The 5 Most Common Google Analytics Mistakes

Posted by David Whitehouse

Ok, so you lazy people out there, I know what your like, you just slap your Google Analytics code on the site and think that its done. Well your wrong, and your messing up valuable data right now! Here are the most common mistakes:

1. Failing to Exclude URL Query Parameters
Nobody ever seems to use this, its great though, it gets rid of all the crap out of the content reports. Every time a page loads with a query string (e.g. http://www.david-whitehouse.org/index.php?SirDickonTwitter=boring), Google Analytics treats it as a separate url to index.php. In order to prevent this, you simply put the variable name (e.g. ‘SirDickonTwitter’) in the handy little box (edit profile, edit main website profile information).

2. Failing to Setup Site Search
Again this is a similar problem to the one above. If you don’t state what your variable name is for the site search then url’s like: http://www.david-whitehouse.org/search.php?q=wanker and http://www.david-whitehouse.org/search.php?q=bagels will both be treated as separate content. Instead you just put ‘q’ in the site search query box and then get it to strip the url of parameters.

3. Goal Conversion Setup
I rarely see this one setup right, people often repeat the final step twice, as they don’t realise Google puts the final one in at the end. Most people don’t even bother setting this up, but the ones who do, tend to do it wrongly.

4. Ecommerce Script Setup
When your setting this up, you have to put your ecommerce code after your tracking code, or it won’t work. Most people just paste it in and adapt it, not realising they need the tracking script before hand and an if statement in their footer to prevent the tracking script showing there.

5. IP Exclusion Filters
If you are going to be working on a site, whether you are the developer/designer or the marketing agency, perhaps even the business owner – you need to be adding your ip address to the exclude filter on the profile (make sure you have an unfiltered profile as a backup though).

How to setup Twitter to promote your Wordpress blog

Posted by David Whitehouse

I’ve been looking into all the difference Twitter related plugins for Wordpress, all the different services starting up for Twitter and thinking about how you can promote yourself through Twitter. As a result of this I’ve come up with what I think is the perfect setup for promoting your Wordpress blog through Twitter. Basically, here is my setup:

1. I use Tweetmeme (the little icon top right of this post) to try and encourage to re-tweet my blog post.
2. I have TwitterUpdater, so that when I write a post and publish straight away, it announces it on my twitter feed.
3. When I do scheduled posts, TwitterUpdater won’t notify twitter, in order to do this you need to use TweetLater – which can also allow you to follow people who follow you, automatically.
4. I am using Twollow to follow other people, based on keywords.
5. I am also using TweetLater to keep an eye on keywords on Twitter, such as my name, domain name etc.

And that’s how you can maximise the amount of traffic you get from Twitter. If you have any more suggestions, please let me know. (P.S. This is a scheduled post – so it’s also a kind of a test to see if TweetLater and my Wordpress plugin can get it right. It might go horrible wrong because my Wordpress is an hour behind!)

Finally I have found some direction

Posted by David Whitehouse

Ok so I’ve been interested in the web for a while, and I love Internet marketing – I read about it all the time, every aspect – from attracting visitors and keeping them, to increasing conversion rates and average order values.

Recently I’ve been reading about copywriting, Google Analytics and customer retention. The last one is one of the most complicated and commonly misunderstood subjects I have ever read about – but once you get it, boy is it interesting. I’ve written an article on it – but I think it’s a bit too off topic to be going on Dave Naylor’s blog (we’ll see, maybe he’ll let me put it up)!

So I’m gonna start concentrating on upping the conversion rates, order values and customer lifetime values. I guess this would be some kind of site optimisation consultant, or something. Anyone know what the name is?

Interacting with the web on mobile phones

Posted by David Whitehouse

One thing I’ve noticed after owning the G1 for about a week is that the way I interact with the Interweb is different.

On my mobile it seems to be more about apps rather than web pages – to be honest web pages load too slow for me and I find them fiddly to navigate. I guess mobile ads must have the worst conversion rates on AdWords because of this.

So what effect will everyone switching to mobile Internet browsing have? Personally I’d like to see less images, less links etc. and more text. I also won’t click any ads – as I don’t tend to buy on my phone much. If I was to buy my phone it would probably be through an app. So maybe companies should be developing apps to allow people to buy stuff from their phone… I don’t just mean the big boys like Amazon and Ebay – but the little guy too. Perhaps we need some kind of app that works for OSCommerce – so the little guy can compete. This might be a new aspect of web development that really kicks off – doing transactional apps for ecommerce shops. Perhaps there is a market for a company that can bring all this data together in a neat little app – maybe there is already!

Review of Permission Marketing

Posted by David Whitehouse

So I’ve just finished reading Permission Marketing by Seth Godin, after hearing his name mentioned so much over the past few months I decided I best read one of his books. Permission Marketing was really the book that seemed to make him – the first successful one.

I must say I thought the book was interesting, it talked about how most marketeers are interruption marketeers, whereas he was suggested that they should become permission marketeers. It had a few interesting ideas and some practical tips too, but on the whole the book did go on more than it had to in order to get the point across. Here is how I understood it:

If you do an advert and expect to sell to someone just from one advert then you get bad results, if instead you use the advert to begin a relationship with someone then you can teach them over time about your product, getting more and more trust, until one day you have permission to buy things on behalf of your customer. Amazon seems to be the best example he refers to.

In Internet marketing terms that means attracting people to your site, with the sole aim of getting them to subscribe to your email list/blog. Then over time teaching them and building their trust and then eventually selling to them.

It is also a bit of an old read now, this was before Google AdWords became popular and the big player seems to be Yahoo at the time. I would recommend reading it though as the principles still apply.

On the whole I’d give it 7.5/10. If you want to order the book, you can use the link below to take you to Amazon:

Do you separate your social (network) life from work?

Posted by David Whitehouse

That title probably sounds a bit weird – let me explain.

I use Facebook for friends and Twitter mainly for professional contacts. I like to keep the two separate, which is why you won’t see a Facebook link on my website.

So am I missing out on untold amounts of targeted traffic? Or am I right in keeping the two separate? Facebook for social networking, Twitter/LinkedIn for professional networking?

Does anyone else do this, or is it just me?