We've moved. Please visit us at www.marketingformavens.com/blog.
Over the last few days, I've put a good deal of time into reconfiguring the home page. The previous design was very text heavy and the feedback I received revealed that it didn't clearly explain the services provided by Marketing for Mavens.
It's funny how you can be a web marketer for 10 years and still find yourself reverting to poor design practices. In this case, I'm far too close to the content then I'd prefer to be. I know how valuable Marketing for Mavens can be to a web marketer but when you've been so focused on developing the product for the last 6 months, what you consider to be a clear and concise explanation, turns out to be confusing to people who are learning about your services for the first time.
I still feel like the content needs to be revised further especially on the pages beyond the home page. I'll be updating it over the next several days and will continue to listen to the feedback we've been receiving and update the site accordingly.
Tuesday, August 26, 2008
Thursday, August 21, 2008
Treat Your Web Visitors with Respect. Stop Herding Cattle.
We've moved. Please visit www.marketingformavens.com/blog.
One of the features of Marketing for Mavens is the ability to see how each visitor comes to your site and where they go. The real value is that it forces you to see your visitors as individuals instead of a crowd of people.
When you look at your typical web report, you see how all of your visitors interact with your site. You know that a majority of people visit your home page and that a certain percentage go to your product pages but you miss out on the details like how did this person get here, what were they looking for, and did they find it. The other problem is that any changes you make to your site based on these reports is designed to appeal to the masses. Web reports force us to treat our visitors as cattle that we can herd around. We try to find the path of least resistance that we can push them towards and then track the results through funnel analysis knowing that a certain number will drop out but if we can convert 10% to leads we'll be very happy.
This leads us to the niche that Marketing for Mavens fills. There's a very good reason to use all those web reports and you should continue to do so but you should also be looking at your individual visitors as well. Marketing for Mavens will assist you in treating each visitor, or as we like to call them citizen, with respect and open up a new way of communication that will transform how you interact with your potential customers. With this approach, you will understand what your citizens needs are and assist them in fulfilling these needs turning your citizens into customers more quickly and more efficiently then pushing them through a path that you already know loses 90% of your potential leads.
One of the features of Marketing for Mavens is the ability to see how each visitor comes to your site and where they go. The real value is that it forces you to see your visitors as individuals instead of a crowd of people.
When you look at your typical web report, you see how all of your visitors interact with your site. You know that a majority of people visit your home page and that a certain percentage go to your product pages but you miss out on the details like how did this person get here, what were they looking for, and did they find it. The other problem is that any changes you make to your site based on these reports is designed to appeal to the masses. Web reports force us to treat our visitors as cattle that we can herd around. We try to find the path of least resistance that we can push them towards and then track the results through funnel analysis knowing that a certain number will drop out but if we can convert 10% to leads we'll be very happy.
This leads us to the niche that Marketing for Mavens fills. There's a very good reason to use all those web reports and you should continue to do so but you should also be looking at your individual visitors as well. Marketing for Mavens will assist you in treating each visitor, or as we like to call them citizen, with respect and open up a new way of communication that will transform how you interact with your potential customers. With this approach, you will understand what your citizens needs are and assist them in fulfilling these needs turning your citizens into customers more quickly and more efficiently then pushing them through a path that you already know loses 90% of your potential leads.
Tuesday, August 19, 2008
New Feature: Track Referrer and Search Words
A new feature has been added which allows you to see if your visitors found your site through Google or Yahoo and what keywords they used. This information is now listed in the citizen profile. For now, the code only looks for Google and Yahoo user but it will be expanded in the future to include other search engines and paid advertising campaigns.
Wednesday, July 30, 2008
Where is the integration between content management and web analytics applications?
We've moved. Please visit us at www.marketingformavens.com/blog.
One of the problems which Marketing for Mavens tries to solve is that most sites use some kind of content management system and a separate web analytics application and neither of them talk to one another.
Every day your content management system pushes out the same content to the same people and it doesn't know whether that person has visited your site in the past or what they were looking for. Instead, web marketers are left looking at reports on a monthly basis and then trying to configure the site content accordingly. This response is far too slow and you're reacting to the masses and not individual visitors.
Marketing for Mavens helps to solve this problem by tagging you're visitors based on the web pages they view. It then knows each visitors interests and can push the appropriate promotions and content to them in real time based on these interests. Now your site can be personalized to your visitors without them having to register for your site. This is important as you can now target your content and messages to only the visitors interested in seeing it. If you are interested in seeing how Marketing for Mavens can help you to manage your web content and promotions and deliver them to targeted visitors, please check our our short demo video and join or beta program.
One of the problems which Marketing for Mavens tries to solve is that most sites use some kind of content management system and a separate web analytics application and neither of them talk to one another.
Every day your content management system pushes out the same content to the same people and it doesn't know whether that person has visited your site in the past or what they were looking for. Instead, web marketers are left looking at reports on a monthly basis and then trying to configure the site content accordingly. This response is far too slow and you're reacting to the masses and not individual visitors.
Marketing for Mavens helps to solve this problem by tagging you're visitors based on the web pages they view. It then knows each visitors interests and can push the appropriate promotions and content to them in real time based on these interests. Now your site can be personalized to your visitors without them having to register for your site. This is important as you can now target your content and messages to only the visitors interested in seeing it. If you are interested in seeing how Marketing for Mavens can help you to manage your web content and promotions and deliver them to targeted visitors, please check our our short demo video and join or beta program.
Added Time Zone Preferences
Today, a new time zone option was added to the dashboard. In the past, all of the statistics were returned in UTC time. Now each user can select their time zone and have the statistics display in their local time.
Monday, July 28, 2008
Giving back to the web community
Today, I've been working on a little side project. This idea popped into my head during lunch and I feel compelled to act upon it. Over the years, I've received a lot of help from web community. Whether it's support for a particular product or learning a new programming language, I couldn't imagine having the success I've had without someone answering these questions or showing the steps necessary to solve various problems.
It is for this reason that I've decided to devote an hour of each day to answering one person's web marketing questions. The questions can be from a wide range of topics including coding, web design, development, SEO, paid advertising, database design. No questions is too dumb and I welcome questions from those who have no clue about the web but find it fascinating or need help getting started. I don't pretend to have all the answers but I can, more often than not, point you in the right direction.
Of course this is free and in return I want nothing other than for you try to pass the knowledge along or help others as best you can. This is my opportunity to pay forward all the help that people have given me in the past. If you're interested please fill out the form at www.marketingformavens.com/free_web_marketing_help.html.
It is for this reason that I've decided to devote an hour of each day to answering one person's web marketing questions. The questions can be from a wide range of topics including coding, web design, development, SEO, paid advertising, database design. No questions is too dumb and I welcome questions from those who have no clue about the web but find it fascinating or need help getting started. I don't pretend to have all the answers but I can, more often than not, point you in the right direction.
Of course this is free and in return I want nothing other than for you try to pass the knowledge along or help others as best you can. This is my opportunity to pay forward all the help that people have given me in the past. If you're interested please fill out the form at www.marketingformavens.com/free_web_marketing_help.html.
Wednesday, July 23, 2008
Taking Twhirl for a Whirl
Sorry for the title but I couldn't help myself. I just started giving Twhirl a test drive. Here are some first impressions:
- I love that I can keep up with both Twitter and FriendFeed using the same application but I wish they were integrated into the same window
- There is something about the text that makes it tough to read. I tried changing fonts and colors but I'll have to experiment some more. It might be the line spacing
- I like the Growl like notifications
- Nice built-in search and shorten url features...no more heading off to tinyurl to post a tweet
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