What is bounce rate?
The definition of bounce rate is the percentage of visitors to a site who leave the site without viewing any more pages. (more…)
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The definition of bounce rate is the percentage of visitors to a site who leave the site without viewing any more pages. (more…)
New tools and techniques available for Ecommerce web design optimisation have made it possible to incrementally improve performance and ascertain the most effective methods of internet marketing. In the past, the return on investment from Ecommerce websites has been difficult to track and monitor, and therefore difficult to improve. This has held back the online success of many businesses as their financial controllers have been rightfully conservative about investing in activities with an unknown return on investment.
It has been a popular criticism of Google Analytics for some time now that it didn’t allow the creation of more than 4 separate conversion goals. All that changes today with the introduction of a range of new goal functionality.
Google Analytics now allows for the creation of up to 20 Goals per profile. In addition to expanding the number of goals available, Google has also expanded the types of goals available, to include ‘threshold’ goals for time on site per visit and pageviews per visit.
Tracking goals/conversions is a key performance indicator which can provide highly valuable data enabling you’re website to reach its fullest potential. If you are not currently tracking goals, you should start today!
Google Analytics now allows goals to be organised into 4 sets. Each set containing up to 5 different goals. These sets introduce a new way for the additional goal data to be accommodated within the Google Analytics Reports.
Previously a goal was typically defined as a pageview that resulted from the completion of a valued action on a website. For example the checkout completion page following a successful online sale. Now goals can be based on actions which do not relate to the viewing of a page. Goals can now be based on how much time a visitor spends on the site or how many pages the visitor visits.

i) Time Based Goals
Time based conversions are triggered after a visitor has spent a certain amount of time on a website. A goal can now be configured to register a conversion when a user has spent a specified amount of time on a website. Interestingly time based goals can now also be configured to register conversions if a user leaves a site before a certain amount of time. This can be useful if you wish to set a goal up as a failure metric.

ii) Pageview Based Goals
Another new goal type is pageviews per visit. In a similar fashion to time based goals, a conversion is triggered when a visit exceeds a certain number of pages. Like time based views, pageview based goals can also be triggered by virtual pageviews.

iii) URL Destination Goals
Traditional goals have been renamed URL destination goals. These goals can still be constructed using regular expressions, head match or exact match to identify a page that represents a particular conversion. Now with the availability of up to 20 goals you can easily measure all of those micro conversions (RSS subscription, email signup, reaching a product page, downloading white paper… etc, etc, etc). And yes, you can still use a virtual pageview as a URL Destination goal.
Google has spent some time updating the funnels interface. Funnels are still limited to 10 steps. The big question is, do we still need funnels now we have the ability to setup up to 20 goals. The answer is unquestionably yes! Funnels provide a nice visualisation of critical processes and in particular abandonment rate.
If in the past you have been tracking lots of goals through different profiles, you may want to consider consolidating these goals into one profile. The benefit is you can have all your conversions in one interface allowing much easier analysis.
A key point to remember is visitors can only convert at each goal level once per visit. This is the way it has always been and is likely to remain.
Creating new goals will not modify your historical data, only future data. So all newly created goals will only track future traffic!
In today’s challenging economic climate, data-driven marketing and website decision making is becoming an increasingly important aspect. Google has recognised the importance of this trend with the recent introduction of its Analytics Individual Qualification (GAIQ). The GAIQ course covers web analytics techniques and Google Analytics implementation, administration, and analysis tools.
Today we are pleased to announce and congratulate the success of one of our Internet Marketing Consultants – Chris Mann for attaining this highly regarded and recognised professional qualification. Chris becomes one of the very first web professionals in the country to gain the new qualification.

The new qualification will allow WSI Yorkshire to further enhance its web analytics services, training offerings and mentoring services. The Google Analytics Individual Qualification compliments our existing status as a Google Adwords Qualified Company.
Try New Search Engine or Knowledge Base for computable Knowledge
http://www.wolframalpha.com
I think they are struggling with the server loads, but the idea looks good. (may need to shorten their name so they don’t sound like a Doctor Who nemesis.
Here’s what they have to say about them selves
Goals
Wolfram|Alpha’s long-term goal is to make all systematic knowledge immediately computable and accessible to everyone. We aim to collect and curate all objective data; implement every known model, method, and algorithm; and make it possible to compute whatever can be computed about anything. Our goal is to build on the achievements of science and other systematizations of knowledge to provide a single source that can be relied on by everyone for definitive answers to factual queries.
Wolfram|Alpha aims to bring expert-level knowledge and capabilities to the broadest possible range of people—spanning all professions and education levels. Our goal is to accept completely free-form input, and to serve as a knowledge engine that generates powerful results and presents them with maximum clarity.
Wolfram|Alpha is an ambitious, long-term intellectual endeavor that we intend will deliver increasing capabilities over the years and decades to come. With a world-class team and participation from top outside experts in countless fields, our goal is to create something that will stand as a major milestone of 21st century intellectual achievement.
Status
That it should be possible to build Wolfram|Alpha as it exists today in the first decade of the 21st century was far from obvious. And yet there is much more to come.
As of now, Wolfram|Alpha contains 10+ trillion of pieces of data, 50,000+ types of algorithms and models, and linguistic capabilities for 1000+ domains. Built with Mathematica—which is itself the result of more than 20 years of development at Wolfram Research—Wolfram|Alpha’s core code base now exceeds 5 million lines of symbolic Mathematica code. Running on supercomputer-class compute clusters, Wolfram|Alpha makes extensive use of the latest generation of web and parallel computing technologies, including webMathematica and gridMathematica.
Wolfram|Alpha’s knowledge base and capabilities already span a great many domains, and its underlying framework has the power and flexibility to support ready extension to essentially any domain that is based on systematic knowledge. More »
The universe of potentially computable knowledge is, however, almost endless, and in creating Wolfram|Alpha as it is today, we needed to start somewhere. Our approach so far has been to emphasize domains where computation has traditionally had a more significant role. As we have developed Wolfram|Alpha, we have in effect been systematically covering the content areas of reference libraries and handbooks. In going forward, we plan broader and deeper coverage, both of traditionally scientific, technical, economic, and otherwise quantitative knowledge, and of more everyday, popular, and cultural knowledge.
Wolfram|Alpha’s ability to understand free-form input is based on algorithms that are informed by our analysis of linguistic usage in large volumes of material on the web and elsewhere. As the usage of Wolfram|Alpha grows, we will capture a whole new level of linguistic data, which will allow us to greatly enhance Wolfram|Alpha’s linguistic capabilities.
Today’s Wolfram|Alpha is just the beginning. We have ambitious plans, for data, for computation, for linguistics, for presentation, and more. As we go forward, we’ll be discussing what we’re doing on the Wolfram|Alpha Blog, and we encourage suggestions and participation, especially through the Wolfram|Alpha Community.
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Future
Wolfram|Alpha, as it exists today, is just the beginning. We have both short- and long-term plans to dramatically expand all aspects of Wolfram|Alpha, broadening and deepening our data, our computation, our linguistics, our presentation, and more.
Wolfram|Alpha is built on solid foundations. And as we go forward, we see more and more that can be made computable using the basic paradigms of Wolfram|Alpha—and a faster and faster path for development as we leverage the broad capabilities already in place.
Wolfram|Alpha was made possible in part by the achievements of Mathematica and A New Kind of Science (NKS). In their different ways, both of these point to far-reaching future opportunities for Wolfram|Alpha—whether a radically new kind of programming or the systematic automation of invention and discovery.
Wolfram|Alpha is being introduced first in the form of the wolframalpha.com website. But Wolfram|Alpha is really a technology and a platform that can be used and presented in many different ways. Among short-term plans are developer APIs, professional and corporate versions, custom versions for internal data, connections with other forms of content, and deployment on emerging mobile and other platforms.
History & Background
The quest to make knowledge computable has a long and distinguished history. Indeed, when computers were first imagined, it was almost taken for granted that they would eventually have the kinds of question-answering capabilities that we now begin to see in Wolfram|Alpha.
What has now made Wolfram|Alpha possible today is a somewhat unique set of circumstances—and the singular vision of Stephen Wolfram.
For the first time in history, we have computers that are powerful enough to support the capabilities of Wolfram|Alpha, and we have the web as a broad-based means of delivery. But this technology alone was not enough to make Wolfram|Alpha possible.
What was needed were also two developments that have been driven by Stephen Wolfram over the course of nearly 30 years. More »
The first was Mathematica—the system in which all of Wolfram|Alpha is implemented. Mathematica has three crucial roles in Wolfram|Alpha. First, its very general symbolic language provides the framework in which all the diverse knowledge of Wolfram|Alpha is represented, and all its capabilities are implemented. Second, Mathematica’s vast web of built-in algorithms provides the computational foundation that makes it even conceivably practical to implement the methods and models of so many fields. And finally, the strength of Mathematica as a software engineering and deployment platform makes it possible to take the technical achievements of Wolfram|Alpha and deliver them broadly and robustly.
Beyond Mathematica, another key to Wolfram|Alpha was NKS. Many specific ideas from NKS—particularly related to algorithms discovered by exploring the computational universe—are used in the implementation of Wolfram|Alpha. But still more important is that the very paradigm of NKS was crucial in imagining that Wolfram|Alpha might be possible.
Wolfram|Alpha represents a substantial technical and intellectual achievement. But to build it required not just unique technology and ideas, but also the experience of 20 years of long-term R&D and ongoing development of robust technology at Wolfram Research. Wolfram|Alpha’s world-class team draws from many fields and disciplines, and has unique access to experts across the globe. But what ultimately made Wolfram|Alpha possible was a singular commitment to the goal of making all the world’s systematic knowledge computable
Managed correctly, Pay Per Click (PPC) campaigns are an extremely effective way for small businesses to market their business online. PPC advertising is an attractive marketing medium, as a charge is only applied when your ad is clicked on and visitors are directed to your website.
Unlike most standard forms of advertising, PPC search-engine marketing enables you to target potential customers who are looking specifically for your service. If done right, a PPC campaign can pay for itself many times over.<!–more–>
Sharpening the PPC Saw
Pay Per Click is now a fundamental part of the online marketing mix of many SMEs. This doesn’t mean the paid search arena is saturated, or that many of these companies achieve a maximum return on their investment.
The PPC market place is huge, and provides ample opportunity for advertisers of all sizes; and just because your top key terms are beyond your budget doesn’t mean you cannot have a successful, cost- effective PPC campaign. Here are four tips for taking your paid search marketing activities to the next level.
1. Plan Your Campaign
The straightforward tools for setting up a paid search advertising campaign make it easy to get started. But taking your time with a more planned approach will allow you to apply tools that will optimise the effectiveness of your campaigns.
A well-prepared campaign will include the following elements:
While you can be up and running with your ad campaign in minutes, you will achieve the best return on your investment by working through these important managed steps.
2. Pre-qualify Your Visitors
One of PPC marketing’s strengths is the ability to pre-qualify those who click on your ads: Craft a well-worded ad to include your keywords and some details about your product. Done well, this will deter the ‘tyre kickers’ and encourage those who are ready to buy.
You may also consider offering a free download, White Paper, email course or webinar as an incentive for clicking on your ad. This will capture contact data from a high percentage of those clicking on your ads.
3. Boosting Your Budget
Bidding to have your ad positioned at the top of the search results is not always the best strategy. More traffic often comes from the second, third or even fourth position, which will save you a significant amount of money.
You can also make your budget go a little further by setting up conversion tracking. This not only allows you to identify what keywords are working best for you, but also demonstrates to the search engine that your content is relevant. This can result in your ads benefiting from better positioning without increasing your bid amount.
4. Don’t Suffer from Analysis Paralysis
Web advertising provides excellent visitor activity tracking, allowing you to achieve a greater return on your PPC advertising investment by identifying what is working and what needs tweaking.
Be careful, though, the wealth of website data can be overwhelming, especially if you are not well versed in the technology, tools and terminology of PPC marketing. The key is being able to hone in on the important stats, and then understand how to interpret them.
If you would like more help implementing successful PPC marketing campaigns, please call us on 01484 690430.