#BEMEDU Google Analytics March Madness Training @BEMINTERACTIVE

Today I was invited to join BEM Interactive’s March Madness Google Analytics event. It was a great overview of Google Analytics that I used as a refresher since it had been 2+ years since I had taken any real time to mess with GA. However I also come away with some high level tips from BEM’s GA Ninja Jeremy Shaffer. This guy really knows his stuff and can speak to a crowd very well… something I am still trying to master So without further adieu I would like to share you with what I took away from today.

1. Without a good foundation IE. hosting/website design analytics won’t do you a bit of good. Analytics are meant to help you streamline and custom tailer a site for a visitor, not fix a broken site.
2. You will not magically gain traffic by installing analytics. It takes a full market strategy to drive traffic and analytics can quantify if a strategy will or has worked.
3. Just running reports showing numbers will not get you anywhere. You need to be qualifying questions instead. How can analytics tell me I sold a product from this campaign for example.
4. Define conversions for your site. Having traffic is cool but at what point in your site do you deem their visit valuable? Is it when they click order now? When they visit your careers page? Fill out an email sign-up sheet? define these conversions and then use analytics to quantify them.
5. Quantify valuable metrics. You may have had 43,00000000 visits to your site over the last year but where did they come from and what did they do? How long did they stay? Did they bounce? (yeah that one is for Jeremy Shaffer for those of you who where there.
6. Segment traffic. It is great to know what is happening with all of your visitors but when you get down to answering questions about specific ad campaigns segmentation really helps you find out about your traffic patterns and customers.
7. Analytics should help you come up with solutions to problems. You can report a problem but you will really shine if you can also suggest a solution based on traffic patterns.
8. Don’t get in the mindset that web based analytics cannot help quantify your traditional advertising. You can give customers unique urls or include tracking data in the url so that you know that traffic to that url is from a traditional campaign.

Hope this is helpful to you, if you have any other tips leave them in the comments below.
David Bates

Windows Phone 7 Series

So Windows is making a mobile operating system. Yes is the short answer, and it is brilliant but it seems up until now people never associated windows mobile with Microsoft maybe it was due to Microsoft itself never hyping the OS or maybe it’s the manufacturers fault. Who knows, who cares… As the local tech person for everyone I know I have had a lot of questions that start something like “why would Microsoft try to get into the mobile os business now? Is it because both Apple and Google have one? They must be trying to copy them huh?” I just smile and say well windows has been in mobile phones for a very long time… remember the Motorola Q? They all shrug and then say “yeah but it sucked”… and I say yes that is why they put so much effort into windows phone 7 series, because they needed to to stay in the game.

So now that I got their attention I delve into why Windows Phone 7 Series is an OS worth having such a long name. I think they got it right. First they are requiring the device manufacturers to have certain features like touchscreen, accelerometer, and three hardware buttons along the bottom. Then they are basing the phone on an already existing platform, Silverlight and XNA both of which are highly used on the xbox 360 Microsoft’s gaming platform. Finally they are making the tools free. This is a big step for Microsoft and you can still see on the http://developer.windowsphone.com/ they still charge $99 per year for developer access to legacy SDK’s and samples. What freelance developer wants to pay that… especially when Apple and Google both have free tools (Apple is not completely free as you have to buy an Intel mac) and the phone up till now did not have powerful processors or GPU’s. Windows Phone 7 Series even goes one step further to make the software on the phone support full multitasking or as some like to call it multi-APPing. Combine that with a slick UI and sound UI standards we have a real contender on our hands. I wish this phone would be released a lot sooner than the Christmas time-frame that they currently predict.

Now I have downloaded the SDK and even followed the keynote given at http://live.visitmix.com/ to make a picture viewing app. It worked great, was easy to follow given I already knew the tools from silverlight development and fast… on my computer the emulator outperformed any picture app I ever had on my IPhone. I can’t wait to see what comes of the app store and I hope that MS takes a hint from Apple and Google and decide to make it free to publish apps but charge for advertising and take a cut of sales. If so I’m in.

Thanks for reading
David Bates

Projects and Procedures in the Enterprise

At work recently (and in every other enterprise I have worked for) I have been noticing that policies and procedures reign even if the policy or procedure is completely wrong for a certain scenario.
I pride myself in being a very logical thinker and creating steps/procedures/functions to solve a problem is what I get paid for so when I see others using a procedure that is not fit for a particular scenario or developing a new procedure because it worked one time in a certain environment I cringe.

So I would like to take a moment and share with you a few tips on handling projects in the enterprise and avoiding policies/procedures that can hinder:

1. Start each project with a brainstorming meeting where you include all parties that could be involved.
Doing this will give you the advantage of nailing down procedures that will be involved and even flesh out other people that may need to be involved that you didn’t think about. Doing this will help reveal broken procedures or policies that will get in the way. having the meeting early will also give the people involved a heads up to when you will be making further meetings and will let them know when to schedule time to devote to your project. Come up with stages or phases during this time so that the parties involved will be able to put a name or number to their task. Given the time constraints I see everybody under these days the parties involved will appreciate the heads up.

2. Document as you go.
In programming this is essential and I would say this is essential in other areas as well. When creating code, procedure, new processes, or even documentation itself document it. This is always easier said than done but if you document as you go you will familiarize yourself with the subject matter and will be better prepared to dispute the nay-sayers and policy-spitters that come along during long projects trying to deter your efforts.

3. If you find a faulty procedure don’t abandon it go to the source and find out why it was created.
Many many times procedures are made by people who don’t have a clue about the effects of it but create them anyway to satisfy a need they have. So never abandon a procedure unless you first find out what need is to be satisfied. Most procedure writers will work with you to come to a common goal and some will even improve the procedure so that it better meets their need.

4. Don’t get pushed around.
People will doubt your systems and methods especially if you are in a position to create procedures that they must abide by. Always consider their needs but never change the end goal of a project or allow them to push your scope outside of your goal. Policy-spitters will also come along and tell you that you are stepping out of line. Be prepared to discuss the matter but be well versed in your goal and project so that they cannot push you into a position that may hinder production.

5. Send update emails.
Most people will not read update emails as they see it as a waist of time but it will allow the people who need to know what stage you are at. Put the stage near the beginning of the subject line as most users will see the subject and can decide if it is time for them to step in. This is where the defining stages point in #1 comes into play.

I wont guarantee that these steps will keep polices or procedures from getting in your way when working in the enterprise but I can assure you that by putting the effort up front to include as many players as possible and updating them along the way you will be able to reduce the problems you encounter.

Thanks
David Bates

#GoogleGSO

I have been chatting up the #GoogleGSO thread this morning after hearing the JoshInTheBox Google Song on 1075KZL this morning.
Play it here:

It seams like there is a lot of discomfort around how the city of Greensboro is handling the marketing campaign to try and lure Google into our town. First they abandon their 1,400 follower twitter account in order to create a new branded one instead of simply using a hash-tag, and then they pay $10,000 for RLF to build a wordpress site, which is Google’s competitor for blogspot. when there already where good standing grass roots movements like http://www.google4gso.com/, and the twitter hashtag #GoogleGSO on twitter.

I hope we get it, it would mean a lot to our community but if Greensboro as a city is going to make these kind of basic mistakes on a marketing campaign we made need to look for better business leaders to help us next election season.

One thing I will give them credit for is the google crate… that is awesome

Thanks
David Bates

Cheating on winter

Stolen from Donna


This weekend was perfect >60° weather, sunny with a light breeze. It felt so wrong playing outside after having a snow shower less than a week ago.
Jess’ family came down to visit and that is always a lot of fun. They have two bright and wonderful girls that Daniel loves to play with. You can read about her family from her Mom’s blog http://merryheartcrafts.com/ Anyway we had great food and lot’s of outdoor time. We even washed all of our vehicles. I even felt better as I have been fighting a sinus infection for about 2 weeks now. But that changed. Daniel started to get sick on Saturday and Jess on Sunday. It started out as what just felt like a tickley throat but now is a full blown chest cold with fever. I feel like I stepped back about two weeks and am starting this sinus thing all over again. As I drove to Walmart this morning at 5AM to get Daniel a new thermometer it started to rain… What a way to start a Monday…At least we had the weekend.

Thanks for reading
David Bates