Internet Marketing & Design Blog

Have you ever wanted to track beyond just page views and visitors? It is very important to figure out whether your website is actually helping your business or not. Here Google Analytics does a great job. But to get actionable metrics out of Google Analytics, you need to set up a few things first.  Tracking Goals & Conversions One of its prime features is tracking your goals and then its conversions; goals may be anything, ranging from the Purchase of a product to the completion of an email list sign up or Download of an eBook. In order to set up a goal, you’d need to first go to your website’s profile in Google Analytics and click on the “Admin” tab: you’d find here a tab for Goals. Click on the +Goal link to begin adding goals. Enter a short, descr...

Web designers are some of the best paid workers in the nation, and like most people who earn a good living, the work they do is not easy. Being a web designer is not as simple as designing a website, it involves dealing with clients who have absolutely no idea how web design works. This makes it very important to let clients know up front what they will be getting. Most clients will not understand that it takes time to create websites, and if they change their mind about what they want, it takes even more time to alter what they initially agreed to. This makes it very important to have contracts stating exactly what a customer wants, because a large amount of clients are going to change their mind at some point in the process. Simple steps like having a contract set up beforehand can make the art of web design far less painful.   Source: http://www.topwebdesignschools.org Read More →

I have a big problem with social media. And Twitter. And LinkedIn. And, mostly, good old fashioned email. Let me put those sentiments another way. I have a problem with the way business people knowingly or unknowingly delude themselves into thinking that social media and email are really sufficing as the sort of “relationship ice breakers” that are necessary to secure any sizable piece of business these days. By way of explanation, I should explain that I own a professional services company which offers website design and internet marketing services. I’m also currently our principal salesperson. Our clients understand that our services are not inexpensive and they also realize that hiring someone like us means the beginning of an ongoing relationshi...

Social media has become the hip, effective, and free way to market your company, service, or small business. It’s supposed to be so simple that anyone with a Facebook can do it, but there are as many options, strategies, and potential pitfalls as in traditional marketing, with far more far-reaching effects. If you’re stymied as to how to start your social media marketing campaign, or you want to grab some new ideas for how to increase your social media presence, read on. You’ll see what companies like Spotify, Hipmunk, TheDecalGuru, Dunkin Donuts, and Durango Joe’s Coffee are doing to make social media work for them, and hopefully, you’ll pick up some great ideas for your own campaign. #1 Start With Simple Sharing: Spotify allows you ...

Conversions are one of the most important metric which often gets overlooked. We often focus so hard on one main conversion point and forget about other visitor engagements that exist on our sites. These other engagement points or less-important conversions are what experts call “micro conversions.” World-renowned analytics expert Avinash Kaushik, in his Excellent Analytics Tip series recommends: Focus on measuring your macro (overall) conversions, but for optimal awesomeness identify and measure your micro conversions as well. He also explains the benefits of tracking both micro and macro conversions: It will force you to understand the multiple persona’s on your website, trust me that in of itself is worth a million bucks. It will encourage you to...

As the global economy continues to become more tightly integrated, businesses are looking for innovative ways to spread brand awareness and market themselves. While the power of social media has been over-hyped to some extent by pundits and snake oil salesmen, the truth is that social media campaigns can be an effective way to improve your bottom line. When implemented properly, social media marketing efforts can do wonders for any company. Many firms fail when it comes to launching a social media campaign because they go into it unprepared. Here’s a quick primer on how to make social media work for you. Getting Started Obviously, the first thing to do is set up accounts on a variety of social media platforms. Most people assume that social media begins and end...

Have you ever wondered from where your website visitors come from, rather than just a domain referral from Facebook, Twitter or Google?  How about finding out if the large banner on your homepage drives more traffic to your products than the smaller banner in your sidebar? While tracking your online success Google Analytics can help you get insights from your data. For example if you have a Google AdWords account integrated with your Google Analytics account, then you can monitor your AdWords campaigns within Google Analytics. Now, if you are not assigning visitors from different sources to Google Analytics Campaigns, then you won’t be able to properly segment.  Without proper segmentation, it’s hard to make actionable insights. If you’re looking for these ki...

SEO campaigns are constantly evolving with changes to search engine algorithms and search tactics. Keyword priorities also change over time as your site moves up and down in search rankings. This makes SEO campaigns tricky to manage. Traditional project management techniques don’t cut it so managers need to think outside the box. Scrum is an Agile framework designed for managing software development projects. However, we feel that SEO managers can learn a lot from it! Here are 3 things SEO managers can learn from Scrum:   1. Sprints Sprints are at the core of Scrum. The workload of a project is broken up into segments and completed in sprints that can be anything from a day to a month. A Sprint Planning Meeting is held before each sprint to establish the goals ...

The QR is an acronym for “Quick Response” code. It is a matrix or 2-dimensional code that is capable of including links, text or other information and can be interpreted quickly by smartphones and other camera equipped mobile phones. A scan of this QR code with a cell phone will direct you to a specified page containing the required information. With the increasing popularity, this code is becoming more visible in magazines and on other places like advertising boards and even business cards. The QR codes are considered to be more useful than standard barcodes. While bar codes are one-dimensional linear codes that are capable of holding up to 20 numerical digits, QR codes are 2-dimensional matrix barcodes that are capable of holding thousands of information like a...

Local businesses have it rough. Not only do they typically lack the financial backing that national businesses have, but they also are focused on a more limited target market than their national counterparts. Aside from competing with large national brands, you have to compete against other local businesses. So what do you need to know to position your business to get the exposure it needs? Implementing a local SEO strategy is a great way to keep your business competitive online. Over the past few months, Google has been focusing more on local search results by incorporating Places results into organic search results. Making sure you utilize local SEO best practices will help the chances your business will appear in one of these spots on page 1. By implementing local ...