Google’s Free Ad Server, Ad Manager, accepting applications for beta. Google has rolled out a new Ad Manager service targeted at the small to mid sized publisher sites. Google Ad Manager offers a wide array of inventory management, trafficking, targeting and reporting tools normally found in premium ad serving software or services for free. Currently [...]

Google Analytics Offers Free Benchmarking Service Google has recently announced the addition of analytic benchmarks to their Google Analytics service. This free service will require Google Analytics customers to opt in to “share the account data in an anonymous, aggregated format”. Reporting will be limited in the beta version of this service. Benchmark metrics include: [...]

Landing Page Load Times Effect Google AdWords Quality Score News from Google that web page load times of landing pages will now be a component of your AdWords Quality Score. This information can be found be viewing your Quality Score on an Ad Group or individual keyword level. Landing page: Your landing page is the [...]

E-commerce Photography: 5 Simple Tips for Better Product Shots 1. Soft/Even lighting – Photographers use contrast and shadows to create atmosphere, but for product shots, ditch the art for clarity. Dark shadows and bright highlights can influence the appearance of a product which can prove to be deceptive to a customer. To avoid this kind [...]

SEO & PPC Metrics – Website Page Depth When managing an SEO initiative or PPC campaign, one of the more challenging aspects is measuring the lead quality of the inbound visitors. Most people know how to measure Return on Investment (ROI) and Return on Ad Spend (ROAS), but that should not be the only metric [...]

The following is Part V of E-commerce & Web Analytics: Part I: Visitor Targeting & Acquisition Part II: Landing Page Effectiveness Part III: Cross Selling & Checkout Optimization Part IV: E-commerce Segmenting Modifying & Testing Once data has been gathered, it will need to be analyzed. Analytic programs capture, store and arrange data, but they [...]

The following is Part IV of E-commerce & Web Analytics: Part I: Visitor Targeting & Acquisition Part II: Landing Page Effectiveness Part III: Cross Selling & Checkout Optimization Analyzing & Segmenting Data A successful E-commerce website is a dynamic virtual marketplace. It should change over time, evolving to serve its visitors better by using their [...]

The following is Part III of Ecommerce & Web Analytics: Part I: Visitor Targeting & Acquisition Part II: Landing Page Effectiveness Optimizing Checkout & Cross Selling Once the visitor has been acquired, and the landing page leads to the visitor placing an item in a cart, the next step of the conversion funnel is checkout [...]

A study released last week by The E-Tailing Group has found that a surprising amount of online shoppers not only rely on customer reviews, but use them more so than traditional modes of product information such as retailers, sales associates, advertising, etc. I’ll link you to the article at the end, but what it basically [...]

So Radiohead’s new release “In Rainbows” is apparently going to revolutionize the way music is distributed, the way bands make money, what record companies can really do to save themselves from torrent sites, blah, blah, blah, but a huge issue that has arisen since the release is how fans are reacting to the download provided. [...]