On SOPA and PIPA

In Plato’s Republic, Socrates tells the story of men chained to a cave wall while a bright fire burns behind them and illuminates the cave walls. As these men see shadows and hear echoes that are the consequence of the reality they cannot fathom outside the cave, Socrates asks if these men would not perceive [...]

In a recent post on Useit.com, Jakob Nielsen disparages social media outlet Digg as nothing more than an inflation of your bounce rate as its users show up and disappear without delving any deeper into your site. Stan Schroeder of Mashable, social-media’s stalwart defender, quickly rebutted Nielsen’s argument rightly saying that sites like Digg, StumbleUpon [...]

Measuring Landing Page Effectiveness via Google Analytics The importance of landing pages and their roles in SEO & conversion rates is well documented. It is now common practice to design landing pages based on the source & medium of the referral. Clearly then, it is equally important to find a way to measure the effectiveness [...]

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 [...]

Not unlike the days of Franklin D. Roosevelt, understanding website accessibility involves sifting through a bowl-full of acronyms and abbreviations. Terms like Section 508, ADA, W3C, WAI, and WCAG all get thrown around in reference to accessibility – but what do they all mean? And how do they apply to your business and online presence? [...]

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 [...]