Inbound Marketing Blog

I've been sorting through Google Analytics today to see which of our clients are getting mobile traffic. Not surprisingly, they're all getting it. I'd say relative to the overall traffic, the mobile slice of the pie is similar on all sites. What's not similar, though, is the the bounce rate, which is the amount of people staying on that site and the amount of people leaving without doing anything. On a lot of our sites, the bounce rate for the normal site hovers around 30%-40%, where the mobile sites are closer to 60-70%. It makes sense. Most of these people are accessing a regular site on their mobile phone, so it's not surprising that the bounce rate is a lot higher. It's just harder to use. So I compared this to a few of the mobile sites we've developed and noticed that just having that mobile friendly homepage in place seems to really level out the bounce rate. It brings it right back down to that 30-40% range, similar to the desktop site.more

Why do people click on the search results when and where they do? Why aren’t paid search campaigns as successful as they used to be? Are people even looking at your display ads? Eye tracking is understanding how users look at your website or search results - there are many software programs available. Important for any business, eye tracking studies have a lot to do with what the page looks like - keeping it usable, engaging and easy to take in visually. Still, it has a lot more to do with users' eye patterns on the screen. When it comes to search results, we know that top organic rankings are the best. Why? Well, look at the charts below. One shows click positions, while the other shows cursor movement.more

When you're in need of a tent for the graduation party you’re hosting, what do you do? If you’re like most people, you Google “tent rental grand rapids.” Need replacement windows, a painter, a florist, a nearby Chinese restaurant, reliable PC repair? That’s right, Google. Now what if you’re at work and you’ve been given the responsibility to purchase a new projector for the conference room, or find a dependable commercial lawn care company, or locate a pallet rack supplier for the warehouse or select a venue for the company Holiday party? Where do you turn then? Did someone just say Google? Many businesses I’ve worked with express doubt about how online search affects them. However, it’s just as important for a B2B firm to have a compelling and a search engine optimized website as it is for B2C.more

Online Reviews: Why Should I Care? Taking a vacation these days is precious. With demands on our time from work, home, and community, we want (and need!) the best trip possible. When my husband and I went to Mexico a few years ago, I spent hours on TripAdvisor reading reviews posted by average people. Those reviews helped steer us to book at the resort we chose, which wasn’t cheap. When we got home, I couldn’t wait to write my own review! TripAdvisor’s site says they have over 50 million reviews on 85,000 establishments, with 23 reviews per minute being posted. Readers of the reviews are potential customers of every hotel or restaurant they investigate. A positive or negative review can literally change a buyer’s mind without any further research or information.more

You’re excited to begin working on your new website, and you’ve got it all figured out. Photos to be used, general ideas of copy, videos and overall layout and site map have been approved by the Web managers. All you have to do is execute your ideas. Easy peasy, right? Thinking of ideas is the easy part, implementing them is another (more complicated) story. How can you make sure your content is as great as possible once your website is ready for launch?more

How far ahead are you looking in your business? Here we are, two days past Halloween. I walked through the store yesterday and saw all of the Halloween decorations, costumes, etc., marked half off or more. Then I saw the aisles and aisles of Christmas and holiday decorations: stockings, ornaments, wrapping paper, and much, much more! Already?!more

Last night, while I enjoyed watching the Eagles destroying the Cowboys on Sunday Night Football, Nike informed me that Basketball Never Stops. Take a look:more

Clients always ask me, “What’s the next Facebook?” Given the turbulent ride of MySpace, and the slow mainstream growth of Twitter, I understand why clients would ask this question. They want to know if Facebook will be around - and popular - in a few years and worth the utilization efforts and investment. They also wonder what platform is going to explode next year so they can jump on now and be ahead of the curve. When I’m asked this I often laugh. I feel like they are asking me what will the stock market do next year. I have no idea - and neither does anyone else. It’s impossible to predict the future, so we have to rely on educated guesses and make assumptions and predictions based on historical data.more

Keeping in theme with my last post, Transforming in the Digital Age, I think it’s interesting and entertaining to look back at early uses of the Internet and Web technologies and the changes over time - it provides comic relief and demonstrates how Web technology has evolved from user demands and feedback. Today the Internet is about content and providing a valuable user experience, but it wasn’t always that way - remember silly “splash” homepages and animated flash sites with elevator music? Back in the day website functionality was not only trendy, it was an adventure. I thought it would be fun to compile a list of these hilarious out-of-date features. From the early days of the Web to Web 2.0, a list of the silliest and most obnoxious website features from the past:more

Over the past few weeks I have been blessed with a plethora of Web analytic data to mine and analyze. Although some of you may want to stop reading here, I promise this is not about data mining, but more about a typically missed listening channel. While scanning through endless analytic accounts, I started to notice a trend of a piece of data missing in each site’s analytic data. This is where the data analysis guys/gals typically start to throw up their arms and walk out the door. So instead of doing that, I decided to sit down and write this article with the hopes of helping you gain lost insights and a better perspective of what your visitors are telling you.more

Many students and educators are blessed by the opportunities available to engage with our agencies, Hanon McKendry and MINDSCAPE, and the people who make us who we are. We open our doors often to the curious minds that seek to know more about the advertising and Web industries we serve. While we give them an opportunity to learn, we also receive…in the enthusiasm, the freshness, the vulnerability of these curiosity seekers. We now also receive in another way.more

Link tagging is one ninja-like feature built into Google Analytics is surprisingly powerful and rarely used outside of AdWords campaigns. Link tagging allows you to tag nearly any link with some special values to gain some interesting insights into your traffic sources. To Tag or Not To Tag So, why on earth would someone want to use link tagging? Well, link tagging allows us to see visitors from a particular email campaign. It would help us to identify visitors from a specific tweet or Facebook post. It’s really a very simple thing to do, it’s easy to get started and it can provide a lot of insight into your traffic sources. The first thing to understand about link tagging is that you don’t need to tag everything and you can’t tag some stuff. Organic traffic is impossible to tag. No matter how much of an analytics ninja you are, you just can’t tag organic traffic. If you use Google AdWords, you don’t need to tag those because Google already does that for you. If, however, you are using a different paid advertising campaign or any email campaigns, you will definitely want to tag those.more

As I was organizing some papers, I came across an old marketing piece from the late nineties. Done by the Gardner Group in 1998, it illustrates how businesses can embrace the Internet (back then called e-business) and ultimately transform to efficient and powerful enterprises.more

We are very fortunate to work with over 1,000 clients these days, from multi-billion dollar international companies to local mom-and-pop shops. This wide range of clientele allows us to gain a vast array of experience. Something I experienced this past week was working with one of our larger clients and setting goals for 2012. Before working with us, their 2011 goals were centered around getting to the top of the search engines. Their goal wasn't to just be on the front page, they wanted to be no lower than number 3 in Google. And it worked! As great of a goal as that sounds, I was able to quickly point out several cases where they dominated the search engines for the key phrases they were targeting. But in the end, the traffic driven to the site was minimal at best.more

If you’re a reader of this blog, chances are at some point in your career or life you will be a part of a team that builds and launches a new (or improved) website. For those of you who have launched a website, how were the first couple of days? Websites are a lot of work. They take weeks or months to plan, design, develop, create content and get to the point of going live. Website beta testing is done internally by your staff, your Web team and those you know. Given all this hard work, going live is a HUGE milestone, right?! It makes sense to want to tell people the day it goes live.more

Google, Bing, Yahoo – oh my! Over the past several months, search engines have been toughening up on quality keyword optimized content. With the Panda update, effective February, 2011, search engines are cracking down on inserting meaningful keywords, so that those inserted haphazardly cannot prevent your Web content from reaching search results. When writing copy for a website, press release, blog or other published venue, writers must not take the importance of keyword placement lightly. If there aren’t keywords in your content for search engines to locate, they will not place you highly in search results. It’s that simple. Of course, everyone wants to place as highly as possible in search engines, but how is it done? It can be tricky – but once you know the steps to take, it will be a breeze.more

Many companies want to know what the impact of social media is on sales. Unfortunately, there is not a magic formula that will say “for every fan we get on social media, we’ll get XX in sales”. But, using some super cool tricks in Google Analytics will help make some reasonable assumptions about social media’s impact on sales. For example, let’s say that you are selling widgets, and these widgets are only available for purchase by contacting your company. You write a blog about how cool your widgets are, listing out the features and benefits. You then provide a series of postings on social media, driving people to your blog about widgets (using tagged links, of course!). You also use some traditional methods like paid advertisements, etc. Over the next six months, your company sells 500 widgets. But how many of those came from social media?more

While shopping the LEGO website the other day, I ran across a free application they provide called LEGO Digital Designer. With it, you can assemble bricks from the included palette, then package and upload your creation back to the site. This looked pretty fun so I gave the software a whirl. Now, I am not a professional 3D modeler, but I do have experience in a few tools, such as Blender, and expect a few necessities in a 3D modeling application. LEGO Digital Designer does not have them. But that’s OK, I thought. I’ll just play around with it. For an experiment, I decided to model the building I work in, 25 Ottawa SW, Grand Rapids, MI, the home of MINDSCAPE at Hanon McKendry. My goal was to capture the feel of the building (being that it is LEGO and not a precise, 3D replica) without getting into too much detail. Well, that’s hard for me to do, and before too long, I found myself agonizing over placing bricks exactly where they should be to accurately reflect the building’s layout. Then I would take a step back, take a deep breath, and remind myself that I’m just capturing the building’s essence. Then it would get fun again.more

More changes to Facebook! YAY! I’m sure you've noticed that Facebook has, once again, made some changes. Given the amount of time it’s been since we’ve seen any major updates, it’s about time they rolled out something new and different, right? Here’s a breakdown of the major updates and, of course, my thoughts on them.more

Much like measuring the results of traditional marketing (TV ads, billboards, ect), it’s difficult to analyze exactly what your social media efforts are doing to help promote your brand. In it’s purest form, “social media” is essentially the digital representation of social interaction. How do you truly measure the ROI of attending a network event? Or talking with someone about your business? You don’t- because you can’t but you do these things because you know that it’s piece of a bigger puzzle and can eventually lead to future sales. The same is true about social media: the impacts of engaging are not entirely known. But, if you are willing to spend a bit of time and put your thinking cap on, you can analyze some data and provide some tangible results.more