PixelMEDIA Inc.

Riding the Boston subway recently, I noticed several people crowded around one of the doors in the center of the car despite a clearly worded warning: DO NOT STAND IN FRONT OF DOORS. They stayed at the door during several stops, but did not get off. People getting on and off had to squeeze by them. The train wasn’t especially crowded; there was plenty of space away from the doors. So why were these people huddled in the one spot they were not supposed to be?

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How do you determine that your website is successful?  Maybe you expect to see a certain number of leads every month or entice a certain number of visitors to view a specific demo.  Whatever your goals, it is imperative that you track results — whether or not your goals are being attained.

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Because up to 11 pay-per-click (PPC) text ads might show on any given search query, it is imperative that you do whatever you can to make your ad stand out.  Yes, you want to make sure the users’ search terms actually appear in the ad and that you have a strong call to action, but every PPC campaign manager thinks this way.  You need to dig deeper in your messaging in order to turn the impression into a click.  The three themes outlined below are ways to make your ads stand out in order to increase your overall click-thru-rate (CTR).

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Everyone here at PixelMEDIA understands the frustration felt by people who could not get through to the Great Appliance Exchange website yesterday, April 22. The fact that the program’s funds were exhausted within hours illustrates the excitement and demand that this program generated in so short a time.

At this point, we know that a very attractive offer, a limited window of opportunity, and a first-come, first-served model created a concentrated and intense online queue that quickly overwhelmed the primary website as well as the backup website and phone systems.

PixelMEDIA is working with all involved parties to improve the communication and timing of these attractive offers to implement added measures that will support the peak traffic demands that are generated.

Christopher Suprock, a Ph.D. candidate at the University of New Hampshire and first-place winner of the 2009 Paul J. Holloway Prize Innovation-to-Market Competition, is profiled in this Seacoast Online feature. The article also cites PixelMEDIA for providing more than $15,000 in communications and web design assistance to help Chris’s company, Exeter-based Suprock Technologies, achieve greater visibility. PixelMEDIA owners Erik Dodier and Thomas Obrey offer their perspective on the importance of supporting the next generation of entrepreneurs and PixelMEDIA’s commitment to giving back to the community.

Search Query Performance reports for pay-per-click (PPC) campaigns are extremely valuable for finding new and negative keywords, but another helpful indicator of search terms can be found within Google Analytics (GA).  Two filters work in conjunction with each other to override your PPC keywords and grab the exact terms that users are typing in when clicking your ads.  So what’s the big deal?  Don’t Search Query Performance reports tell me this information anyway?  Yes, but these override filters tell you what happens post-click and, as I always say, PPC cannot be done in a vacuum.  You need to analyze the whole process from search query to conversion.

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I talk a lot about the importance of PPC campaign metrics such as CPA (cost per acquisition) and conversion rate (percentage of clicks that turn into conversions), but at the heart of these metrics is the actual conversion.  As defined by Google:

“A conversion occurs when a click on your ad leads directly to user behavior you deem valuable.”

This user behavior may be a purchase, a whitepaper download, or a page view in an important area of your site.  As with your other marketing media, PPC is a channel that needs to be tracked.

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Google AdWords is an amazing advertising platform but, like most things, there is always room for improvement.  I will take a look at various AdWords features and voice my concerns while explaining why improvements are necessary.  As a precursor, I have spoken with my Google representative about my concerns and she has assured me that they are being taken into consideration.

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If you have participated in taking a website in a new design direction, you may have noticed the difficulty in separating the form from the function. Here at PixelMEDIA, we employ a useful deliverable know as a mood board. In its simplest form, a mood board combines numerous elements into a collage that establishes an overall tone and creative direction. In many cases, we use it when a brand “refresh” is needed or if there is a lack of defined brand guidelines for the web channel. If you are currently working on a complete rebrand, you may consider this method as way to explore and establish typography, a color palette, or a style of a photography or illustration.

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For the majority of my career I’ve worked on and around e-commerce sites, and I’ve seen a broad range of database designs and site architectures. Within that broad range I’ve seen many good and bad practices, and one of the worst is to design an e-commerce site that can’t scale to meet the business’s future needs. These sites tend to be havens for odd bugs and are likely to become maintenance nightmares. (Read More…)