Stabbing in the dark and not finding the prize?
By Tamara Caddy
You need hard figures for real insights into who, how and why is using your website. Use analytics to measure and optimise web traffic and effectiveness.
The “build it and they will come” mantra is fine for Kevin Costner but in the fierce environment of online operations it is fool hardy not to have strategy (informed by data) behind your web presence.
Understanding the source and the behaviour of your users will help you get the best out of your website, generate more leads and hopefully help you fulfil your online objectives.
Web statistics have long been used to track where visitors are coming from (geographically and online) what language they speak, how often they visit and what browsers they use. There’s a barrage of software available, although, in its new 2012 incarnation, Google Analytics includes information for web strategists to use as part of their arsenal including ‘real time’ data.
SEVEN WAYS TO HARNESS WEB ANALYTICS
Track user behaviour by measuring pages per visit; average time on site; bounce rates. Create events to track such as enquires, conversions, downloads, how many scrolled all the way to the end. See what parts of the site are attracting the most users, getting them to stay, such as landing pages or campaigns. This allows you to adapt the site and content strategically rather than on an ad-hoc basis
Goal flow allows you to evaluate a conversion funnel and identify processes that aren’t working or that are too fiddly for most users to bother with.
View top keywords and search terms to spot trends based on different criteria that you select – including visits, bounce rates and pages per visit.
The ability to monitor the average page load time you can make sure your site is running smoothly as delays result in lower conversions.
Examining mobile web analytics enables you to cater your site according to what devices, smart phones and tablets people are using. This is a crucial consideration when building your web’s functionality and useability.
Gauge users’ level of social engagement with your site by tracking what content and pages inspired social action: such as shares, retweeting and likes. We recommend plugins such as Sharethis and AddThis sharing plugins to boost traffic and for which Google Analytics is a complimentary tool.
Personalise areas such as dashboards so your users can quickly access the statistics that relate to their area of responsibility. Or create separate areas for different campaigns or target groups.
Our advice is to employ analytics to put strategy, backed up by figures, behind your site and to ensure it is functioning at its optimum and designed for your business’ needs.
Want help building your website and powering analytics to get the best results?
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Look east for eCommerce: some inspiration from China
By Tamara CaddyYou may have heard it first from Julia – this is the Asian Century…
Undeniably, Asia is ripping shreads off the failing economies in the US and Europe. Economic giant China is storming ahead – now it no longer just manufactures our tech products (like iphones) but has their own growing, ferocious demand for smart phones and tablets. While the fastest growing technology brands in Asia are streaking ahead, western companies are also reaping the benefit of the ‘red’ dollar.
China now delivers Apple the most revenue after the U.S and this continues to grow. When the iphone was launched in China in 2009 – it was then just two percent of Apple’s revenue – now it (and Hong Kong and Taiwan) are 12 per cent of Apple’s full-year revenue for 2011. This was hard to grasp in 2009 when it was launched in China as you can tell by the reactions on Gigaom at the time.
Chinese-made and owned brands like Huawei being sold for a fifth of the price of Apple phones combined with the bans on wi-fi made the success of the iphone seem unlikely – yet the rapidly growing middle class is changing this…rapidly.
As a flow-on effect, online stores are now increasingly being accessed through mobile and the Chinese average spend increasing. Australian eCommerce sites should take a leaf out of the book of the Chinese eCommerce site, Yihaodian. Boasting 120,000 goods for sale, same-day delivery in many areas and sophisticated digital customer relationship management tools. Astoundingly, it posted a three-year growth rate of 19,218%.
Or China’s Jiaxing Mbaobao Technology is one of the leading designers and distributors of bags. They take the business seriously with a research centre in Venice, a presence in Tokyo and are expanding to English-language sites targeting North America. The company, which has a three-year growth rate of 6,228%, has embraced the buzz concepts of “fast fashion”, “fast marketing” and “fast logistics” and serves over a million customers.
The growth in online sales has come despite the great firewall of China, which saw the closure of 1.3 million websites last year. In a country with such a mammoth population and so many operators trying to make a yuan, serious savvy is required.
Chinese citizens spend an average of 2.7 hours online per day — second to only the Japanese and as the country continues to open up – the floodgates are also opening to savvy eMarketers which boast a local and overseas presence. The Australian wine industry is just one growing area where satisfying the Chinese appetite for Aussie reds is a perfect eCommerce platform. With such a high proportion of our exports dependant on the Chinese market (25 per cent), there is no reason that Australia’s online commerce players shouldn’t get a hearty slice of the China-pie.
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Zendesk and JIRA link arms and tighten grip on bugs
By Tamara Caddy
The marriage between JIRA, the Mortein of bug tracking, and Zendesk, the Help Desk superhero, has been given a revamp. The update ensures that their forces combined are bugs’ worst nightmare.
Zendesk recently posted on their blog “managing feature requests, bug reports and other suggestions alongside scheduled updates can be difficult.”Ah-ha, indeed, combating bugs and tracking multiple projects – often using multiple business tools – often doesn’t go smoothly. Yep, don’t we know it.
The revamped, two-way integration means JIRA and Zendesk users – support staff and backend team – can collaborate on customer support requests associated with issues – like pesky bugs – by sharing tickets. With ease they can edit, update or resolve a ticket easily between helpdesk and issue-tracking applications. It avoids losing data between help desk and development teams and minimises miscommunication associated with sharing between platforms. In short, it gets both teams on the same page.
Zendesk said “we’ve beefed up our integration [with JIRA] to make the experience seamless, allowing agents and developers to volley support tickets back and forth like McEnroe and Borg (at a non-competitive charity exhibition match.).”
The customer gets fast, consistent support as all comments and progress are tracked in both systems. Of course, resolving problems faster means happier customers.
The handiest tools in the web-support-shed working in alignment can only be a good thing.
Read the Zendesk blog here or get more product info here.
Design Industries can help you integrate your Zendesk Help Desk Support system. For more information how click here or contact us.
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Getcha Mitts On This Handbook
By Tamara CaddyIn the words of famed graphic designer, Petrula Vrontikis, ”Practice safe design – use a concept”.
Indeed, the seed of great solutions to the design conundrums of any business is a well thought-out, immaculately planned and precisely executed vision.
Enter the Design & Branding Directory. Produced by the folks at Desktop & Marketing magazines, it is THE handbook for perusing approaches that have worked for different brands across mediums for everything from mini start-ups to multi-national mega-giants.
It is bursting with case studies with problems (and solutions) just like yours by innovative creative service providers just like us, Design Industries.
On pages 44 and 45, we are proud to detail our digital solution for the soon-to-be-launched site, meemeep.com.
Sadly, each provider could only choose one case study to showcase. We’d love to show off more examples of our tailored web solutions from eCommerce to e-Newsletters that we’ve created for all sorts of retailers, start-ups, not-for-profits – big and small. To hear more, contact us.
Get The Design & Branding Directory for $15.95 through retailers or through Desktop Magazine.
Read moreWould you ignore nine million potential customers?
By Tamara CaddyAccording to recent figures from ABS the number of Aussies that subscribe to the internet via their mobiles continues to climb –now at 9.7 million – over 40% of Australia’s population. Globally, 43% of facebook users log on via mobile. You can’t escape it – developing mobile interfaces are now more important than ever to your web presence. If you don’t act strategically you’ll alienate the lion’s share of Australians. Obviously… but how should you develop your mobile webpage?
Be platform agnostic, instead of joinin one brand’s cult: develop mobile adoptions that’ll work on any platform. Otherwise, unless you only want to target customers with an iPhone, you’ll have to build individually for Apple, Android, Windows and whichever O/S which come out – ballooning your expenditure.
Good looks and functionality must work alongside each other. When you get these two right your online mobile enterprise activities can flourish. Get it wrong and you’ll sabotage your customer base and repeat business.
Case in point: I recently tried to use an (outdated) Nokia to get onto the Qantas site to change a flight and with a lot of fiddling I could view my bookings but not change them on this mobile version. After wrangling to no avail, I was left a frustrated flyer rather than a frequent one.
Eight tips for developing mobile web:
Functionality, functionality, functionality.
Make your mobile web fully functional regardless of application.
Keep it quick and simple for users.
Forget fussy graphics.
The site needs to adapt its content depending on the capabilities of (or lack of) the device receiving it.
Sacrifice showing off for user convenience: such as bandwidth compression.
Make online payments easy and streamlined.
Use analytics and monitoring to make sure your mobile web remains strategic.
Like any web presence, link it to your CRM reporting.
Contact DI for your tailored web solutions including for mobile web
Read moreClient Focus: Neco
By Sam PascuaWe are extremely pleased to announce the launch of the revamped Neco website, we love the way the final site looks, it was worth all the effort.
Let us know what you think
You can visit their website here
Insights from a Non-Geek working with technical developers at a software startup
By Sam PascuaEveryone is wired differently. Some people are artistic, some are leaders and some are highly technical. Most of the time, it is fairly difficult for these different types of people to communicate effectively and understand each others’ limitations and strengths. This can be especially true if you find yourself working as a non-technical employee in a highly technical field such as software development.
Fortunately, you can ease the relationship with your more technical colleagues if you take the time to learn about their work. Here are some tips to help you better understand the pains and complications that go along with developing and maintaining software from a developer’s point of view, as well as how to position yourself to best work with them.
Start With the Basics
First of all, try to get up-to-date information on the basics of programming languages and industry jargon. Check out Wikipedia or industry blogs to brush up on what is current and get more familiar with industry buzz words.
Read moreClient Focus: Prime Electrical & Data Services
By Sam PascuaWe are extremely pleased to announce the launch of a recent website – Prime Data & Electrical Services
We worked closely with Prime Electrical & Data Services to produce a revamp of their website, the new site is full of images of previous work and a list of the clients Prime Electrical & Data Services have worked with.
Prime Electrical & Data Services has been a long standing client of Design Industries and we are proud to have been chosen when the time came to redesign their web site.
You can visit their website here or read our case study here.
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