>The snow is a wake up call for all companies. Your customers are connected, new media feeds old media and bad PR can be devastating.</p> ]]></content:encoded> <wfw:commentRss>http://www.1updigital.com/twitter-blog/social-media-bad-news-baa/feed/</wfw:commentRss> <slash:comments>4</slash:comments> </item> <item><title>Web Analytics Demystified</title><link>http://www.1updigital.com/google-analytics/web-analytics-demystified/</link> <comments>http://www.1updigital.com/google-analytics/web-analytics-demystified/#comments</comments> <pubDate>Wed, 01 Dec 2010 11:39:08 +0000</pubDate> <dc:creator>Ian Howie</dc:creator> <category><![CDATA[Analytics]]></category> <category><![CDATA[Google Analytics]]></category> <category><![CDATA[Web Analytics]]></category> <guid
isPermaLink="false">http://www.1updigital.com/?p=7000</guid> <description><![CDATA[What I’ve found helpful with our clients is to spend time demystifying Web Analytics, and showing how it can help an organisation to grow online. I thought I’d share some of these insights with you.]]></description> <content:encoded><![CDATA[<h4>Are you on the right track with your Web Analytics?</h4><p>Over the past few weeks I’ve been looking at various <a
href="http://www.1updigital.com/google-analytics/going-beyond-google-analytics/">Analytics tools</a>. However good the tools are, they are only as good as an organisation’s willingness to embrace, understand and act on the findings.</p><p>What I’ve found helpful with our clients is to spend time demystifying Web Analytics, and showing how it can help an organisation to grow online. I thought I’d share some of these insights with you.</p><h4>A Bit of Background…</h4><p>Web Analytics is essentially the analysis of how visitors find and use a website. The Analytics industry came out of the shadows in 2005 when Google bought the Analytics vendor Urchin. Shortly after the acquisition, the Urchin On Demand product was renamed Google Analytics and re-launched as a free product. Not surprisingly Google Analytics is now the most widely used hosted web analytics system.</p><h4>Business is Booming…</h4><p>The UK Internet economy is growing. It is estimated that during 2010, roughly 26 million people have bought goods, travel or other services online at least once a month . This means that the UK Internet economy is now estimated to be worth 7.2% of UK gross domestic product . Furthermore, the UK Internet economy is forecast to grow at 10% per annum between 2009 and 2015 to as much as £228bn.</p><p>As the online economy grows so to does the need for organisations to stay ahead of their competitors. Five years ago you could put some money into search, have a landing page and watch the money roll in. These days the online landscape is much more competitive. Rather than just investing in online advertising and having a pretty website, gaining valuable online customer intelligence insights will be key for companies wanting to make the most of the boom in online advertising.</p><h4>Up The High Street&#8230;</h4><p>High street shops and supermarkets spend millions on the psychology of store layout to entice people in and keep them there, tempting them to spend, spend, spend. Web Analytics tools help you do the same in the online environment &#8211; investing in Web Analytics can easily pay for itself. A 1% or 2% increase in the visitor conversion rate (ratio of visitors to sales or leads) can earn an organisation thousands in extra revenue for a modest outlay in software and expertise.</p><h4>Business-Focused Metrics&#8230;</h4><p>In the past, Web Analytics Tools have been seen as turbo charged stat counters. This is true of statistics like page impressions and bounce rates, which aren’t as insightful as metrics like conversion rates, download rates, visitor loyalty, visits to purchase and average basket value. These are the business-focused metrics that any Sales Director, Financial Director or CEO will understand and enjoy.</p><h4>Staff &amp; Process&#8230;</h4><p>A common problem is that many organisations already have good web analytics software, but aren’t tracking all visitor actions like downloads, sign-ups or purchases. Many businesses lack analytics staff, and don’t have the processes in place to make sure that those golden Analytics Insights are turned into actions. Don’t be one of them!</p><h4>Are you on the right track with your Web Analytics?</h4><p>Start by asking yourself is your web data giving you real insights into your customers’ behaviour? Are you gaining business-focused insights or just scratching the surface with things like bounce rates? And are you able to make changes to your website, or run tests on your landing pages?</p><p>What are your experiences of Web Analytics? Are you able to turn your Insights into profitable actions? It would be great to hear your stories.</p> ]]></content:encoded> <wfw:commentRss>http://www.1updigital.com/google-analytics/web-analytics-demystified/feed/</wfw:commentRss> <slash:comments>3</slash:comments> </item> <item><title>Going Beyond Google Analytics</title><link>http://www.1updigital.com/google-analytics/going-beyond-google-analytics/</link> <comments>http://www.1updigital.com/google-analytics/going-beyond-google-analytics/#comments</comments> <pubDate>Wed, 24 Nov 2010 14:37:20 +0000</pubDate> <dc:creator>Ian Howie</dc:creator> <category><![CDATA[Analytics]]></category> <category><![CDATA[Google Analytics]]></category> <guid
isPermaLink="false">http://www.1updigital.com/?p=6916</guid> <description><![CDATA[Going Beyond Google Analytics: Why you should be using: Social Mention, Kampyle &#038; ClickTale...]]></description> <content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>Google Analytics is great at collecting quantitative data and displaying it in graphs, histograms, tables and charts. While Google Analytics is very efficient at collecting this information, you might still be missing the contextual detail that Qualitative data gives you.</p><p>I have found three key tools that will help you better understand your audience. They mix both quantitative and qualitative data to give you a much more in-depth view of your online visitors.</p><h4>1.	Social Media Monitoring: <a
href="http://www.socialmention.com/">Social Mention</a></h4><p>Social Media Monitoring allows you to easily track and measure what people are saying about you, your company, and your products across social media sites, web-wide. It can help brands with quality control or customer care problems that may have gone unnoticed.</p><p><a
href="http://www.1updigital.com/wp-content/uploads/Social-Mention1.png"><img
class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-6920" title="Social-Mention" src="http://www.1updigital.com/wp-content/uploads/Social-Mention1.png" alt="" width="481" height="297" /></a></p><p>With Social Mention you can see your top social media keywords (useful for SEO and PPC, the latest comments about you or your business, and identify any negative feelings towards you or your brand.</p><p>For example, you might have noticed that you are getting less traffic to your site from your brand terms. Social Mention could show you if you’ve had a negative message on a social media site or blog, which you could then attribute that drop in traffic to.</p><h4>2. Feedback Tool: <a
href="http://www.kampyle.com/">Kampyle</a></h4><p>Kampyle is a fantastic tool that gives you invaluable insights into your online customers. It allows your online visitors to give you feedback on your business, and can even be integrated with Google Analytics.</p><p>The Israeli start-up claims that small sites average one to five feedback messages per day, medium sites average 20-30, and large sites average upwards of 50. Kampyle presents the most value to the large sites, which must manage their feedback effectively or lose out to their competitors who are doing this better.</p><p><a
href="http://www.1updigital.com/wp-content/uploads/Kampyle1.png"><img
class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-6923" title="Kampyle" src="http://www.1updigital.com/wp-content/uploads/Kampyle1.png" alt="" width="451" height="480" /></a></p><p><a
href="http://www.1updigital.com/wp-content/uploads/Kampyle.png"><br
/> </a></p><p>A clever Greasemonkey script even allows you to merge your Kampyle feedback with your Google Analytics data. This gives you invaluable context and often leads to the discovery of problems with web page design.</p><h4>3.	Heat Maps: <a
href="http://www.clicktale.com/">ClickTale</a></h4><p>ClickTale is probably best described as visual Analytics. ClickTale heatmaps allow you to see where your users not only clicked, but also where their mouse went. Even cleverer is the ability to record an individual’s user journey. You can even see how much attention a specific area of a web page gets from your visitors.</p><p><a
href="http://www.1updigital.com/wp-content/uploads/Click-Tale.png"><img
class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-6924" title="ClickTale" src="http://www.1updigital.com/wp-content/uploads/Click-Tale.png" alt="ClickTale Heat Maps." width="481" height="349" /></a></p><p>ClickTale can be most valuable when you want to see how individual users actually use your website. If you are doing any kind of website testing, my advice would be to try ClickTale first &#8211; it will give you an invaluable insight into what is and isn’t currently working.</p><p>Using these tools together with Google Analytics will give you a much better, deeper understanding of your customers: Social Mention gives you access to the conversations going on outside of your website, Kampyle allows you to gain insights into what your customers actually think through feedback, and ClickTale can actually show you what your visitors are doing on your website.</p><p>Have you got any favourite insights tools that you use with in conjunction with Google Analytics? Share them with us…</p> ]]></content:encoded> <wfw:commentRss>http://www.1updigital.com/google-analytics/going-beyond-google-analytics/feed/</wfw:commentRss> <slash:comments>7</slash:comments> </item> <item><title>Three New Google Analytics Insight Features</title><link>http://www.1updigital.com/google/google-analytics-insight-features/</link> <comments>http://www.1updigital.com/google/google-analytics-insight-features/#comments</comments> <pubDate>Wed, 10 Nov 2010 15:59:11 +0000</pubDate> <dc:creator>Ian Howie</dc:creator> <category><![CDATA[Analytics]]></category> <category><![CDATA[Google]]></category> <category><![CDATA[Google Analytics]]></category> <guid
isPermaLink="false">http://www.1updigital.com/?p=6515</guid> <description><![CDATA[In the past few months Google have re-launched three powerful Google Analysis tools:Analytics Intelligence, In-Page Analytics, and Weighted Sort.]]></description> <content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><strong>Three New Google Analytics Features That You Should Be Using Right Now…</strong></p><p>The definition of Analytics is &#8220;the science of analysis&#8221;. Website Analytics tools like Google Analytics, provide the ways and means to analyse your website data. However, somewhere along the line, both users and Analytics vendors seem to have focused more on the data and less on the analysis.</p><p>The folks at Google are starting to re-address the balance. In the past few months they have re-launched three powerful analysis tools:<strong> Analytics Intelligence</strong>, <strong>In-Page Analytics</strong>, and <strong>Weighted Sort.</strong></p><p>All three tools aid data analysis by cutting through the mass of stats, straight to the gold dust. By gold dust, I mean the key Insights into how people are interacting with your website and how to use those insights to improve your web pages to increase conversion.<br
/> Lets look at all three tools in a bit more detail.</p><p><strong>1. Analytics Intelligence</strong><br
/> At Ad:Tech New York, Google announced the Major Contributors feature, a very useful upgrade to the Intelligence reports.</p><p>Google Analytics Intelligence reports provide both automatic and custom alerts when there are significant changes in the data patterns of your site metrics over daily, weekly and monthly periods.</p><p>The new Major Contributors feature gives you a detailed report when a custom alert triggers. So rather than just seeing one metric for your custom alert, you’ll now see all the major traffic sources, landing pages, time on page and other metrics that contributed to the alert.</p><p><img
class="alignnone" title="Intelligence Alerts" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_CkizHsl86-c/TM83Hq9v3XI/AAAAAAAAAlI/NGKOvtMnfNs/s400/image0.png" alt="Google Analytics Intelligence Alerts" width="400" height="206" /></p><p><strong>2. In-Page Analytics</strong><br
/> In-Page Analytics replaces the Site Overlay report – a feature that never seemed to fully work. In-Page Analytics is perfect if you get a little intimidated when you see rows of data.</p><p><img
class="alignnone" title="In-Page Analytics" src=" http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_Zj7Xn8xapy0/TLiEAzKhYwI/AAAAAAAAA9o/dWKVJ2q-fQA/s400/inpage-report.png " alt="In-Page Analytics" width="400" height="245" /></p><p>By putting the statistical information next to web pages and including information about where on the page visitors clicked, In-Page Analytics makes it much easier to gain Insights on your design and usability.</p><p><strong>3. Weighted Sort</strong><br
/> This is a huge step forward for Google Analytics as they realise that website data needs to be weighted. For instance, a page with 10,000 visits and a high bounce rate is much more important to you than a page that has had ten visits, but the highest overall bounce rate. If you lower the bounce rate by 1% on the page with 10,000 visits, you’ll experience a big difference to your site. If you focus on fixing the page with ten visits, you will have spent a lot time for very little reward.</p><div
class="wp-caption alignnone" style="width: 308px"><img
title="Weighted Sort" src="http://t1.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcSwIN_VDugx8UEJ7n7k0SfJ7WHs4heoVNeawF3y1AFufCCZDWE&amp;t=1&amp;usg=__C0kRepcdJhsX38xV30Ld1VVt0N8=" alt="Weighted Sort" width="298" height="169" /><p
class="wp-caption-text">Weighted Sort</p></div><p>The Weighted Sort appears when you click on Bounce Rate on most reports. When you enable Weighted Sort it applies an algorithm, which takes into consideration the number of visits for each page, bringing to the forefront the items with the most visits and the highest Bounce Rates.</p><p>Expect to see more new Google Analytics Insight features soon. In the meantime, check out the <a
href="http://www.google.com/analytics/apps/">GA Apps gallery</a> for more tools that will help you gain insight into your web traffic.</p><p><strong>See Also: <a
href="http://www.1updigital.com/blog/5-ways-to-gain-video-audience-intelligence.html">5 Ways to gain Video Audience Intelligence</a></strong></p> ]]></content:encoded> <wfw:commentRss>http://www.1updigital.com/google/google-analytics-insight-features/feed/</wfw:commentRss> <slash:comments>2</slash:comments> </item> <item><title>5 Ways to gain Video Audience Intelligence</title><link>http://www.1updigital.com/google-analytics/5-ways-gain-video-audience-intelligence/</link> <comments>http://www.1updigital.com/google-analytics/5-ways-gain-video-audience-intelligence/#comments</comments> <pubDate>Thu, 04 Nov 2010 15:46:08 +0000</pubDate> <dc:creator>Ian Howie</dc:creator> <category><![CDATA[Analytics]]></category> <category><![CDATA[Google Analytics]]></category> <guid
isPermaLink="false">http://www.1updigital.com/?p=6494</guid> <description><![CDATA[Video Analytics helps you identify your best content and discover audience behaviour with insightful details.]]></description> <content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><strong>Video Analytics helps you identify your best content and discover audience behaviour with insightful details.<br
/> </strong></p><p>In my experience of Video Analytics there are 5 key metrics provide insightful data on your audience.</p><p><strong>1. Time on Video</strong><br
/> What is your viewers attention span? This can tell you so much about your audience. Did they only watch the first five minutes of a thirty minute video? In this case you may to break the video into shorter clips.</p><p><strong>2. Where are they Viewing your Video</strong><br
/> The site the video is being viewed can have a huge impact on the viewer behaviour. A blog site may have a highly relevant audience that is prepared to watch longer videos. While a more general site may be better for shorter clips. You want to be judging this on both the number of video views and length on time viewing the video. A video may have a huge audience on a site you haven’t hear of before – if so why not contact them and seeing if you can development some exclusive content for them.</p><p><strong>3. Clicks to your site</strong><br
/> Do viewers click from the video to your website? You can find this information in your web Analytics tool. It is useful to know if want your video to drive leads and sales. Ideally have a related Landing Page that is the first page someone lands on from clicking on your video clip and has a logical connection to your video. Many people just land viewers on the homepage of their website which may not be as relevant</p><p><strong>4. Compare the Best with the Worst Videos</strong><br
/> Not all your videos are equal – so which one has had both the most views and been viewed all the way through? Why do some videos have better engagement than others? Which was your most viewed video and which was your worst viewed video and why? Asking these questions help you create content that matches your audience.</p><p><strong>5.  Social Sharing?</strong><br
/> Are your video appearing on Facebook, Twitter or other Social sites? 	Getting your Video shared on Social Media is a quick way to build an 	audience.</p><p>Video Analytics works best when you test different ideas out. By testing and measuring you will gain a huge advantage over your competition.</p> ]]></content:encoded> <wfw:commentRss>http://www.1updigital.com/google-analytics/5-ways-gain-video-audience-intelligence/feed/</wfw:commentRss> <slash:comments>0</slash:comments> </item> <item><title>Wake Up! There’s more to Pay Per Click Than Just Search…</title><link>http://www.1updigital.com/google-adwords/wake-up-there%e2%80%99s-more-to-pay-per-click-than-just-search/</link> <comments>http://www.1updigital.com/google-adwords/wake-up-there%e2%80%99s-more-to-pay-per-click-than-just-search/#comments</comments> <pubDate>Wed, 29 Sep 2010 18:00:35 +0000</pubDate> <dc:creator>Ian Howie</dc:creator> <category><![CDATA[Google AdWords]]></category> <category><![CDATA[PPC Articles]]></category> <category><![CDATA[PPC]]></category> <guid
isPermaLink="false">http://www.1updigital.com/?p=5551</guid> <description><![CDATA[Pay Per Click (PPC) advertising is different to any other form of online or CPM (Cost per Thousand) advertising. Your ad could be seen thousands of times, by thousands of different people, but unless someone actually clicks on it you won’t pay a penny for the privilege.]]></description> <content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><strong>Isn’t it time to wake up to the fact that there is more to Pay Per Click (PPC) than just search?</strong></p><p>Pay Per Click (PPC) advertising is different to any other form of online or CPM (Cost per Thousand) advertising. Your ad could be seen thousands of times, by thousands of different people, but unless someone actually clicks on it you won’t pay a penny for the privilege.</p><p>However, many advertisers are only using the Search part of Pay Per Click, believing that Search is good for direct response and Display &amp; Video are good for branding.</p><p>Here are our top five reasons why we think there is more to Pay Per Click:</p><p><strong>1. Google Display Network</strong><br
/> Formerly known as the Content Network, the Google Display Network is available from Google AdWords, reaches more than 80% of worldwide Internet users and serves more than 6 billion ad impressions every day across high-quality websites, news pages and blogs. Unlike many other online advertising display networks, there is no minimum spend.</p><p>Google has been building tools to make the Display Network more of a direct response platform. Advertisers can run placement reports to find out the sites and pages that produce the best results, then target specific sites in response.</p><p>At the other end of the scale, Google’s Display Network can also lead to more searches for your specific brand terms &#8211; people have seen your Display ads as they browse different sites on the Display Network, that can lead to them searching directly for your brand when they want to find out more.</p><p>American Laser Centers, an aesthetic services provider, used the Google Display Network to start a chain reaction of leads and conversions. Using the Google Display Network text and image ads, they increased conversion by 365% while cutting impressions in half.</p><p><strong>2. Mobile Search</strong><br
/> With Google AdWords, you can specifically target smart phones and other mobile devices, such as the iPhone, iPad, Android and Blackberry. Google handles over 98% of mobile search queries, and the fact that a lot of AdWords campaigns don’t target mobile search means that it’s a lot cheaper than desktop search. Mobile search queries tend to be only one or two words long, and it’s common for people to miss-spell words, meaning that there is a wide range of possible search terms.</p><p><strong>3. Facebook</strong><br
/> Facebook is now the world’s most popular website, with 540 million unique visitors last month alone. Facebook now has its own PPC platform, which allows you to target users by location, interest, age and other demographic information. This type of advertising works best when running highly targeted ads made up of an image and text. Since users prefer to stay within the Facebook site, ads need to be highly compelling in order to entice viewers to click. Some of the most successful Facebook campaigns so far have been for food (Gonuts for Donuts), travel (Visit Britain) and mobile phones (Nokia).</p><p><strong>4. YouTube</strong><br
/> In a relatively short period of time, YouTube has quickly become the second most visited site in the world after Facebook, with 490 million unique visitors last month. It is also the Internet’s second biggest search engine in its own right, and allows advertisers to target and engage with huge numbers of people who already interacting with the content. YouTube allows advertisers to target specific videos, channels and verticals, run overlay ads on videos, and even run ads within videos.</p><p><strong>5. Sitelinks</strong><br
/> Ad Sitelinks is a feature for search-based ads that lets you include up to 10 additional links to deeper content on your site beyond the main landing page. They are strictly speaking just another aspect of search however, they involve thinking about the search process in a different way. They enable smart companies to maximise their brand presence on Google, and to maximise the amount of valuable screen real-estate taken up by a particular brand. Used together with SEO, well designed Sitelinks can fill the whole top half of the results page with your brand!<br
/> Over the last year, some search costs and CPCs have been rising, while the costs of other forms of Pay Per Click advertising, like mobile and Facebook, have stayed low. Can you afford not to explore the other features that PPC advertising offers?</p><p>I will be speaking on this subject at the <a
href="http://www.a4uexpo.com/london/speaker/ian-howie/">Affiliates4U Expo in London, on the 12th–13thOctober 2010.</a></p><p>You can also <a
href="http://www.1updigital.com/downloads/RobertsonCooper.pdf">download our Case Study</a>, which describes how we use Google’s Content Network to increase conversions.</p> ]]></content:encoded> <wfw:commentRss>http://www.1updigital.com/google-adwords/wake-up-there%e2%80%99s-more-to-pay-per-click-than-just-search/feed/</wfw:commentRss> <slash:comments>0</slash:comments> </item> <item><title>Google Analytics vs Adobe Omniture</title><link>http://www.1updigital.com/google-analytics/google-analytics-vs-adobe-omniture/</link> <comments>http://www.1updigital.com/google-analytics/google-analytics-vs-adobe-omniture/#comments</comments> <pubDate>Fri, 03 Sep 2010 09:25:49 +0000</pubDate> <dc:creator>Ian Howie</dc:creator> <category><![CDATA[Analytics]]></category> <category><![CDATA[Google Analytics]]></category> <guid
isPermaLink="false">http://www.1updigital.com/?p=5495</guid> <description><![CDATA[Despite the state of the UK economy, the web analytics industry continues to grow. It is estimated that £85 million was spent by UK companies on web analytics technology and consultancy during 2009, up 9% year-on-year from £78 million in 2008. Last year Adobe entered the Analytics market by buying Omniture for 1.8 Billion. While [...]]]></description> <content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>Despite the state of the UK economy, the web analytics industry continues to grow.<br
/> It is estimated that £85 million was spent by UK companies on web analytics technology and consultancy during 2009, up 9% year-on-year from £78 million in 2008.</p><p>Last year Adobe entered the Analytics market by buying Omniture for 1.8 Billion. While other paid providers have suffered at the hands of the free Google Analytics product, Omniture has dominated the top end of the paid Analytics market.</p><p>If you put Google Analytics head to head with Omniture’s SiteCatalyst Analytics solution, Omniture comes out the winner based on the number of available tools, modules and reports available.</p><p>However reporting is not analysis. While Google Analytics lacks some of SiteCatalyst’s bells and whistles &#8211; it is a free product with free updates. This is allowing companies to spend their license fee savings on investing in analysis and insights.</p><p>As Analytics guru, Avinash Kaushik,  says in his book Web Analytics 2.0, “you need an analyst, that is, a person with a planet-sized brain. Invest multiple times more in her or him, or<br
/> more of them, if you truly want to take action on your data. Otherwise, you are simply data-rich and information poor.”</p><p>In 2009, the proportion of spending on internal staff increased from 36% to 42% of total web<br
/> analytics spend while spending on technology decreased from 45% to 38%. In these tougher times expect this trend to continue.</p><p>The good news is that Google and Adobe have the funds to drive innovation &#8211; making it easier to gain actionable tasks from their respective Web Analytics systems.</p><p>What are your experiences of Google Analytics, Omniture or other Web Analytics products?</p><p>Please share your comments below.</p> ]]></content:encoded> <wfw:commentRss>http://www.1updigital.com/google-analytics/google-analytics-vs-adobe-omniture/feed/</wfw:commentRss> <slash:comments>0</slash:comments> </item> <item><title>5 Rules for the Perfect Web Analytics Dashboard</title><link>http://www.1updigital.com/google-analytics/5-rules-for-the-perfect-web-analytics-dashboard/</link> <comments>http://www.1updigital.com/google-analytics/5-rules-for-the-perfect-web-analytics-dashboard/#comments</comments> <pubDate>Tue, 10 Aug 2010 09:01:47 +0000</pubDate> <dc:creator>Ian Howie</dc:creator> <category><![CDATA[Analytics]]></category> <category><![CDATA[Google Analytics]]></category> <guid
isPermaLink="false">http://www.1updigital.com/?p=5464</guid> <description><![CDATA[Stop yourself from drowning in data and build a Web Analytics Dashboard that puts you in control&#8230; The media are quick to highlight stories of lost data or identity theft, but, while we should be concerned with the protection of our data, there is another truth: many online marketers are drowning in data. The advantage [...]]]></description> <content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>Stop yourself from drowning in data and build a Web Analytics Dashboard that puts you in control&#8230;</p><p>The media are quick to highlight stories of lost data or identity theft, but, while we should be concerned with the protection of our data, there is another truth: many online marketers are drowning in data.</p><p>The advantage of online marketing ease of measurement: email marketing, Pay Per Click, Search Engine Optimisation, Display, Affiliates and A/B testing can all be measured. In doing so, they generate huge amounts of data.</p><p>Web Analytics was originally presented as a way of solving this data deluge. Web Analytics is simply the measurement, collection and reporting of online traffic for purposes of understanding and optimising website usage.</p><p>The problem is that, as vendors of Web Analytics products have added more options to track more data sources, it has become harder to manage and interpret the data.</p><p>The solution is build to Web Analytics Dashboard that only focuses on the data that is of the most interest.</p><p>These are the top five rules that I use when creating Web Analytics Dashboards:</p><p><strong>1. Keep It Simple &amp; Include Insights</strong><br
/> Keep your Web Analytics Dashboards to just one page: doing so will keep it focused and make it easier to understand the data. As well as including the summarised data, have space for some insights and recommendations. Having a section for these allows the senior executives reading the Dashboard to focus on making decisions, rather than just interpreting the data.</p><p><strong>2. Include Your Key Performance Indicators (KPIs)</strong><br
/> What do you need to track? Is it time on site or the recording of a sale or sign-up? First work out your KPIs, then set up Goals to measure them, and then include these in your Dashboard.</p><p><strong>3. Use Filtered Data</strong><br
/> Filters allow you to exclude certain traffic from your Web Analytics. This could be your internal traffic or traffic from your web development company or PR company, allowing you to be sure that you are only looking at data from genuine visitors.<br
/> <strong><br
/> 4. Segmentation</strong><br
/> Web Analytics allow you to not just filter your data but also segment it. For instance, you may only want to look at search web traffic or even just Paid Search traffic. Segmentation will give greater clarity to your data and make it easier for you to see if your KPIs are being met.<br
/> <strong><br
/> 5. Make Your Dashboard Visual</strong><br
/> A picture says a thousand words: using graphs, pie charts and bar charts will not only make your Dashboard look more appealing but will also help make it easier to understand.</p><p>What do you all think? Have you tried to create your own Web Analytics Dashboard? What was the impact of it? Do you have any tips you want to share?</p><p>Please share your comments below.</p><p><strong>See Also: </strong><br
/> <a
href="http://www.1updigital.com/blog/3-tips-for-leveraging-your-google-analytics-data.html ">3 Tips For Leveraging Your Google Analytics Data</a></p> ]]></content:encoded> <wfw:commentRss>http://www.1updigital.com/google-analytics/5-rules-for-the-perfect-web-analytics-dashboard/feed/</wfw:commentRss> <slash:comments>1</slash:comments> </item> <item><title>Brands and the World Cup: who were the real winners and losers?</title><link>http://www.1updigital.com/google/brands-and-the-world-cup-who-were-the-real-winners-and-losers/</link> <comments>http://www.1updigital.com/google/brands-and-the-world-cup-who-were-the-real-winners-and-losers/#comments</comments> <pubDate>Fri, 16 Jul 2010 11:51:47 +0000</pubDate> <dc:creator>Ian Howie</dc:creator> <category><![CDATA[Google]]></category> <category><![CDATA[News]]></category> <category><![CDATA[PPC Articles]]></category> <category><![CDATA[SEO Articles]]></category> <guid
isPermaLink="false">http://www.1updigital.com/?p=5611</guid> <description><![CDATA[Spain has emerged as world champions and the excitement is over for another four years. 32 teams battled it out in South Africa for World Cup glory, but the game wasn’t just being played on the pitch; brands went head-to-head in a fiercely contested online marketing battle. From betting and beer to travel to TVs, [...]]]></description> <content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>Spain has emerged as world champions and the excitement is over for another four years. 32 teams battled it out in South Africa for World Cup glory, but the game wasn’t just being played on the pitch; brands went head-to-head in a fiercely contested online marketing battle.</p><p>From betting and beer to travel to TVs, who were the real winners and losers?</p><p><strong>In the back of the net</strong><br
/> In tribute to John Motson, here are some interesting World Cup search stats:<br
/> 1. Traffic to news sites on June 11th reached over 12m visitors per minute globally. The day&#8217;s traffic busted the previous record of 8.5m visitors per minute, which was set when Barack Obama won the U.S. presidential election in 2008.<br
/> 2. According to AdTech, UK traffic dropped by a whopping 20% during England matches. However, as soon as the matches were over, traffic rose, with AdTech serving 10% more banner ads than normal.<br
/> 3. There was a 20-fold increase in the number of searches for ‘Vuvuzela’ between the 5th and 19th June.<br
/> 4. During the week commencing the 14th June, there were five times more searches for ‘Vuvuzela’ than there were for ‘Wayne Rooney’, England’s most searched for player.<br
/> 5. Twitter set a new tweet record during Japan&#8217;s 3-1 victory over Denmark. When the referee blew the final whistle, Twitter recorded 3,283 tweets per second.</p><p><strong>Official Sponsorship vs. ‘Ambush Marketing’</strong><br
/> Many brands saw huge spikes in searches and traffic around their terms, without having spent millions on official sponsorship. In fact, the brands that sponsored individual teams benefited the most.</p><p>Qantas, official airline for the Australian team, saw searches increase by 155% between the 26th June and 3rd July, whilst Carlsberg, official sponsors of the England team was the third best performing brand for the week ending 12 June.</p><p>The real winners were the companies like Bavaria beer who used less conventional methods of marketing their products. Bavaria beer supposedly dressed 36 blondes in bright Orange mini-dresses at the Holland-Denmark game. After the story broke, the Bavaria beer website become the fifth most visited beer website in the UK.</p><p><strong>Piggybacking on World Cup keywords</strong><br
/> What was perhaps most surprising was the failure of brands to link their activity to key online searches. Take Adidas for example. They produced the controversial new Jabulani World Cup match ball. But they weren’t bidding on the term, and only appeared on page two of the organic search results.</p><p>The phrases &#8216;world cup 2010&#8242; and &#8216;soccer world cup&#8217; were the most popular searches during the competition. You would be forgiven for thinking that advertisers would be falling over themselves to bid on these keywords to profit from the huge spikes in searches. Not so.</p><p>The majority of companies failed to make the most of unique opportunities to link their brands with key world cup search terms</p><p><strong>What lessons did we learn?</strong><br
/> I’ve put together some thoughts on what could have been done by brands and businesses that wanted to get the maximum exposure during the World Cup:</p><p>1. Bidding on all related keywords:  bidding on ‘soccer world cup’, ‘world cup 2010’ and ‘world cup 2010 fixtures’ and targeting your ads would have been a strong tactic.</p><p>2. Using the Google Display Network: there were millions of people reading World Cup news and stories on the display network. By showing ads on the display network you could have opened your business up to millions of potential new users.</p><p>3. Using Mobile Search: 19m people now use mobile internet every month. One of the key ways that people find information on their mobile is through paid search, which is predicted to see 25% year-on-year growth.</p><p>4. Monitoring the trends and emerging searches:  using all the available keyword tools, including HitWise, Google Ad Planner, Insights For Search and Google Trends, look for keywords that are trending and start bidding on them.</p><p>5. Learn these lessons for next time – Wimbledon has been and gone, and yet again, no one took full advantage of the competition and failed to bid on the key search terms, including ‘wimbledon’, ‘longest game wimbledon’ and ‘andy murray’.</p><p>Globally trusted brands are failing to make the most of these opportunities. If nothing else, doesn’t this teach us that we can turn any event into an opportunity, no matter what your business?</p> ]]></content:encoded> <wfw:commentRss>http://www.1updigital.com/google/brands-and-the-world-cup-who-were-the-real-winners-and-losers/feed/</wfw:commentRss> <slash:comments>0</slash:comments> </item> <item><title>Google AdWords Suicide</title><link>http://www.1updigital.com/google-adwords/google-adwords-suicide/</link> <comments>http://www.1updigital.com/google-adwords/google-adwords-suicide/#comments</comments> <pubDate>Fri, 09 Jul 2010 09:23:13 +0000</pubDate> <dc:creator>Ian Howie</dc:creator> <category><![CDATA[Google AdWords]]></category> <category><![CDATA[PPC Articles]]></category> <guid
isPermaLink="false">http://www.1updigital.com/?p=5476</guid> <description><![CDATA[Google AdWords nearly drove one irate advertiser to suicide! Stop AdWords from driving you to an early grave...]]></description> <content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><strong>Google AdWords nearly drove one irate advertiser to suicide! Stop AdWords from driving you to an early grave&#8230;</strong><br
/> You might have heard about the Google AdWords customer in India who threatened to kill himself if Google didn’t respond to his Google AdWords Help thread “in the next few hours”. This guy was so hacked off with the lack of AdWords help that he took the extreme measure of promising to kill himself (he didn’t, by the way).</p><p>OK, so threatening to take your own life may be a little extreme, but we all have things that drive us nuts about Google AdWords and the AdWords interface and make us want to kick something. Here are our top 5 AdWords grievances…</p><h3>1.	Google AdWords Network Targeting</h3><p>This is a very common mistake and one that has burnt thousands of advertisers. The settings you choose here will determine where your ads appear on the Internet. The Google Network is made up of the Search Network and the Display Network (formerly the Content Network).</p><p>-	The Search Network is where your ads can appear above or beside the search results for the keywords you target. The Search Network does include other search partner sites like ask.com and aol.com.</p><p>-	The Display Network (formerly Content Network) is where Google scans your ad groups and based on the keywords, they assign a theme to those ad groups. They then do the same to the pages on the Display Network. When the content page and your ad group have the same theme, your ad is displayed. You can use text, image, video and rich media ads on the display network.</p><p>By default your campaigns are opted into both the Search and Display Networks. But what Google doesn’t tell you is that because the Search and Display Networks work in very different ways, best practice is to run separate Search and Display campaigns, not lump them all in together.</p><p>So when you set your campaigns up, build separate Search and Display Network campaigns:</p><p><a
href="http://www.1updigital.com/wp-content/uploads/networks-1.png"><img
class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-5482" title="networks (1)" src="http://www.1updigital.com/wp-content/uploads/networks-1.png" alt="" width="621" height="258" /></a></p><p>Click ‘let me choose’ and select Google Search and Search Partners if you want to and save your changes.</p><p><a
href="http://www.1updigital.com/wp-content/uploads/networks-2.png"><img
class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-5483" title="networks-2" src="http://www.1updigital.com/wp-content/uploads/networks-2.png" alt="" width="806" height="308" /></a></p><h3>2.	 Devices Targeting</h3><p>This is another trap that is easy to fall into. Just like the Network targeting scenario, you can target your ads to desktop computers and mobile devices:</p><p>-	Desktop and Laptop Computers (pretty self-explanatory).<br
/> -	iPhones and other mobile devices with full internet browsers where you can display standard text ads.</p><p>Again, by default both of these targeting options are selected, and again, this goes against best practice. User’s behaviour is so different on a mobile device than on their computer or laptop. People tend to use one-word searches and misspellings are common.</p><p>It’s best to structure mobile and desktop device campaigns differently. If you’re on a computer you might be more likely to use long tail keywords and be looking to make a purchase, rather than looking for information. But the same rules apply – make sure your landing pages are relevant and make sure they render OK on a mobile device.</p><p>As before, deselect “iPhone and other mobile devices with full internet browsers” to only target Desktop computers, and vice versa to only target mobile devices. You can also target specific networks, so if you were after business users, targeting Vodafone might be a good test.</p><p><a
href="http://www.1updigital.com/wp-content/uploads/devices3.png"><img
class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-5484" title="devices3" src="http://www.1updigital.com/wp-content/uploads/devices3.png" alt="" width="752" height="367" /></a></p><h3>3.	Quality Score</h3><p>Do you honestly know what Quality Score is and how Google determines your Quality Score? The rule of thumb is that the closer the relationship between your keyword, your ads and you landing page, Google will give you more points out of 10 (1 the lowest, 10 the highest), which in turn will mean better ad positions and lower costs per click.</p><p>Did you know that Google can display your keyword Quality Score in the AdWords interface? OK, so it’s not your actual Quality Score. Google can’t really tell you that. But it’s an indication that you might need to do some work on your ads or landing pages. So anything with a Quality Score of 6 or below might need some attention.</p><p>By default the Quality Score is not displayed. To turn it on and display the Quality Score, go to the Keywords tab and click on Columns and tick the Quality Score option:</p><p><a
href="http://www.1updigital.com/wp-content/uploads/QS4.png"><img
class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-5486" title="QS4" src="http://www.1updigital.com/wp-content/uploads/QS4.png" alt="" width="957" height="651" /></a></p><p>Now you’ll be able to see your Quality Score under the keywords tab:</p><p><a
href="http://www.1updigital.com/wp-content/uploads/Quality-Score5.png"><img
class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-5487" title="Quality-Score5" src="http://www.1updigital.com/wp-content/uploads/Quality-Score5.png" alt="" width="497" height="134" /></a></p><h3>4. First Page Bid</h3><p>Have you ever logged in to your account and seen those little messages that tell you that your keyword max CPC is below first page bid estimate?</p><p><a
href="http://www.1updigital.com/wp-content/uploads/below-first-page-bid6.png"><img
class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-5488" title="below-first-page-bid6" src="http://www.1updigital.com/wp-content/uploads/below-first-page-bid6.png" alt="" width="184" height="43" /></a></p><p>AdWords is only trying to be helpful. If your bid is less than the first page bid it will tell you, and suggest what you should be bidding. But be careful with this! Firstly take a look at your average ad position. If it’s high, it suggests that your ad is always appearing on the first page so you probably don’t need to worry about increasing your bid.</p><p>Also, it should really only apply to Exact match keywords, and occasionally Phrase match. You’d be mad to increase your Broad match bids too much. It may cost you a fortune and you could end up overbidding. Use your own judgement on this one. Take what Google says with a pinch of salt.</p><h3>5.	 Daily Budgets</h3><p>Be careful with your daily budget as you can find you’re overspent by up to 20%. To be fair to Google, they do warn us that “Daily budget represents your average spend over the month; actual spend on a given day may vary”, but it’s worth keeping your eye on it.</p><p>We recommend using a slightly lower test budget when you first start an AdWords campaign. Then you can ramp it up once you are sure your campaign is running smoothly.</p><h3>Stop Google AdWords from beating you!</h3><p>The real danger is that you make a few mistakes, don’t build or optimize your campaigns in the best way, and then declare “AdWords doesn’t work!”.</p><p>Unless you’re in the know, or are an agency with dedicated Google account management support, there are things that you just won’t know you’re supposed to be doing.</p><p>We’re running regular Google AdWords Certified Trainer courses and seminars for individuals, companies or agencies. Book one of our courses and expect to get the kind of information you need to be able to take on Google AdWords. <a
href="http://www.1updigital.com/training-and-events/google-adwords-101">Check our course dates</a>.</p> ]]></content:encoded> <wfw:commentRss>http://www.1updigital.com/google-adwords/google-adwords-suicide/feed/</wfw:commentRss> <slash:comments>0</slash:comments> </item> </channel> </rss>
