On Friday I spent a few hours at Microsoft’s European Product Development Centre in Dublin with Reeves Little previewing project Gatineau and running through some of the new features being built into their upcoming website Analytics program.
I’d been a fan (and customer) of analytics company and product, DeepMetrix for several years and was interested to see how the product had evolved since the technology was bought by Microsoft in 2006 and what exactly Microsoft had brought to the analytics mix. Reeves is part of the team in Dublin that are building some new components into the product and was kind enough to ask me over and get involved in some user testing and sign up for the upcoming BETA programme.
Continue reading ‘Microsoft Analytics preview in Dublin’
Google have just announced that their free Analytics tool is due for an upgrade and users should see an updated user interface kick in over the coming weeks. This looks like a global upgrade as opposed to a phased, regional update and comes after user feedback and requests.
I’ve always found Google Analytics to be really unusable and the interface was overly complicated but these are probably legacy issues that Google inherited when they bought Urchin. I’m looking forward to this upgrade based on the following statement from Trevor over at Google’s Inside Adwords blog.
The new version of Google Analytics has a more intuitive look and feel, with greater clarity in the navigation between reports. In addition to the new interface, we’ve added many new features including a customizable reports dashboard, scheduled emailing of reports, improved geographic map view, and over-time graphs for at-a-glance analysis.
There’s an updated Interactive demo available too.
The EdenWeb homepage has been updated with a new top banner and an updated value proposition. I’ve also added a new Company and Design Services page which I’ll be updating over time (some services are not yet listed). Interestingly enough, the ‘holding page’ we had for several months (even a year) hasn’t really had a huge effect on new work coming in. My biggest regret to scrapping the old site is the obvious effect that removing all that content has had on certain Search Engine rankings.
In hindsight, if I was to do this again, I’d probably take the following approach instead of just replacing all content with a holding page…
- Keep outdated content online
The long term vaue of your search engine visbility may be more important than the relevance of your content!If your site has good Search Engine visibility, is ’spidered’ successfully by Google and Co. and is bringing in decent volumes of tracffic then keep it live until you’re ready to do an intelligent modular update or a complete redesign. Furthermore, if you’ve got a good Page Rank then you’ll want a miminum disruption to the value of a good PR.Obviously, if that content in question is pricing or product information then you have to make your own call. In my case, the content ‘missing’ was more a lack of a current gallery, outdated date design services info and a new logo design and strapline that were all in the works.
- Add newer design work in the form of an updated gallery/portfolio
If you don’t have time to update descriptions of your design services, then at least update the actual design examples. In our case, our design services are obviously visual. People come to the site looking for visuals. Even if the design services page doesn’t have any information on Presentation , Icon and Diagram design, they’ll get the idea once they see the updated gallery.
- Start blogging
Instead of culling the News, add a blog to your site and keep people informed of company developments. It’s the easiest way to add relevant industry and company news to your site and a few montly updates can keep the site fresh while the main content is static.There’s a good PDF on the subject at Tom Raferty’s post on Business Benefits of Blogging
- Ask permission!
Add a newletter signup and start building your contact list. If you’re concerened that your site is out of date, can see passing traffic through your stats and want to at least catch some details, you will find that interested parties are only too happy to add themselves to your contact database.
This way, you can keep people informed of the new launch even inform them of your updates along the way.
- Rewire the site
Turn the navigation into PHP includes (is your hosting plan supports this). Keep the same navigation and the same links but do some rewiring here in anticiaption of all links and navigation items changing with the new design. PHP includes will allow you to rapidly update the site with newer navigation later on as multiple pages can be updated instantly. Introduce CSS into the pages (yes, my site was really that old!) so the overall changes to the look and feel are again easier (and quicker) to roll out.
- Start updating the content gradually and pushing it out live
Obvious enough. Even one page at a time can make a big difference. In our own case, I introduced some simple content changes that made a massive difference to the overall feedback we were getting and a jump in enquiries from the contact page.
- Rework the overall template and introduce a new homepage
Thats a whole different can of worms. Talk to a design expert :O)
So thats basically what I would do now instead of replacing everything with a holding page.
Apart from suffering a slip in visibility on search engines for key services, we didn’t do too badly. Each company is a different case and we had the benefit of most of our work being word of mouth/referrals. You may want to try the above approach or even try a blended approach (holding page and link to old site).
Whichever method you choose, I can recommend the blog, newsletter signup and newsletter/blog updates as the best way to keep your site current until you launch your new site.
One of our favourite web stats providers has been bought by Microsoft and are no longer taking new signups. It’s a real shame because we have several new clients who we were ready to sign up to DeepMetrix and their excellent visitor tracking service.
While researching alternatives, I notice that CrazyEgg has just done a softlaunch and has started to take signups. One of the more interesting features that a lot of Web Analytics developers are pushing out are the use of ‘Heat Maps’ which display the ‘hot’ areas on your page by recording mouse movements and clicks etc.
SES 2006 is currently kicking off in San Jose, California.
Billed as ‘The Premier Event for Search Engine Marketing & Optimization’, attendees will learn
- how search engines list Web sites for free and through paid placements
- how to get free “organic” traffic by building a site that pleases search engines and your visitors
- how to efficiently purchase listings guaranteed to rank your company at the top of search engine results.
- how to calculate the ROI of your search marketing efforts by tracking your visitors from the time they hit your site until they buy—and get tips on improving conversion if they don’t!
- how to build links that generate traffic to your Web site, and how to avoid the penalties of “spamming” the search engines
- what’s coming next in the constantly evolving world of Web search, and how you can profit from those changes
Some Search Engine Marketing firm has been spamming us with ‘compelling’ offers such as
First place guaranteed in Google
Get listed in under a week on page one of all the major search engines
etc etc
If this caught your attention and seems like an attractive, quick and easy way to remedy low search engine positions, then you need to be aware of something very simple. Nobody can guarantee you a no. 1 ranking in Google, Yahoo or any of the other Search Engines for anything. Read the spam again and you’ll find the offer is vague and scant on the specifics on what they will get you to no.1 for..
What they probably can get you high (even 1st place) listings for is your company name.
Thats fair enough. I know quite a few companies that would love to be more visible on search engines for their company name and it wouldn’t be a huge challenge to get them there either. You see, chances are your company name is quite unique and there are not a huge amount of other firms competing to be at no. 1 position for that name. However, Keywords that people use to find your business are another matter entirely and it’s here that you really want to be visible.
Example: Imagine your family business makes hand-made Greenhouses and your company name is Adamsons. Yes, you want to be found for people searching for ‘Adamsons’ but you definitely want to be found for the relevant real-world keywords and phrases that people are using to find your services.
- Hand made greenhouses
- Greenhouse europe
- Red cedar greenhouse
etc etc
Getting to number 1 in any search engine for those particualr phrases could be extremley difficult depending on the amount of competitors you have who are jostling for the same space. Without knowing specifics and doing a genuine levels of detailed research on your industry, customers and competitors there is no way any Marketing company could presume to guarantee you a 1st place listing anywhere except probably your mail’s spam-folder!
