Engage

Are these your top 10 biggest website mistakes?

September 22, 2011 By Chris Elvery 2 Comments

Following on from my last post about building websites to take account of Social Media, I thought, seeing as I spend most of my life reviewing sites that I’d share some of the most common errors I see – these are not in any order and the list is not definitive, but hopefully they may strike a chord!

1) What’s it all about then?

If I see another website where I struggle to understand why on earth it was built in the first place, who it’s for, what it’s supposed to do or what I’m supposed to do on it, then, I will …… have seen an awful lot that fall in to this category. Websites need a purpose!

2) Build it and they will come?!

The key to a successful website is understanding your audience and building a site that offers value to them. Without knowing that, you’re on a hiding to nothing!

3) Accessibility isn’t for me

There are laws and there are standards – make sure you follow them. Visually impaired and people with other disabilities use the web too you know!

4) Well I know where everything is!

Any usability study will tell you that when people are lost, they leave. Clear, logical navigation and tools to improve (such as breadcrumbs) are key.

5) Looks good in my designer’s office!

It looked great when you saw it on a 25″ widescreen monitor, on a safari browser. Now that you’re looking at it on a 17″ monitor using Internet Explorer 6 – it’s not so great! Ensure that you build for the widest possible audience.

6) They’ll get in touch if they really want to

You build a site, you attract traffic through Search Engines and other mechanisms and then you leave site visitors to their own devices when it comes to what you want them to do – be clear, be bold. Make specific to the page the visitor is on.

7) Website – done. Now back to the day job.

You have a site which is invisible to the outside world – don’t get me wrong, there are occasions when you don’t want any profile, but most clients build a site to attract business, yet the site has either been built so the Search Engines avoid it like the plague, or there are no links in to it……

8) Build for now, we’ll think about tomorrow, tomorrow!

Think of your site as an apartment block. If you can consider what you’d like the block to look like over a 3-5 year period and then build the site – even if it’s the first storey, then at least you’ve got the architecture to allow you to continue to built. The amount of multi-storey bungalows I see!

9) My developer knows what I want

“I thought the guy knew what he was doing and gave him £1500 and my logo and he built me a site – now I find it has no search engine profile and I can’t update it myself”. True story and oh, so common. Always specify your requirements before starting.

10) We’ll get an enquiry one of these days……

Everyone says that Google Analytics is wonderful – question whether they use it and that’s a different matter. It’s as if by the very fact that Analytics is plugged in that the site will heal itself! Analytics are great, learn how to read them (Google’s Conversion University is great) and make decisions based on the information . Two words of warning – make sure that you filter yourself/ your developer out from the data and make sure that you treat the data with a certain amount of common sense – after all they only tell you what people did – not what they wanted to do!

Filed Under: analytics, Conversion Rate Optimization, Engage, Google Analytics, Tips, Web Analytics, Web Design, Web metrics

Inside WebTrends Engage 2009: Jascha Kaykas-Wolff

April 15, 2009 By Craig McLurg 1 Comment

I was able to sit down with Jascha Kaykas-Wolff, VP Marketing at WebTrends, for a while during the Engage conference. Here are some of the thoughts that he shared with me.

[Craig]: Customer’s perceptions of WebTrends may not be as good as it could be. Do you have any theories as to why and any plans for improvement?

[Jascha Kaykas-Wolff]: I’m a film buff, and like to describe Webtrends as an epic movie, 15 years in the making, where many of the best scenes never made it off the cutting room floor. There is a challenge inherent in the technology industry in that we, for the most part, dehumanize what we do. The story we tell about what we do becomes a discussion about features and functions and not much else. Webtrends is, and has been historically, respected as the most flexible and powerful platform in the industry. The challenge is that flexibility isn’t a narrative that can be told to everyone and thus flexibility morphs into ‘everything to everyone’ which manifests itself as ‘nothing to anyone’. With Alex Yoder at the helm, along with our new management team, we are taking a decidedly different approach. Strange as it might sound, we’re not really in the business of analytics – We’re in the business of helping our clients build relationships with customers. Relationships built on understanding people. That purposefully human approach to our business and industry is what you will see from Webtrends moving forward. That approach is Webtrends Open Exchange.

[Craig]: People I’ve been talking to are excited about the new Data Access Services. Are there other Open Exchange initiatives that we can look forward to?

[Jascha Kaykas-Wolff]: First off, we are thrilled about our new data access API. As I spoke about at engage, we have been wrongfully conditioned to pay for convenience. This conditioning impacts the way we pay for getting our own money out of our banks via the ATM network, to having to pay more money for locally grown, organic food. The same conditioning has been reinforced in the analytics industry – Not anymore. Webtrends and our customers have an equitable value exchange and we believe it is our responsibility to help our customers make sense of their data, and get to its understanding within the context of their business in a way that works for them. Making the data access API available to our customers without nickel and diming them for its use is the president we are setting for the industry. We also pre-announced our data collection API available later this summer, and you will see us continuing to invest in helpful tools and services like tag builder. Open Exchange is also a philosophy that governs the way we work and the partnerships which we formalize. Webtrends Social Measurement powered by Radian6 is an example of how the Open Exchange provides a platform for partnerships that can have a meaningful impact on the industry. You will see more partnership announcements from us and within our Open Exchange in the near future.

[Craig]: How important are consulting services to WebTrends?

[Jascha Kaykas-Wolff]: Webtrends is, and historically has been, focused on our best in class support. As we looked back over our 15 years of experience in the industry and the customer successes that have been enabled, there are a handful of consistent components in the successful equation. Our consulting services are one of those extremely critical components. To that end, and though the leadership of our VP of services Dave Canelis we have made substantial investments in our consulting services. Those investments include the reorganization of the team to include our solution engineering team and added practices like digital marketing optimization and training. Expect some very exciting and relevant advances from our services team in the coming months.

[Craig]: What sort of impact has Google Analytics had on the industry? Is WebTrends doing anything special to respond?

[Jascha Kaykas-Wolff]: Rising tides float all boats. Google has introduced web analytics to a percentage of the industry that previously hadn’t been served. With their free web analytics offering Google has up leveled the entire industry’s expectations that analytics are a critical component of everything you do online. Our business is quite a bit different than Google’s. Our customers run businesses that are much bigger than just the internet channel. They care about call centers, IVRs, CRM and any other of a myriad of possible data silos that help them manage their business. You will see us continue to make investments in capabilities that allow our customers to break down data silos in their business – Investments in industry firsts like data access APIs at no charge.

[Craig]: You’re commuting to Portland but still living in Seattle. What are your biggest challenges with work and your family?

[Jascha Kaykas-Wolff]: Balance is incredibly difficult. I have three small children (Simone, Sofie & Julien) and it’s very tough to be gone the majority of the week and not see them all. Our youngest is 6 months and he is growing so fast it’s almost like he is a different kid each week when I come home! I’m a bit of a type A personality and when I come home I operate like I never left… which sometimes drives everyone nuts as they have all established a routine that I quickly disrupt. I’m fortunate to have an amazing partner in life, Rebecca, who makes it possible for me to do what I’m doing; I told a story at Engage about my number is really the story about how I met her. It also helps us that she has been a customer of Webtrends in the past and is an incredibly accomplished marketing executive that understands what I do and whom I can bounce ideas off of. While the balance is tough, and we are anxious to sell our house and move to Portland, I’m lucky to be surrounded by amazing people in the office and an very supportive family. It wouldn’t be possible if both weren’t the case. If you know anyone looking to move to Seattle, let me know… we have a wonderful house they can buy.

[Craig]: Thanks for spending some time with me, Jascha. I know that you are a very busy person and I appreciate you fitting me into your schedule.

Filed Under: Engage, WebTrends

WebTrends Engage 2009: Videos from Final Day

April 10, 2009 By Manoj Jasra Leave a Comment

The data within your web analytics solution is a gold mine of information about your customers, your campaign budget and your business. Successful marketing organizations leverage this information to make data driven decisions. The industry’s best and brightest share their experience in applying web analytics data towards insightful corporate dashboards, multi-channel data warehouses and unique analysis projects. This is your chance to ask the experts how you can get more out of your data.

WebTrends’ CEO Alex Yoder closes the conference

Filed Under: Engage, Web Analytics, WebTrends

WebTrends Engage 2009: Pictures from Final Day

April 9, 2009 By Manoj Jasra Leave a Comment

Pictures from the final day of WebTrends Engage 2009: Expert Panel and the socialization of data, WebTrends Road Map, and Closing Remarks from Alex Yoder.

Filed Under: Engage, WebTrends

Inside WebTrends Engage 2009: Obama Data Crunchers

April 8, 2009 By Craig McLurg Leave a Comment

Dan Langer, the Obama campaign’s national data director, and Luke Peterson, data architect for Obama for America, presented a facinating discussion of how the Obama campaign used data-mining techniques to cultivate record numbers of donors and voters by cross-referencing hundreds of disparate data sources. This data was made available to the grass roots organizers throughout the campaign.

Some incredible facts and figures:

gathered 13,000,000 email addresses and sent out 1,000,000,000 emails
raised $750,000,000 during the campaign: $500,000,000 online and $250,000,000 offline

One technique that the Obama campaign used was to allow people to be the first notified by text message when Obama selected his running mate. All they had to do was register their phone number and zip code. Then, when Obama was in, say Cleveland, each registered user within 50 miles would get a text message saying that Obama was going to be in Cleveland tomorrow. There would be a special entrance reserved for mobile users and they only had to show the text message as their ticket. This is an excellent example of using online data to get people involved in an offline fashion.

Another example is that when someone registered on the Obama website, the user’s information was emailed directly to the local campaign organizer so that te newly registered user could be phoned within minutes of registering.

Filed Under: Engage, WebTrends

Inside WebTrends Engage 2009: Special Correspondent

April 2, 2009 By Craig McLurg 1 Comment

The WebTrends Engage’09 Conference starts next week in Las Vegas. It’s being held at the Red Rocks Resort from Tuesday, April 7 until Thursday, April 9.

“M” is sending me (Craig McLurg) on a special mission down to Las Vegas to blog live from the WebTrends Engage Conference. I’ll keep you posted on what is happening at the conference and what everyone is talking about. I’ll be giving updates on the events and sessions that I attend.

Starting Tuesday, April 7, you can follow me at twitter.com/waworld as well. I’m looking forward to seeing everyone in Vegas! If you see me, be sure to stop by and say hello. I work with Manoj at Shaw Communications and would like to know the “Inside Story” on him too.

Filed Under: Engage, WebTrends