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ConversionRater A discussion of online advertising, web entrepreneurship, and personal ramblings from Pat McCarthy.

Monthly Archives: November 2005

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I Want a Web 2.0 Community Platform

November 30, 2005 6:11 pm / 3 Comments / Pat McCarthy

I’d like to make one addition to Richard MacManus’ list of Web 2.0 Products We Need (But Which Don’t Exist Yet): A Web 2.0 community platform.

The web is full of some good quality community content sites, and in my case I’m thinking of my site Wakeboarder.com. It’s a classic Web 1.0 site with a content management system, some static content, some forums, image and video uploading, reviews, etc. The web is full of sites like this.

Due to it badly being in need of both a design and functionality update, I’d love to upgrade it to a Web 2.0 community platform.

What I’d really like, although I’d settle for less, is an open-source web application that’s got one user account and combines the basic features of digg, del.icio.us, myspace, and flickr (with videos and pictures).

Obviously combining all the features of those applications would be a large project, so I’m thinking of just the basic functionality of each, so a user can login, submit/bookmark relevant news items/forum threads/pictures/videos, have their own profile page where they can link up with others, comment, and start discussion threads, and share pictures and videos like you would with flickr.

Has anyone seen anything close to this and I’ve missed it? Is anyone developing this? I’d be willing to beta test. I’d also pay money if someone developed something like this of decent quality.

I imagine there would be a ton of site owners who will want to change their “Web 1.0” community/content sites into a new social/sharing platform such as this. It could be a very successful project. Someone please drop me a line if you know of anything going on in this space.

Posted in: Startups, Web 2.0

Yahoo Adds RSS To Email: This is Big

November 30, 2005 3:52 pm / 2 Comments / Pat McCarthy

Yahoo is adding RSS feeds to their new web mail application, making it the first major web mail application to have built-in RSS.

Publishers will also have the option of having a button to allow people to add their feed to the user’s Yahoo RSS mail folder.

This is big because it’s introducing RSS in a familiar format (email) to a huge group of uneducated users. For a couple of years now people have complained that RSS will only work for technology people, but I think it’s coming to the masses. Get your feeds ready.

Posted in: Random, Yahoo

Google’s List of Services

November 30, 2005 11:41 am / Leave a Comment / Pat McCarthy

News.com has a nice chart with Google’s complete list of services.

When you see it all in one place, it’s readily apparent that Google is moving into lots of areas, all at once, and they’re definitely no longer just a search company.

While many of the services are free, you can be they’ll find ways to monetize them.

It’s also apparent that Yahoo and MSN are prime competitors in many of these fronts, with a little eBay and AOL thrown in for good measure.

Posted in: Google

Microsoft’s Free Classifieds Service

November 30, 2005 11:15 am / Leave a Comment / Pat McCarthy

CNET points out that Microsoft is launching a free classifieds service code named Fremont.

Techcrunch has also seen it and thinks it’s impressive.

A few takeaways from this:

1. Classifieds is going to be one of the major battlefields for the GAMEY companies (Google, AOL, Microsoft, Ebay, Yahoo).

2. It’s good Microsoft is going to integrate it with social networking and MSN Messenger. I fear that it will only be compatible with MSN Spaces and Messenger. For real success they may want to make it open to everyone.

3. You know things have changed when the quotes about it from a Microsoft executive are about how it’s different from Google Base.

4. Integration with their mapping service is a good idea, as well as being able to see listings based on things like domain, so you could see classifieds just from everyone who works at Microsoft by sorting listings for everyone that has a microsoft.com email address. How is Craiglist going to keep up with those features? Or will we find out that people just want simplicity?

(start idea rant)
This also leads me to a bigger business idea I’ve been thinking about in this space. Will someone just go ahead and build a decentralized classifieds system that had a form that publishers could put on their site to have data dumped into a centralized database that could then be accessed by that publisher or any other publisher who wanted to run those ads.

For example, on my community site Wakeboarder.com, I could place this form on my site for people to create classified ads that woudl go into this central database. I could then pull all the ads created by my users out of this database and show them on my site. The beauty comes though is that if another wakeboarding site also wants to display classifieds, they could pull any classifieds tagged with “wakeboarding” and display them. My users would appreciate the additional exposure for their ads, and this other publisher gets ad content they might not be able to get otherwise.

As Wakeboarder.com, why would I want my ads shared to a competitor? Well, theoretically that competitor would also start adding ads into the system that I could pull as well. It’s just more content we can provide and share, I see no need to put a wall around the ads my users are creating, I don’t make any money off it now.
(end idea rant)

Posted in: Microsoft, Random

Oops, You Can Still Add a New Site In Google Analytics

November 30, 2005 2:13 am / Leave a Comment / Pat McCarthy

Some of you who already have a Google Analytics account may have noticed that Google has shut off the ability to add a new site profile in their interface as they handle capacity issues with so many new accounts being added.

However, if you view the source of your main Google Analytics page that lists your site profiles, you’ll see that the link to “Add Website Profile” is simply commented out in the HTML!

So, in order to add a new account, follow these instructions:

  1. View the source of the main profile listing page and search for “Add Website Profile” and right before that is the link to add it. It should look something like:

    admin?vid=XXXX&scid=XXXXX

  2. Take that link, and paste it onto the base URL which is:

    https://www.google.com/analytics/home/

Now you’ve got a new website profile to be added.

Posted in: Google, Web Analytics

Top Ways To Use Web Analytics To Improve Your Blog or Website

November 30, 2005 1:48 am / 40 Comments / Pat McCarthy

Now that a quality free web analytics solution is available in Google Analytics (when it works), bloggers and web site owners who previously didn’t want to spend the money are now taking a good look at analytics and what it can do for them.

It’s neat to see some data, but how do you actually make that data work to improve your website or blog? The following are some top tips on how to use web analytics to improve your website or blog:

  1. Increase Page Views Per Visit
    Whether your site is an ecommerce site or a blog making revenue from advertising, you most likely will benefit from visitors viewing a higher number of pages on your site. With every statistic you aim to improve, get a baseline number and shoot to make it better. For this statistic, think about what you can do to your site to increase the number of pageviews.

    For a blog: Do you have prominent links to your most popular posts? Do you link to your own posts within other relevant posts?

    For an ecommerce site: Are you cross-promoting relevant products people might be interested in? Are you providing any useful content to go along with the products?
  2. Expand Your Geographic Reach
    Look at your geographic location statistics and see what areas of the world you receive the most traffic and what areas you are weak in. What can you do to strengthen your traffic in areas where you’re strong, and what can you do to improve traffic for places that you’re weak?

    For a blog: Are your posts aimed at only one geographic region? Brainstorm what you can post that will be interesting to bloggers in other areas. Find some blogs in those regions and comment and link to good posts. This will provide some trackbacks from your sites, and help you form some good relationships with bloggers in those regions.

    For an ecommerce site: Are you marketing to your weak regions? Can you buy PPC ads or optimize for searches people in those regions might be making? Do you support multiple currencies in your stores? Can your site be translated? Perhaps even mirror sites for each country with the correct domain ltd for those countries would be worthwhile.
  3. Mine Your Referring Links
    Take a close look at what sites are referring traffic to you through normal links. Why are they doing so? Can you strengthen your relationships with those sites to get even more traffic from them? Are there more sites like their’s that you could get links from that you haven’t approached? Are there any types of sites you think you should be getting links from but aren’t? Why not?

    For a blog: If you’re getting a lot of trackback links, strengthen relationships with those sites. Are you on their blogrolls? Would they add you if you asked? Try getting more trackbacks on similar sites. Are you getting any traffic from directories or blog directories? If not, submit to some of them and see what happens.

    For an ecommerce site: Are any sites naturally linking to you? If not, maybe you should create some good content to go along with your products. If so, are there more links you could get on those sites, or other sites like them?
  4. Mine Your Search Terms
    Just like referring links, what can you learn from your organic search terms? Can you get more traffic and better rankings for the terms that are doing well? Are there terms you’re not ranking well for? Can you create more content for those?

    For a blog: You probably are ranking well for some keywords you might not expect, that’s one thing great about blogs. You make a random post, and start getting traffic for some keywords you mentioned. Use that power to your advantage, post about your keyword topics and use those keywords in the titles and body of the post. Expand what you post about and how you normally name your titles, you’ll probably see good results.

    For an ecommerce site: Most likely you’ll need to make sure your site is structured well to rank well in searches, and that you have good link popularity. Also try creating some content for specific keyword phrases.
  5. Grow Your Top Content
    Look at your most heavily visited content and analyze why. Is it the most visited because of the way your site is structured? Because it has the most links to it? Or because it’s the most useful or helpful content to visitors? Once you know why, expand that top content.

    For a blog: Most likely your top content will be some popular blog posts you’ve made. Why do people keep reading those posts? Can you make more posts in that format or about that topic? Did lots of other bloggers link to it? That should be a clue it has value and you can grow your traffic by hitting that subject more often.

    For an ecommerce site: Your top content may be a certain product or category. Can you add more products of that type or category? Or is the top content because of the way your list your categories or products? Is it working out how you want it? Is the top content really the products you want to have the most traffic?
  6. What Is Your Bounce Rate?
    After you’ve found your top content, this is most likely also your top entry pages to the site. This is because either links or search terms are taking people to your top content first. Most analytics tools have a “bounce” or “exit” rate. This tells you the percentage of visitors that exited on the same page they arrived on. A large percentage means that most of the people who landed on that page just viewed it and left. A low percentage means they clicked on to other parts of your site before leaving. Obviously you’d like to lower the percentage to get people to view other aspects of your site.

    For a blog: Are you letting people know about other good posts or sections of your site in obvious ways from the entry pages people are arriving on?

    For an ecommerce site: Think about the path you want a visitor to take from that entrance page to reach the product you’d like to sell them. Are there prominent links? Are you telling the user what they want to know and tricking persuading them to move on in your buying process?
  7. Set Up Goals
    With Google Analytics and most other good analytics applications you can set up conversion goals of some type. This doesn’t necessarily mean a sale, a blogger or normal site may set a goal of having someone sign up for a newsletter, view a certain number of pages, or view a particular page. Once you have these goals set, track them and improve your site to hit your goals.

    For a blog: If you’ve got nothing to buy or for anyone to sign up for, set a goal to have visitors reach a certain number of page views, and improve your site to hit that goal. Otherwise, have subscribing to an email newsletter, downloading an ebook, or taking some sort of action to be a goal.

    For an ecommerce site: Obviously making a sale is the top conversion goal you should focus on. There are a ton of analytics and analysis that can go into this and it’s fodder for a whole set of posts on the topics. But basically track your conversion rate, set up a funnel, and improve the statistics from your baseline average.
  8. Check Your Web Design Parameters
    Most analytics apps allow you to see things like what browsers your visitors are using, what resolution their screen is set at, what version of javascript they have, what operating system they use, if they have Flash installed, and other data. Check this data periodically to make sure your site is designed to look and operate well as much of your audience as possible. There’s nothing worse than finding out 30% of your audience are Apple users and you’ve never seen how terrible your site looks on an Apple.

    For a blog: Most blog templates are fairly well-tested, but you can’t be too careful. Check out your data and try to test out your site in multiple browsers and systems.

    For an ecommerce site: You should perform some rigorous cross-browser and cross-platform testing to make sure you aren’t leaving money on the table by providing a bad user experience.

Start taking a good look at your analytics, you’d be surprised what kinds of improvements you can make with that data.

Posted in: Google, Web Analytics

Delicious Firefox Extension

November 29, 2005 5:08 pm / 1 Comment / Pat McCarthy

Fred Wilson announces a new Delicious Firefox Extension. And it can be installed here.

Very cool stuff, I use del.icio.us a lot, so I like saving some room in my bookmarks toolbar by moving this to the buttons menu, and adding del.icio.us search to the pulldown is cool when you are searching for something that people have tagged useful articles about.

Posted in: Random

The Importance of a Unique Selling Proposition

November 29, 2005 3:18 pm / Leave a Comment / Pat McCarthy

It mainly holds true for ecommerce sites, but something that’s important for all sites and blogs to consider is their USP, or Unique Selling Proposition.

Your USP defines why your site is different and what makes it special. Why should people buy from you? Why should they read your blog?

While I don’t go as far as some people saying you should state your USP on your front page of your site, I do think it’s important that you know what your USP is for your site.

A good article about choosing your USP and how to use it comes from “marketing guru” Jay Abraham.

For example, the USP of Conversion Rater is “Making the web convert for your goals.” I find it too vague and I’m not sure I’m fully delivering in the early stages, but nobody said I was perfect. I’ll continue to strive to hit that USP.

Posted in: Conversion Rate, Ecommerce

Is Google the VC A Good Or Bad Thing?

November 29, 2005 12:14 pm / 2 Comments / Pat McCarthy

There has been talk about how Google and Yahoo are now competing with venture capitalists by buying up small startups before they get VC money and establish their businesses.

For Google and Yahoo, it’s probably smart if they identify that the technology and talent of the companies they are acquiring are worth it. They get to buy them before they have a lot of investors who need a return on investment, and they get to buy them before they’ve established a big market and deserve a higher payout.

Is this good for the companies? Yes and no. It’s good because they are assured of making some good money, and they have a good chance their technology will get rolled out to a large user base by Google or Yahoo.

However, are they missing out on making a bigger payday? Are they missing out on their product catching fire and making their own company even bigger, more successful, and more powerful? And, if they are entrepreneurs, do they really want to work for a large company?

And perhaps the most important question, is this better or worse for the web as a whole? Is it good that these technologies are getting to use the resources, expertise, and user base of a Google? Or would we be seeing greater innovations if they stayed independent?

Food for thought, it’s tempting to say that independence is better for the web as a whole, but I’m not sure if I was a startup founder if I could turn down a nice acquisition from a large player 6 months into my companies existence either.

Posted in: Google, Startups, Yahoo

Quoted by News.com’s Blogma

November 28, 2005 9:24 pm / Leave a Comment / Pat McCarthy

My thoughts on Evan Williams’ post Ten Rules For Web Startups were quoted on News.com’s Blogma.

I hadn’t heard of Blogma before, so it was cool to see. It’s also be nice to be quoted on the same page as the great Boingboing!

Now back to your regularly scheduled blogging…

Posted in: Blogging, Startups, Web 2.0

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