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Three tools to quickly analyze a website for free
Alex Pomer
Alex Pomer is a project manager and online media buyer at New Media Campaigns. He received a degree in Advertising from The School of Journalism and Mass Communication at UNC Chapel Hill. He has successfully launched sites for statewide political campaigns, national organizations and non-profits. Follow him on Twitter.
It's easy to quickly judge a website based on its design and write it off as either 'good' or a 'bad'. But when you're in the web design business, there's a lot more behind-the-scenes information to consider when evaluating a website and how to improve it. The following tools allow anyone to get a good idea of a website's quality with only that website's URL.
Website Grader provides a condensed summary of a site's performance
Hubspot's Website Grader is a great tool for getting a snapshot of a website's effectiveness. After entering the site's URL, the grader generates a report on many performance factors including:
- Content creation
- Page optimization
- Website promotion
- Conversion opportunities
- Comparative competitive analysis.
The tool then spits out an overall grade (1-100) of the website so that you can easily compare it to previous and future sites. A low score from Website Grader is likely a result of poor content creation, connectivity and/or basic meta information, all of which can be improved with a little time and a content management system with SEO control built in.
GTmetrix asseses a site's speed and provides actionable suggestions for improvement
Not only have studies shown that web surfers are impatient, but Google recently announced that website loading time is now a factor in search rankings. GTmetrix is a tool that utilizes Google Page Speed and Yahoo! YSlow to grade a site's performance and presents the almost 50 results in a simple layout that prioritizes scores as either High, Medium or Low and places the most urgent changes at the top.
Because most of these scores are a result of the website's coding, this tool is a great judge of a developer's ability. So next time you're evaluating web design firms, put a few of their most recent sites through GTmetrix to get an idea of how they compare.
Browser Shots let's you check websites for compatibility in different browsers
Browser Shots allows a user to select from a huge range of browsers in various operating systems and see screenshots of any site in those browsers. If anything, Browser Shots offers too many browser options so we suggest sticking to only the following:
Linux:
Chrome 5.0- Firefox 3.6
Windows:
- Chrome 5.0
- Firefox 3.0, 3.5 and 3.6
- MS Internet Explorer 6, 7 and 8
- Opera 10.0
- Safari 3.0 and 4.0
Mac
- Safari 5.0
If a website is compatible with every browser version listed above and the site is up-to date, it's likely that there's some good code laying the foundation for that website.
Judging a website accurately based on valuable information
It's amazing how much you can learn about a website with only its URL. With these three tools anyone can evaluate his own site, a competitor's site, and the talent level of those sites' developers. What other tools are you all using to take stock of websites? Any favorites that you prefer to these?
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The Advantages of Placing Content in Different Channels
Megan Winterhalter
Megan Winterhalter is the Marketing Assistant and Copywriter for New Media Campaigns. She assists in marketing communications and launching client websites. A senior in The School of Journalism and Mass Communication at UNC Chapel Hill, Megan is pursuing a degree in Strategic Communication. Megan interned at New Media in the summer of 2009 and has spent time working in the creative department of McKinney. Find out what she is up to by following her on Twitter.
We've all heard the old adage 'never put all of your eggs in one basket,' and when it comes to developing an online presence for yourself or your brand this saying could not fit more perfectly.
While it's great to develop a strong and comprehensive website to serve as a hub of information, it's just as important to develop a presence in different channels so that your brand can reach as many people as possible. And while almost every brand has a Facebook and Twitter account, many fail to take advantage of other media-specific channels such as YouTube, Flickr and Slideshare.
The great thing about utilizing such websites is that you are placing your name and multimedia in front of an audience of people who are already looking for it. Users will be able to find you in the type of medium they want instead of having to sift through general search results. These websites also make it incredibly easy to redirect traffic to your individual site, creating an easy way to garner a new variety of interested visitors.
The Facts
- People are watching 2 billion videos a day on YouTube and uploading hundreds of thousands of videos daily.
- The user base is broad in age range, 18-55, evenly divided between males and females, and spanning all geographies.
- Fifty-one percent of users go to YouTube weekly or more often; 52 percent of 18-34 year-olds share videos often with friends and colleagues.
- Flickr hosts more than 4 billion images.
- Flickr allows you to connect with friends and family and allows you to set special viewing privileges.
- Slideshare garners 25 million visitors a month and 70 million monthly pageviews
- Slideshare allows you to share presentations, documents, and pdfs with colleagues and interested users
Building your presence on YouTube
As one of the most visited sites on the Internet, YouTube is a place with unbridled opportunity. By placing your videos on the site, you’re sharing your brand and message with people who will actively seek it out. When you create your YouTube account, you also create a user page that maintains all of your videos in one central location – making it easy for visitors to view videos in succession.
YouTube also allows for tagging – so that you can list keywords that relate to your video and keywords that your visitors may use when searching for similar content. By optimizing the titles of your videos and the key words and phrases you use in your tags, you’ll be able to reach new visitors through search.
Once you upload your videos to YouTube it’s easy to embed those videos on your website – creating a direct link between YouTube’s services and your website.
Other features of YouTube include:
- Public or private videos: Users can elect to broadcast their videos publicly or share them privately with friends and family upon upload.
- Subscriptions: Users are able to keep track of their favorite users' new videos.
- Record from Webcam: Users with a webcam and Flash software are able to instantly record video responses or normal videos onto the site rather than having to prerecord and then upload the video.
- Separate index on Google: When users upload videos to YouTube, these videos are indexed separately on Google searches displaying as ‘video results’ instead of in the general results.
Building your presence on Flickr
Flickr works similarly to YouTube in that you can easily embed photos on your website that draw from the photos on your Flickr account.
Flickr’s clean and organized layout makes adding and searching for photos easy for users and visitors alike. It also allows you to tag photos so that they can be tied to a certain topic. Flickr also allows you to create sets of photos that display as slideshows – a feature that is particularly useful when showcasing photos from a specific event or time period. By including rich descriptions such as titles, tags, location, and people, you give your images context and a life of their own.
Flickr also encourages users to comment on each other’s photos, facilitating a sense of community amongst its users. By using Flickr, you’re reaching out to others through a channel that devotes itself to one type of media. Flickr also offers flexible privacy controls making sharing images simple, secure, and comfortable.
Building your presence on SlideShare
Simply put, SlideShare is the best way to get your presentations and documents out there on the web. It’s a place where you can share your ideas and learn from the ideas of others. Users regularly comment, favorite, and download content. And just like Flickr and YouTube, SlideShare offers an easy way to embed their presentations on your website.
Other features of SlideShare include:
- Embed slideshows into your own blog or website.
- Share slideshows publicly or privately. There are several ways to share privately.
- Synch audio to your slides.
- Market your own event on slideshare.
- Join groups to connect with SlideShare members who share your interests.
- Download the original file.
The result of utilizing different channels
By taking advantage of the services that YouTube and Flickr have to offer you’re not only reaching out to followers in a channel that they are familiar and comfortable with but you’re also creating direct links between these services and your main website, drawing traffic and attention to the place you want people to see.
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Keeping a positive tone in emails
Alex Pomer
Alex Pomer is a project manager and online media buyer at New Media Campaigns. He received a degree in Advertising from The School of Journalism and Mass Communication at UNC Chapel Hill. He has successfully launched sites for statewide political campaigns, national organizations and non-profits. Follow him on Twitter.
I regularly write over 80 emails a day working as a project manager so it's important to come across clear and polite as often as possible. As a general rule, for emails longer than a sentence or two I try reading them over one last time before sending, only to edit them to be more positive and friendly. A few general rules I try to follow are:
- Begin and end every email on a positive note
- When in doubt, add a little personal touch
- Remember to be as helpful as possible
Below are two examples of a response to the following email:
Alex,
Can you get back to me about the following changes?
1) Is there a way to acknowledge when people sign up on the website?
2) Can we add a Facebook link button?
3) Will you put a link to the Events section of the site in the main navigation?- Liame
The initial email draft:
Hey Liame,
I've responded to your questions below in red.
1) Is there a way to acknowledge when people sign up on the website?
The CMS allows you to redirect users to thank you pages or set up a confirmation message in the 'options' tab of the 'form editor' here: www.thanksforreadingthispostsoclosely.com/link-to-form-editor
2) Can we add a Facebook link button?
Will you send over the link to your Facebook page and let me know where you would like to place the button and we'll get this set up?
3) Will you put a link to the Events section of the site in the main navigation?
This has been fixed.
Let me know if you have any other questions,
- Alex
The final email after editing to make it more positive
Hey Liame,
I hope you had a great weekend! If it's as hot in Ohio as it is in North Carolina, I hope you managed to stay cool. I've responded to your questions below in blue.
1) Is there a way to acknowledge when people sign up on the website?
Sure thing! The CMS allows you to redirect users to thank you pages or set up a confirmation message in the 'options' tab of the 'form editor' here: www.thanksforreadingthispostsoclosely.com/link-to-form-editor
2) Can we add a Facebook link button?
If you'll send over the link to your Facebook page and let me know where you would like to place the button, we'll be sure to get this set up right away! I'd suggest putting the Facebook link in the sidebar, since that will allow you to easily add other social networking links in the future too.
3) Will you put a link to the Events section of the site in the main navigation?
The navigation is now all set.
Be sure to let me know if there's anything else we can do to help out, thanks!
- Alex
The difference between a dull and a positive email:
Both emails get the job done. The difference lies in putting in just a little bit of extra effort to let the client know you're there to both fix their problems and also make that process enjoyable. It takes just a minute or two to check the weather, lighten the tone with an exclamation point and provide some industry insight, but those few minutes can go a long way towards making your client relationships more pleasant.
Responding in red versus blue probably doesn't make a difference. But I've always thought of red as such an angry color so why not go with a color that says "helping you out" instead of "fixing your problems."
Subliminally friendly is friendly none-the-less and it's the little things that give an email the positive tone you're going for.
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Using New Technologies in Politics
Alex Pomer
Alex Pomer is a project manager and online media buyer at New Media Campaigns. He received a degree in Advertising from The School of Journalism and Mass Communication at UNC Chapel Hill. He has successfully launched sites for statewide political campaigns, national organizations and non-profits. Follow him on Twitter.
As a web design firm that does a lot of political campaign websites, we consistently push our clients to take advantage of new technologies and help them stay on the cutting edge of the web. Part of staying up to date with today's technology though is not just being content with participating in what everyone is doing, but pushing the envelope and looking for what's next.
Facebook and Twitter are old news for politicians
In the last election cycle, using social media tools in politics has gone from being new and innovative to being essentially required because of its ability to bring politicians closer to their consituents. Politicians can update their followers about what they do on a daily basis through Twitter, customize their Facebook page to post campaign or relevant news updates, and show their speeches and announcements on YouTube.
But if candidates and elected officials aren't using these basic tools by now, they're behind and likely aren't even looking to keep up with the changing times. Some candidates however, are both taking advantage of today's social media tools and also looking for tomorrow's.
Mobile updates and geo-location are ripe for government interaction
The latest movement in social media has been the rise of geolocation-specific services like Foursquare and Gowalla, which allow users to post updates that are connected with their geographic location using their cell phones. Natually, because of the success of these geolocation-specific services, other tools have been developed to utilize collective location-based updates, some of which are perfect for politicians.
Bonner Gaylord, a recently elected City Councilor in Raleigh and one of our clients, announced earlier this week that he was incorporating SeeClickFix, a location-based mobile citizen reporting software onto his city council website. SeeClickFix allows users with either an iPhone, Android or BlackBerry to download an app and report non-emergency city issues, like potholes and graffiti, to elected officials.Citizens can see a map of issues in the surrounding area, as well as which of those issues have already been addressed and which are still open. City Councilor Gaylord is one of the first adopters of this type of technology at his level of government but he's still looking to the future.
"I would like to see an App adopted by [Raleigh] that allows citizens to weigh in on big issues that are before the council," said Mr. Gaylord. "A one-stop App that provides the details of an issue with the ability for each citizen to comment and even vote... would be a great way to involve more citizens in the decision-making process."
We love having such an early adopter as one of our clients. What kinds of new technologies are your local politicians using? Do you have any suggestions for them?
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Understanding Your Mobile Audience
Jonathan Hungate
Jonathan is responsible for developing new business relationships and leading the launch of select client projects. He has more than 6 years of marketing and communications experience and has managed a wide variety of successful web projects.
As mobile web usage continues to grow rapidly, it’s important to make sure that your site is optimized for mobile devices and the people using them. This involves understanding your audience and what they want from your site while on-the-go.
Examples include:
- The ability to quickly check your balance on a banking website
- The power to check-in to your flight through an airline site
- Finding the daily specials from a local restaurant site when deciding where to eat
In each of these examples, a wise business must prioritize what content is especially relevant to a mobile user and then present that information or functionality in a simple, convenient and accessible way.
Let’s look at 2 specific examples on both ends of the spectrum:
Toyota: A virtual salesperson at your fingertips
Toyota has a great example of a mobile site. The content is highly-optimized, interactive and genuinely helpful. I can see specs, pricing, colors and more—it’s like having a virtual salesperson with me as I walk around the lot—minus the sometimes over-bearing pressure to upgrade my warranty.
Bojangles: A missed opportunity
When you’re out on the road and a “gotta-wanna-needa-hava” moment hits, bojangles.com is of little help. Instead of an optimized site with a store finder or even an 800 number, you’ll only find paragraphs of text outlining the history of the company and descriptions of the delicious food that they’re not helping you find.
Conclusion
Don’t miss your opportunity to reach mobile web users. These are often point-of-purchase interactions that can lead directly to sales, a better customer experience, or both. As we did when designing the mobile version of our own site, seek to understand your mobile audience and then optimize your site for them. And if you need a hand, let me know. We can help!
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Related posts:
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HiFi Website Featured on Design Shack
Clay Schossow
Clay Schossow leads New Media Campaigns' project management and business development efforts. A graduate of UNC Chapel Hill, he has guided more than 200 websites from concept to launch. He is a frequent writer on Internet marketing and online campaigning. You should follow him on Twitter.
We're very excited to announce that our new Content Management System, HiFi, has been featured on one of the most popular web design galleries, Design Shack. The gallery boasts over 10,000 RSS subscribers and carries a lot of influence in the web design community. Currently, HiFi is holding down a solid 8.5 rating based on visitor votes -- we encourage you to also go vote for the design.
The Design Shack post says the site is featured for its bright colors, oversized deisng elements, repeated use of small tirangles, and the navigation buttons.
While it's an honor for any of our projects to be featured on galleries, this one is particularly sweet for a couple reasons. First, it's our own product getting recognized, which is a really nice bonus. Second, HiFi is positioned as a CMS for designers and developers -- the specific audience that closely follows Design Shack. When we originally designed the site, we had a goal of getting featured on design galleries, as we knew that would drive targeted and relevant traffic to the product.
The strategy seems to have paid off, as HiFi had 4x the typical daily newsletter signups yesterday when we were first featured. In addition to sheer volume, these registrations are likely more targeted than a typical day's. Designers found us through the gallery, browsed the site, liked what they saw, and converted to our newsletter for updates and announcements.
Thanks for all of your votes and support!
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12 tips to customize Gmail to increase productivity and organization at work
Alex Pomer
Alex Pomer is a project manager and online media buyer at New Media Campaigns. He received a degree in Advertising from The School of Journalism and Mass Communication at UNC Chapel Hill. He has successfully launched sites for statewide political campaigns, national organizations and non-profits. Follow him on Twitter.
Since Gmail's public release in February of 2007, Google's email service has amassed over 176 million monthly users due to its massive free online storage and search-focused, conversation-view interface. While Gmail is an amazing free service on its own, there are many ways to improve your efficiency at work by taking a little time to give your Gmail some flare. Here are 12 ways to customize your Gmail and get more out of your favorite email service:
Note: some of these features are still in Gmail labs, meaning they are not yet official features and are subject to termination at any time. These features have been labeled with "(L)". To turn on and enable a labs feature, log into your Gmail account, go to Settings, then Labs and then find the desired lab and choose 'Enable'.
- Labels
- Keyboard shortcuts
- Tasks
- Consolidate email accounts
- Email filtering
- Multiple inboxes
- Rapportive
- Canned responses
- Title tweaks
- Send & Archive
- Email double-checking
- Mouse gestures
1) Use labels as folders for your emails
Labels are the basic organizational tool of Gmail, they're like folders except you can assign an email to as many labels as you want. Because Google gives you so much free storage space (more than 7.4 GB and counting), you don't need to delete incoming emails to conserve space. Instead you can file each email away by labeling and archiving it. This will give you an organized, searchable database of every email you've ever sent or received since you made the switch to Gmail. An organized email database is invaluable when you're trying to track down a conversation and pick up right where you left off with an old client, look up a forgotten password, or redownload a previously emailed file.
A few hints when using labels:
- Give a label a color by clicking on the box to its left
- Give labels a hierarchy by using the naming convention 'parent/child'.
- Enable "Nested Labels" (L) for neater organization
2) Use keyboard shortcuts to quickly navigate around Gmail
Heavy computer users know that keyboard shortcuts can save a ton of time when used correctly. Gmail has its own set of keyboard shortcuts that can make going through and organizing a long list of emails as easy as a few keystrokes. To enable keyboard shortcuts, go to "Settings" in your Gmail account and then choose "Keyboard shortcuts on."
A few keyboard shortcuts I personally use the most are:
- "l" for labeling an email
- "v" for labeling and then archiving an email
- "j" and "k" for going between older and newer email conversations
- and <tab> then <enter> for sending an email
New users of Gmail keyboard shortcuts however can simply press "?" in Gmail to see a list of all the keyboard shortcuts. You can also check out a list online or download a PDF of the shortcuts.
3) Tasks: Gmail's to-do list
Tasks, the first of Google Labs' features to graduate and become an official feature of Gmail, is a simple to-do list that displays like an individual chat box in your Gmail. The beauty of Tasks is its integration with so many of Gmail's core functionalities. You can easily:- Add an email to a task (In Gmail: More actions -> add to tasks)
- Turn a task into an email (In Tasks: Actions -> Email task list)
- Print a task (In Tasks: Actions -> Print task list)
- View and update a task from your mobile device (In mobile web browser: go to gmail.com/tasks)
As a project manager for a web design and internet marketing firm, I use tasks most frequently at work for:
- Documenting clients' desired website changes during phone calls
- Brainstorming blog post topics and content
- Grouping emails into a single to-do list.
It is worth noting that Remember The Milk, a popular task and to-do list manager, has both a Gmail browser add-on and a gadget in Gmail labs that replicate many of the functionalities of Tasks.
4) Consolidate multiple email accounts into one Gmail account
If you're like most people, you have more than one email account. Gmail makes it very easy to combine all your email accounts into your Gmail account and still send from each one of them.
Go to 'Settings->Accounts and Import' and choose either 'Send mail from another address' or 'Add POP3 email account.
Follow the instructions and verify the email account. Once the account is verified, all emails to that account will forward to your Gmail inbox and you can choose to send from any of your email accounts on any email you send.
5) Email filtering to automatically organize your inbox
There are 183 billion spam emails sent each day and according to a Microsoft security report, more than 97% of all e-mails sent are unwanted. While those numbers might not specifically apply you, it's likely that you're getting a fair amount of email that you'd rather not be getting at all, or have automatically organized and filed away. That's where email filtering comes in.
Setting up a filter is as easy as going to 'Settings->Filters' or selecting an email and going to 'More actions->Filter messages like these.' For example, all my Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Groupon emails are automatically labeled as 'Social Networks' emails.
There is one feature of Gmail however, that makes filters far more effective at analyzing and determining who is spamming you.
YourEmail@gmail.com = Your.Email@gmail.com = YourEmail+Anything@gmail.com
Let's say your email address is "HanSolo@gmail.com", anything sent to "Han.Solo@gmail.com", "H.anSolo@gmail.com", or "H.a.n.S.o.l.o@gmail.com" will all get sent to your same "HanSolo@gmail.com" inbox. Additionally, you can use a "+" to add any text to your email address and have it go to the same @gmail account. For example, "HanSolo+MillenniumFalcon@gmail.com" will be sent to HanSolo@gmail.com.
By combining this functionality with filters you can keep your inbox much more organized and track down who is spamming you. Simply establish a few guidelines like giving out the address "Han.Solo@gmail.com" for work, "HanSolo@gmail.com" for friends and family and "HanSolo+PizzaHut@gmail.com" for specials from Pizza Hut (for example).
All these emails will go to the same inbox, but by setting up filters, you'll be able to quickly sort out emails sent from any one source.
6) Multiple inboxes shows more mail at a single glance
Multiple inboxes (L) allows you to have up to five additional inboxes based on different search queries. These different search queries can be anything from a certain label to emails from a certain email address like @whereyouwork.com.
I use multiple inboxes to display emails labeled 'Needs Response' and 'Awaiting Response' to the right of my main inbox so that a single glance at my Gmail tells me exactly what has to be done and what I should be expecting.
7) Rapportive, a social CRM built into GmailRapportive is a simple social CRM built into Gmail for Firefox and Chrome. It replaces the ads in the sidebar of your Gmail with a snapshot of the person you're emailing's presence in major social networks like Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and Flickr.
This gives you an extremely easy way to get a better, more real idea of the person you're emailing and allow you to connect with them on a more personal level. You can take a quick peak at their Facebook interests and last few Tweets, for example, and see if you have anything unexpected in common.
The service also lets you leave private notes so that you can keep records and improve your emailing relationship with individual contacts in the future. For example, if someone emails you with her username or account name and password to your service, you can enter in that information so that you won't have to ask for it the next time.
To instal Rapportive, simply go to Rapportive.com and click install. It's a relatively new service so it's always improving it's features.
8) Canned responses
Canned responses (L) are extremely helpful and timesaving for those people who answer the same questions or send the same responses multiple times a day. To create a canned response, simply enable the feature in Gmail's labs and when writing an email, click 'Canned responses' to the right of where you would normally attach a file.
Canned responses can also, if coupled with filters, be used to create custom auto-responses based on the content of the email or who is sending it. For example, if you're out of the office, you can send out one response for emails sent to your home email address, another auto-reply for emails sent to your work address, and a specific response for emails about an important project you're working on indicating another person to contact.
9) Tweak the title of Gmail so the inbox count is visible
Title tweaks (L) may seem like a tiny change but can make a big difference in how often you check your email. It switches the order of elements in the browser's title bar from "Gmail - Inbox (22) - youremail@gmail.com" to "Inbox (22) - youremail@gmail.com - Gmail". By putting the inbox count to the first item in the title bar, you're almost always able to see how many unread emails you have, even when you've got several tabs open or Gmail is minimized.
10) Send & Archive can save several keystrokes on every sent email.
One of the easiest ways to keep your email clean is to enable Send & Archive (L), which adds a button on emails, giving you the option to (not surprisingly) send and archive an email instead of just sending it. For those of you who find yourselves archiving most of your emails after you send them, this simple lab can save you several minutes everyday.11) Let Gmail help make sure an email is ready to be sent
The following three easy customizations set up Gmail to alert you when it thinks an email isn't ready to be sent:
- Don't forget Bob? (L):
The Don't forget Bob feature automatically looks at the groups of people that emails have been sent to most frequently and suggests recipients that you may want to include on an email based on who you've included on previous emails. - Got the wrong Bob? (L):
Similar to Don't forget Bob but arguably more disaster-preventative, this feature automatically looks at a group of email recipients and analyzes it to look for outliers. The feature then suggests that a different email recipient may be preferred (like bob@bestfriend.com instead of bob@meanguyatwork.com) and potentially preventing the sending of an email to the wrong person. - Undo Send (L):
This lab simply delays sending an email for 5, 10, or 20 seconds when 'sent' is clicked and displays a message at the top of the screen that reads, "Your message has been sent. Undo." This gives you a chance to take back an email that you immediately regret sending, like when you've forgotten to attach a file or emailed your boss instead of your coworker.
12) Mouse gestures
Gmail has keyboard shortcuts galore for the heavy keyboard users among you but they don't leave out those of you who prefer the mouse. Mouse gestures (L) allows you to hold right-click on our mouse and move it to the right to go to the next conversation, move it to the left for the previous conversation, and move it up to go back to the main inbox view. This can be very useful when you're quickly skimming through a bunch of emails.
Note: this feature works better on Windows
How else are you all using Gmail to increase efficiency and stay organized at work? What's still missing?
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Why We Wrecked Our Site Traffic
Clay Schossow
Clay Schossow leads New Media Campaigns' project management and business development efforts. A graduate of UNC Chapel Hill, he has guided more than 200 websites from concept to launch. He is a frequent writer on Internet marketing and online campaigning. You should follow him on Twitter.
Last year around this time, our company had a call to arms: we would blog. Not just boring drivel so we could claim that we maintain a blog, but good, useful, specific content about things we know and are working on.
The goal was to show the world the things we’re doing, offer some helpful advice and plugins to the community, challenge ourselves to do cool things worth reading about, and to increase our overall site traffic.
The strategy paid big dividends in all of those realms. We focused on jQuery, JavaScript, CSS tricks, and other development strategies. Traffic grew to a reliable 40,000 + visits per month, our tutorials and plugins were featured around the web, we were encouraged to take extra time in coding to push the envelope, people were appreciative and thankful for our efforts, and we ranked high on Google for very competitive terms about jQuery and JavaScript.
Mission accomplished, right? Not so much. While we were getting all of those visits, they rarely converted into leads for our web design and development services. The people finding us had already solved 80% of the problems we address for our clients, and they were using our free resources to solve the remaining 20%.
Furthermore, it gave our blog a split focus. Covering front-end web development, politics and web marketing all on one blog meant that too many posts were going up that didn't appeal to our followers.
Monetizing Our Targeted Traffic
We began to wonder if there was a better way to organize things to provide a more consistent experience to our readers and to perhaps benefit ourselves from the traffic. We threw around a range of ideas: a book on jQuery promoted through our posts, accepting some choice advertising, selling our plugins, and more. Ultimately, we decided that these options were outside our core focus and motivations for the company.
We then realized that our growth in traffic was perfectly coupled in timing with the launch of our first product: HiFi CMS for Designers and Developers. Not only would it be great to send additional traffic to HiFi, but our visitors happened to be perfectly targeted for the product. Designers and developers who value doing things the right way in an innovative manner. We could also maintain two highly focused blogs instead of one that was all over the map.
The Process
However, internal discussions about the benefits of the traffic and actually pushing 1,000+ people a day away from our site were two very different things. The process didn't happen overnight, because we needed to be sure that we did everything right.
First, we imported all of our technical blog posts from NMC into HiFi. Naturally, there were were some formatting errors in the import and we had to go through every post line by line (including code samples) to make sure the import went smoothly.
Next, we realized this was a perfect opportunity to further optimize some of our popular post URLs and title tags. We went through each post to make sure it was optimized according to Google Keyword Tool and that the URL was as tight and relevant as possible.
Finally, the scariest part of the whole process came. We set up 301 permanent redirects from all of the old NMC links to the new URLs on gethifi.com. Nearly all of our blog traffic is referred from Google, so we wanted to ensure we kept all of our ranking with the new posts. According to Google and every other trustworthy resource out there, the 301s are the best way to maintain your page rank and successfully pass it along to the new site. While Google hasn't lied to me before, it was a little bit harder to "flip the switch" when 30,000 of our monthly visitors are on the line.
Wednesday May 26, 2010, a date which will live in infamy, we pulled the trigger. Everything looked to work perfectly thanks to weeks of efforts from across our team.
The Results
While the traffic switch went perfectly and HiFi saw a large spike in incoming traffic, it's only the first big hurdle, it isn't the ultimate motivation of this experiment. The real goal is to turn that traffic into followers and leads for HiFi.
Within the first week, HiFi has gained dozens of new Twitter followers and there has even been some nice new chatter about HiFi. Also, our email list has gained a decent amount of new signups, but not a number aligned with the volume of traffic now going to the site. So, our next step is to optimize the site for our new type of visitor who lands on HiFi accidentally rather than intentionally and might not be seeking out the email signup. Also, now that we have more traffic, it's important to provide more valuable resources to those visitors and encourage them to subscribe. We're accomplishing this by building out the site's content and planning several exciting new plugins to publish exclusively on HiFi.
We're excited with the initial results, but recognize we have a lot of hard work ahead of us in continuing to generate good content and increasing our conversion rate. Let us know what you think and if you've ever done something similar. -
A Site for University Innovation
The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill has been named "America's Most Entrepreneurial Campus" by Princeton Review and Forbes.com, a claim that UNC wants to uphold. New Media Campaigns has been involved in the entrepreneurship program at UNC and we are always watching the many ongoing entrepreneurial initiatives at UNC, the latest of which became a New Media Campaigns project.
It started from a book written by Chancellor Holden Thorp and Entrepreneur-in-Residence Buck Goldstein called Engines of Innovation: The Entrepreneurial University in the Twenty-First Century which will be released on September 29, 2010. Engines of Innovation addresses the need for universities to use their vast intellectual and financial resources in innovative ways to come up with solutions to the world's biggest problems. In addition to this book, Goldstein created a freshman seminar that parallels the purpose of the book and is where New Media Campaigns was able to help.
The class explored entrepreneurship and innovation in the university setting through readings, research and guest speakers. The information learned in the class was then translated into blogs, video interviews and articles all posted on a website the class maintained: RevupInnovation.com.
Naturally New Media Campaigns was interested in this effort given our ties to the University and its entrepreneurial community. We helped the class get the site set up so that the students could then take over. As a student in the class and I was not only introduced to New Media Campaigns, leading to a current summer internship, but I also learned firsthand the importance of entrepreneurship at a university.
The class was split into four groups to manage the site and create content. The web media team worked closely with New Media Campaigns and was in charge of launching, editing, and maintaining the website. The audio-video team set up, filmed and edited the interviews conducted in and outside of class. To reach beyond UNC, the best practices team researched other leading entrepreneurial universities to report on what they are doing right. Lastly, the blog team transformed class papers into blog posts and led the search for outside bloggers.
Some of those interviewed or blogging for the site include Harvard Professor Michael Porter, UNC Chancellor Holden Thorp, MIT Professor Bob Langer, Duke Professor Joel Fleishman and many others.
The students have come up with a number of cool features -- from highlighted personal interviews on the homepage, a signup form for UNC faculity and community members to submit blog posts and importantly, a newsletter signup on the sidebar of every page. Much of the sites followers are from within the University and prefer email to rss as a subscription mechanism.
While the class has ended for the year, revupinnovation.com will continue into this summer as several students have decided to stay involved. There is a core group of students staying in Chapel Hill this summer that will maintain the website daily, in addition several students will be working from around the country continuing to conduct research and interviews.
It was an exciting project for New Media Campaigns to be involved in. The project got off to a great start and it was a tremendous experience for the students. It will be exciting to see how the project continues to evolve.
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How to optimize an image for your website
Alex Pomer
Alex Pomer is a project manager and online media buyer at New Media Campaigns. He received a degree in Advertising from The School of Journalism and Mass Communication at UNC Chapel Hill. He has successfully launched sites for statewide political campaigns, national organizations and non-profits. Follow him on Twitter.
No one likes waiting for a webpage to load. It's frustraing and almost as if the site's host is asking for you to take your attention elsewhere. Both Google and Amazon have established through testing that higher webpage load times lead to lower traffic and conversions. When Google Maps reduced the size of their homepage, traffic increased 10%. Amazon's tests showed that for every 100 millisecond increase in load time, sales decreased by 1 percent.
Prioritizing image formatting is one of the easiest ways to speed up your site's load time. Unfortunately, many people gloss over their image formatting and navigating their website takes much longer as a result.
Here's an example of two images, one that has been optimized and one that hasn't, in case you don't believe me.
Last month, Google began accounting for the annoyance of waiting for pages to load by incorporating site speed into their search rankings, giving web hosts tangible incentive to start paying more attention to page load times. Since image formatting contributes so much to a page's load time, here's a quick breakdown on how to optimize the images on your website without purchasing any photo-editing software.
How big should your image's file size be?
An image's file size can vary greatly and it is the biggest determining factor in how fast an image will load to a webpage. High-tech cameras take extremely detailed pictures, resulting in huge file sizes, some are even several megabytes. Ideally though, an image that's uploaded to your webpage will be under:
- 100kb for a large image
- 50kb for a medium image
- 30kb for a small image
Here's a free online tool that allows you to sacrifice a little image quality in exchange for a reasonable file size and quick load times.
What file extension should you use for your images?
The three file extensions you should consider for your website's images are .jpg,.png and .gif
- .jpg - Use for images with more color like photos and images with gradients.
JPEG images are made up of millions of different colors but can be used at a lower quality to greatly decrease the file size. Typically JPEGs can be compressed 10:1 without much perceived loss in image quality.
- .png - Use for images with less color like charts and graphs or images with large areas of the same color, especially those requiring semi-transparency.
PNG images were created as a free substitute for the GIF format because GIF images are patented and require developers to pay a license fee. In fact, PNG actually stands for "PNG's Not GIF." PNG images are superior to GIFs in many ways including:
- Typically PNGs can be compressed further than GIFs
- PNGs are capable of varying levels of transparency
- PNGs can have a wider range of color depths
- .gif - Use for images with less color like charts and graphs or images with large areas of the same color.
GIF images are limited to 256 different colors but because image programs have the ability to control the number of colors that are in each image, charts and graphs with few color varieties can be stored at very small file sizes in the GIF format. GIF and PNG images are similar but GIFs are superior in the following ways:- GIFs can suport animated images
- While PNG images are widely supported, they aren't well supported in Internet Explorer 6.0 and some HTML email clients.
To convert your image to either a .jpg, .png or .gif file extension, you can this free online image converter tool.
What is the image title and image alt text?
The image title and alt text are used to describe the image you're placing both to viewers and to search engines.
Image Title - The image title, as the name might suggest, is a short title of the image you're placing on the webpage. It's also what shows up in that yellow box when you mouse over an image in many browsers (mouse over the image to the right for an example).- Image Alt Text - The alt text for an image is alternative text to describe an image in detail for search engines. An image's alt text will also display instead of the the image for people who have images disabled in their browser. Instead of seeing an empty image icon, the viewer will get a description of the image, which could inspire that person to enable images and see what you're trying to show them.
You can add an image title and image alt text in the HTML of a web page but many Content Management Systems, like ours, allow you to easily add them when you're inserting the image.
If you've got any good practices for optimizing an image for the web, feel free to let us know in the comments.
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