Recently I was troubleshooting why ?fb_xd_fragment= was getting appended to the end of a bunch of URLs in Google Analytics. With a little bit of googling, the source of the problem wasn’t tough to find--it happens when a visitor using Internet Explorer clicks a Facebook ‘Like’ button on your page.

Surprisingly, though, all of the highly ranking results in Google give a GA solution that’s flat-out wrong. Here’s why:

Continue reading "What is fb_xd_fragment and how can I make it go away from Google Analytics?"

In April of this year, Google began updating their search algorithms with something called "Panda." These effects have been more fully integrated throughout the year. In the world of SEO, this update represents a greater movement towards human accessibility and usability and away from machine oriented language (such as meta tags, keywords, etc.).

Panda utilizes thousands of ratings from human quality raters that provide answers to simple questions on the quality of the websites they visit. These questions include anything from "Would you trust this website to prescribe pharmaceutical drugs to your children?" and "Were you engaged by the content on this site?" to "Would you ever revisit this site?" These questions focus on visual design, user experience, and original content, more so than any other algorithms have previously measured. Based on the quality raters' answers to these questions, Google determined trends that re-ranked thousands of websites. These re-rankings hurt thousands of "content and link farms" which used traditional SEO tricks to boost rankings. Specifically, these sites suffered due to the following qualities:

Continue reading "How Google Turned SEO Upside Down in 2011"

According to IBM Coremetrics Benchmark Reports, 2011 was a huge success for Thanksgiving weekend shopping. Online spending and mobile traffic took the cake with big increases from 2010. 

Black Friday 2011 saw a 24% increase in overall online spending from 2010. Not surprisingly, 4% of traffic and 9% of sales came from mobile devices, up from 5.5% and 3%, respectively. Leading the charge in mobile usage was the iPhone and iPad, with the iPad leading conversion rates at 4.6% versus the 2.8% for overall mobile devices.

Cyber Monday fared even better with a 33% increase in online spending from 2010. Mobile traffic and spending didn't shine as brightly on Cyber Monday as it did on Black Friday 2011, but were each up almost 200% from Cyber Monday 2010, at 11% of traffic and 6% of sales. 

Continue reading "Black Friday and Cyber Monday Numbers Are In"

Recently, Matthew came to us with a common Google Analytics challenge--how to break out reports for particular sections of a site. He wrote a blog post explaining his situation, and we helped out--here’s how we did it, so you can, too!

Continue reading "Using Filters to Create GA Reports for Each Section of Your Site"

Google Analytics events measure and categorize specific user actions, giving insight into difficult metrics like outbound links and JavaScript interactions. Unlike pageviews, the attributes of an event are entirely controllable by the way you track them, and can be fired several times, at will, on a single page. This means a few things:

Continue reading "Trackiffer.js: GA Events Made Easier"

"Pivot." It's become a buzz word among startups thanks to Eric Ries and his lean startup language. It can often be overused and in the process be stripped of its meaning. But the principle remains invaluable for startups, and large companies for that matter, to constantly embrace change. What you set out to do will probably look nothing like what you will be doing in 3-5 years. Embrace it.

This post will take more of a case study approach, introducing three "graduated" startups that started as something very different than what eventually made them big.

Continue reading "Lean Startups: Part 3 - Startups That Pivoted"

Time and time again we come across companies who have one objective for their site redesign: drive more traffic to the site. However, a site design does not drive traffic. Advertising campaigns drive traffic. This is why, when it comes to a redesign, the focus should be on conversions, not traffic. While traffic is critical to a web site’s success, it certainly should not be the primary or only goal. Sheer traffic numbers or large increases in pageviews don’t mean much if there is no action being taken by those visitors. In order to get a better idea of whether your redesign was a success, conversion tracking is key.

Continue reading "Focus on Conversions, Not Traffic"

As discussed in Part 1 of Lean Startups, learning quickly is imperative in bringing an idea to a productive and successful product. An important piece of the learn, measure, build loop is learning from the very start of any idea. The question is, how do you test your idea and learn from potential response? Enter: The Magic Test.

The Magic Test--a recipe designed and supported by Eric Ries--entails attempting to sell your idea as "magic". Before jumping into discussions about features and functionality, think of your product as solving one or two major pain points magically. You don't need to tell people how you're going to solve their problems just yet--at least not until you know that people are interested in that problem even being solved. Simply put, if people won't buy magic to fix their problem, then they won't buy your product.

Continue reading "Lean Startups: Part 2 - The Magic Test"

"Buzz buzz buzz" goes the lean startup movement. This ideology, led by Eric Ries, focuses on learning from potential users and iterating through quick builds, and has been in the spotlight recently. I will spend a couple of posts explaining the most important and useful shifts in thinking that could shape your startup.

One of the most unique contributions that Ries makes to startup methodology is a flipping of the normal "Build, Measure, Learn" loop.

Continue reading "Lean Startups: Part 1 - “Learn, Measure, Build”"

Google Analytics filters are great for excluding certain data from your reports, such as traffic from your company's IP addresses or staging server. They're also relatively simple to create.

In addition to the general Exclude and Include filters, GA also offers an Advanced filter option. In their help documents, Google does a good job explaining what to do, but not why you'd actually want to use this option. I want to share three helpful filters we've used at Viget that help make your data cleaner and workload lighter. I'll also share a few more soon!

Continue reading "Fun with Filters in GA, Part 1"

A question that plagues startups from day 1 is: how am I going to pay for anything? There are numerous different capital structures and forms of investment, but it seems like the hot topic is making the case for IPOs. While it seems like the next best thing to sliced bread for many, I sought to answer the question: is going the IPO route really worth it for startups?

Most of my college education was focused on econometrics and statistics, so instead of attempting to provide anecdotal case studies (which can vary drastically), I sought to collect data and provide empirical evidence that would provide insights on whether the act of an initial public offering (IPO) would increase or decrease operating return on assets (a measure of efficiency) and revenue (a measure of growth). This post summarizes my findings.

Continue reading "New Study: IPOs Now More Attractive for Startups"

I recently tweeted about the New York City DOT's new anti-speeding campaign. The campaign has the NYC DOT electronic signs turn a standard pedestrian icon into a rather frightening skeleton when drivers speed through the 30-mile-per-hour speed limit. This campaign got me thinking - do these ads ever work? Over the years we've seen numerous creepy, horrifying, and sensitive ads across various marketing channels. But how effective are these campaigns? Have there been any actual positive (or negative) results? I took a deeper dive into one of these campaigns to find out.

Continue reading "Are Creepy Ads Effective?"

Paul wrote about ClickTale a couple months back, noting that the heatmaps that ClickTale offers can often provide insight into what content and elements visitors are paying attention vs. what needs improvement. However, if you don't have time or money to get ClickTale up and running but you do already have Google Analytics installed on your current, there are several reports that you can use to glean information that could help inform future UX and visual design direction. Below you'll find seven reports that you may want to take a peek at before starting your redesign process.

Continue reading "7 Ways Google Analytics Can Help Inform Design Decisions"

I recently came across the 2011 CMO's Guide to The Social Landscape. I think this is pretty on target when it comes to figuring out how to best align your goal with the right social media channel. However, with multiple goals and channels, it can get tough to maintain a consistent brand. Your brand may come off as disjointed or fragmented, leaving customers filled with doubt about what exactly your brand stands for and where the value is, thus negating all your hard social media work. Mashable posted their 5 Tips for Maintaining Brand Consistency Across Social Media. I agree with a couple, but not sold on all of them. Below are some additional tips that can help give your brand one voice.

Continue reading "Brand Consistency and Social Media"

Latest reports on iAds tell us that Apple recently slashed the minimum ad buy for an iAd from $1 million to $500,000 in an attempt to make the platform more appealing to advertisers. What exactly does this mean for Apple's iAds? Are they hurting that badly? Is this a move to attract advertisers in lieu of the new iPad 2 release this week? Several explanations exist and there's much speculation as to how well iAds are actually working.

Continue reading "What Does the Future Hold for Apple’s iAds?"