What is important for creating a website for business
Before picking up a manual for web design, understand what it takes to understand code
Today there are choices to have a website created. Used to be you would go to a designer and voila! Achtung Baby, we have a website!
Many people believe you shouldn’t use a template, but “should” and “could” become irrelevant in the face of one’s budget. Designers complain about templates – customers release template-based sites that is not well optimized for search – but it is the business budget that makes the ultimate decision for small business owners.
If your budget does not permit hiring a web designer, you may want to consider what may be costing your business if you decide to create the website on your own.
- Although building a website has become easier, you have to weigh your time against coding issues that can occur. How much is an hour of your time worth? Free can become expensive if the coding issue is difficult to identify. Coding requires a patience and some effort to verify proper operation across browsers.
- After a launch, a website must be optimized for exposure online, and coordinated with social media. This means applying content changes for search engine optimization and using social media to make the website a working conduit. Integrating the site into other systems, such as email services and e-commerce checkout, is also essential.
- The needs for a website changes with added content and services. Adding social media such as a Linked In page, a Facebook page, or a blog means clearing a section of page for its visibility while avoiding a cluttered page appearance.
I am not suggesting to always seek a designer. I am saying weigh your resources carefully to build your own website. Your worst enemy is time. An awful mistake is to delay improvements that drag into months and months. A website is a part of the real experience for clients and customers as much as a handshake or presentation. People are becoming more accustomed to reviewing digital properties and expect WYSIWYG.
Because of the points outlined, a website can become outdated over a few years. One way to update on the light is to include recent photos of products and services. Images should display how your customers will benefit from your product or service. A few insertions can help, with some A/B test to verify the changes that gave the greatest lift.
If you do decide to create your site, follow these tips on my Pitney Bowes Smart Essential post 1o ways to improve a website on a budget to make the most of the launch.
Consider your website as an investment, not as a cost – you’ll find that ultimately you will build the site the right way that will attract leads and make “working in your business” into “working on your business”.
Free Google Analytics webinar – How to manage your business online through web analytics
This September 2011 webinar I created for Small Biz Technology shows how Google Analytics (and any web analytics, for that matter) should work in your business. You can make choices that help you manage the business effectively. Ramon Ray, editor of Small Biz Technology, made the introduction.
This video will show the importance of setting a goal, how to use paid search, and how referral traffic should be monitored. This can aid your business’ effort to make timely decisions based on the data presented.
Note: Due to processing, the audio was somewhat damaged.
When Custom Variables Are Consistently Useful: Customer segmentation by membership
Ah, the New York Times. A paper with global stature. No paper made more significant headlines of its own in the online world when the New York Times announced its digital subscription program (details here). The skinny is that visitors who are not subscribers can view up to 20 post in a month, while subscribers of one of three digital news packages have unlimited access. When non-subscribers click on their 21st article, they can purchase a subscription. The plan was implement in March 2011, and the jury is still out on how well the paywall plan is working. New York Times is noted to be the largest newspaper publisher who has implementing a paywall.
Many online blogs operate like a newspaper, and while many still are not at the scope of New York Times, a financial model for making a profit can be a challenge. So what would a small business do to emulate a paywall, or even figure how to better serve its audience? One analytics feature that would be helpful is developing a custom variable to distinguish subscribers online.
A few words on custom variables. Custom variables are a javascript call out that measure page actions for specific activity, In the case of visitor, measurement can include such as the number of pageviews from members who log in on a members-only site. The variable is typically activated by modifying the analytics code, inserting the following Javascript call out with parameters.
Google Analytics requires that index, name, and value are identified. They are determined as followed method accepts four parameters:
- index—This is a slot number, with a single value from 1 – 5, inclusive. This is meant as a key for one custom variable, so you can have index 1, and index 2, an index 3, and so on.
- name— This is a string that identifies the custom variable.
- value—This ia a value that is paired with a name. You can pair a number of values with a custom variable name, such as a custom variable name gender and supply male and female as two possible values.
- opt_scope—The scope for the custom variable, usually for an additiona description
Most web analytics solutions have some variation of the callout. Piwik, for example, uses the Javascript callout setCustomVariable( index, name, value, scope ) where scope is named “visit” or “pages” depending on whether your variable is tracking based on visits or pages.
When you decide to implement custom variables, you need to consider your site needs carefully against your budget, since most paid solutions offer more flexibility with variables. Piwik and Google Analytics, both free solutions, limit the number of custom variables, while paid solutions Yahoo Web Analytics and Omniture Site Catalyst permit more variables and offering even more customization.
But custom variables can help track visitors to distinguish traffic patterns between members and non-members. Such an arrangement would help your blog develop what effort would convert non-subscribers to subscribers, as well as may other ideas to maintain traffic onsite and provide unique, nuanced treatment for two separate sets of visitors.
There are plenty of other ways a custom variable can be used. Justin Cutroni offers a unique way of using custom variables for coupons – you can read about his process here.
What other ways can custom variables be useful?
How Regular Expressions Makes Segmentation and Web Analytics Diagnostics Easier
The next time you look at your keywords in Google Analytics, take notice of repeated phrases and characters. Maybe they’re words about direction – North Dakota, South Carolina, or the phrase “new” for New Jersey, New York, New Brunswick, etc. Sometimes its a brand name and product combination – Google Chrome, Google Android, Google Adwords, and the list goes on for many brand in many industries.
These patterns sometimes need to be sifted to detect trends, but repeatedly parsing data by eyeball and keystoke can impede speedy analysis. To reduce the effort, try inserting a regular expression in your report filter the next time you review a Google Analytics report or plan a goal in Piwik.
Regular expressions are characters meant to return a string or pattern of text in a query. Regular expressions appear in Javascript and a number of coding languages. Within a web analytics solution, regular expressions are used for identifying keywords with a similar spelling or related meaning. Expressions are also handy in other filters such as returning a string of IP addresses, as well as URL segments that appear repeated, be it characters from a tagged campaign or a subdirectory.
Because of their versatility, regular expressions can be added to a number of analytics solution settings. In Google Analytics, for example, the regular expression string can be saved in the advanced segmentation wizard for repeated usage, saving time to recreate a group with each use of an analytics session.
Parenthesis () identify a group of characters, usually applied with there are versions of a group of words. (az) captures the lowercase letters a or z. So say you have a product called jeansa and jeansz – you can create a regular expression jeans(az) to capture both in a query. You can cover long sequential ranges with a hyphen, such as (a-z) to cover the lowercase alphabet.
Brackets [ ] can also capture a group, The difference between the brackets and parenthesis is that brackets are for matching a sole character. So while (xyz) would return with parentheses, a bracket [xyz] captures appearances of x, y, or z in a string.
A hyphen can also be sued to denote a sequential range of characters.
A period . is typically a wild card, used for unknown characters in a text.
What if your desired sifted text string contain a period or a question mark? You can use a backslash \ – it permits an exact usage of the character that follows it. In coding language this means the backslash “escapes” the code to treat a character as exactly as it appears.
A caret ^ return queries in which characters appear at the beginning of the string. So ^New would return “New York Knicks” but not “The New York Knicks”
A dollar sign $ requires characters to appearance at the end. So from the Knicks example, the word $Knicks would select both “New York Knicks” and “The New York Knicks”
The pipe, |, dictates an either/or. So if your are interested in keywords about cars, for example, “Toyota|Ford” can return Toyota or Ford, while “Toyota|Chrysler|Ford” returns a a choice from a series of makes.
A great way to use regular expressions is imagine the string as a strainer. Ultimately you want the query to show what you want sifted out from a “flow” of characters. Keeping the concept simple will help you be able to develop regular expressions.
What if you’re not comfortable with coding? You can think about the desired queries pairings, then seek help from someone experienced with Javascript to translate the idea into a regular expression.
Keep in mind that a regular expression filter may be adjusted over time, particularly as keywords that are used in a blog posts change or with whatever change that occurs for a website.
Learning sources for regular expressions:
Luna Metrics, a web analytics consultancy based in Pittsburgh, has a wonderful user-friendly guide on the key regular expressions used in Google Analytics. You can download it at the Luna Metrics blog.
Google offers a page covering the basics of regular expression. You can connect to the page here.
Because regular expressions are based on Javascript code structure, W3C schools offers a few pages on the subject, which can give an overall arc on how expressions are used with respect to a website.
What is the benefit of regular expressions to your online presence?
Regular Expressions help your analysis in a few time-saving ways:
- Reduced analysis time — By saving regular expression in an advance segmentation wizard, you remove the need to recreate a segment set with each report.
- When used on keyword, RegEx can provide a refined focus on keyword trends within a site, leading to better decisions on PPC, content, and other marketing sources.