Business

Sarah Worsham / Apr 7, 2009

All Your Tweet Belong To Us

All Your Tweet is a free service (currently in beta) that aims to aggregate various Twitter services into one place. Fairly basic functions such as follow, unfollow are offered, along with basic analytics (followers, friends, favorites, status updates) for multiple accounts. A web-based twitter client integrates all accounts into one dashboard, with URL shortening and tracking, and the ability to integrate RSS feeds into Tweets. Scheduling future tweets is also a really nice addition.

When I demoed All Your Tweet, the interface seemed a bit confusing with links at the top and Action links along the left. Some of the links are only available from the dashboard, which makes changing between “Actions” difficult. The web-based Twitter client is nice, but while it constantly updates times, it didn’t seem to always update tweets (those were in batches). So the time updates are a confusing illusion that it is actually constantly refreshing. Having analytics on the side was nice, but not something that was needed while tweeting. Most disappointing, I couldn’t get the RSS feed to work properly – although this may be due to recent problems with Twitter.

All Your Tweet has some really nice functions and I’d like to see them make the interface more robust and easy-to-use. It has the potential to be a pretty useful social marketing tool.

Have you tried All Your Tweet? What are your thoughts?

Technorati tags: all your tweet, social media, internet marketing, social media marketing, business, social networks, marketing

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Sarah Worsham / Apr 6, 2009

Important Metrics for Your Pay-Per-Click Campaign

Many businesses run pay-per-click (PPC) campaigns in order to increase traffic and sales to to their websites. However, many are not looking at how effective those campaigns are. I’ve run across several websites which thought they were doing ok with their PPC campaigns, but upon closer examination, we found they were spending more than they were getting out of the advertising.

Conversions

A conversion is when an action that you’re advertising is actually taken on your website. So if you’re advertising a product, it’s when someone actually purchases that product. This is usually tracked by putting a script tag from your PPC ad on your thank you page that happens after a purchase is made. Conversions are the whole reason you’re advertising, so they are very important to track.

Cost Per Conversion

For the number of conversions you get in any time period, how much are you spending on advertising? Taking the total amount spent and dividing it by the number of conversions will give you how much you’re spending per conversion – or cost per conversion. This metric is extremely important for knowing whether you’re spending too much on your advertising for what you’re getting out of it. If this number is too high, it’s time to look at optimizing your ads, website and landing pages. (As an aside, sometimes people will click on an ad and purchase a product much later – days or weeks – this is not tracked with this metric).

Conversion Rate

How many clicks do you have to get before someone purchases from you? How effective is the path the visitor takes to purchase the product? The number of conversions divided by the number of ad clicks gives you the conversion rate.

Clicks

How many times people are clicking on your ad- how much interest and traffic it is generating. If you are using advertising for branding or just for traffic, and are not tracking conversions or sales, this is an important metric.

Cost Per Click

How much each click costs – or how much you’re paying for each person that your ad brings to your website. Taking the total amount spent and dividing it by the number of clicks will give you this metric.

Click Through Rate (CTR)

How effective your ad is – in message and targeting (keywords, placements, etc.) Measured by the number of clicks on an ad divided by the number of impressions (number of times it is shown). A low CTR can indicate poor messaging or targeting (keywords, placements, etc.).

(photo by The Ancient Brit @ Flickr CC)

Technorati tags: pay-per-click advertising, internet advertising, internet marketing, search engine marketing, business, SEM, SEO, PPC, marketing

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Sarah Worsham / Apr 3, 2009

16 Quick & Easy Ways to Increase Usability On Your Business Website

usabilitysantaroseoldskool Usability is the science of making things easier to use. Usability is especially important to websites since visitors can easily and quickly go somewhere else. Try these tips to make your website easier to use and help your visitors find what they’re looking for.

Search in the upper right – Especially for large sites, make it as easy as possible for visitors to find what they’re looking for.
Consistent menus – generally on the left or top of the site. Visitors should be able to navigate wherever they want and get a feel for the site structure.
Include a home link – Visitors may want to get back to the homepage easily.
Contact page – with a business phone, address and email. It increases your reputation and makes it easy for potential customers to get in contact with you.
Sized to fit – Fit into the minimum standards screen resolution of 1028×768 without scrolling horizontally.
Easy to read – Use text colors with good contrast, size and easy to read fonts.
One layout – If your site has a consistent layout throughout, it will make it easier for visitors to navigate and find information.
Pleasing to the eye – Color scheme is important to your professional image and makes it easier to visitors to understand what you do, as well as navigate your site.
Use white space – Don’t bunch things up. People need white space in order to scan and read your site.
Speak normally – Overly technical text or too much hype makes reading difficult.
Use bullet points and lists – when feasible to make it easy for visitors to scan your content.
Move forward to the right – Submit, next, go, etc. buttons should always be on the right, cancel buttons on the left.
Use Flash, rich media, video, audio, etc. sparingly – If you have a video page, great, but your whole site shouldn’t be in rich media or people without the plugins, on mobile devices, or using text browsers will not be able to see your content. Audio, Video, Flash and rich media should preferrably not play without the visitor clicking a button.
Restrain movement – Animation, flashing and movement make it difficult for people to read and scan your website. Use for relevant informational purposes, not just as a gimmick or ad.
Limit advertising – We all understand that advertising has a place and a purpose. If you choose to include advertising, keep it relevant, limit it to specific spots on your site, limit then number of ads and mark them clearly as advertising.
Include a Sitemap – Sometimes it’s just easier to see a list of all the pages on a website. This helps search engines find all your content as well.

Do you have other tips to increase usability? We’d love to hear them in the comments…

(photo by SantaRosa OLD SKOOL @ Flickr CC)

Technorati tags: customer experience, customer-centric, experience centric, business, usability, design

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