PixelMEDIA Inc.

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…)

I have received several inquiries after my seminar and webinar on social media for business and building a successful process for it. So below is a deeper dive on the two sections of my presentation (slide 9) that were most asked about. The questions were in regards to the tools used to find the right information, what to look for, and the methods on how to manage the data.

The concept of auditing and mapping is to understand the environment and how it relates to your corporation or brand. This blog is not a deep dive into daily social media tasks that need to be performed. Chris Brogan has a great blog on that.

The Takeaway

• You can’t plan a social strategy without quality information
• Focus on your goals and not the noise
• Plan ahead by documenting results
• Test tools after you have refined your focus to save energy (Read More…)

Recently there has been talk of a new metric within the PPC industry: conversions per impression.  I first read about this metric from Chris Crompton of Search Engine Land.

In my view, this metric represents the overall effectiveness of your PPC campaign.  The click-through rate (CTR) measures how relevant your ads are to user search queries. The conversion rate tells you the percentage of visitors who complete your predefined goals once the ads are clicked. These are important metrics, but it may be time to consider conversions per impression (CPI) as well.  Let’s take this example:

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PixelMEDIA is pleased to announce the redesigned website for the Working Dog Foundation, the fundraising organization for the New Hampshire Police K9 Academy.  Knowing PixelMEDIA’s track record of helping non-profits, and hoping for support from one of their community neighbors on Pease, Chairman Mark Ericson approached PixelMEDIA’s cofounder and CEO Erik Dodier, for pro bono website consulting, design, development, and hosting services back in July of 2009.

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Will 2010 finally be the year that Internet Explorer 6 (IE6) loses enough market share that developers no longer need to support it?  I know I speak for not only myself but for many of my developer colleagues when I say, “one can hope!”  IE6 will be 9 years old this year and yet there is still a column for it on our QA checklist.   Windows has come out with two newer (and better) browsers within the last 9 years that we also support; yet developers typically code for the most recent version of Firefox, Chrome, Safari and Opera.  So why do we need to support a version of IE that in today’s technology space is equivalent to a fossil? (Read More…)

Spammers are pretty clever. Wait, scratch that. Spammers are extremely clever – and becoming more-so every day. Their deviant techniques constantly evolve and for anyone that runs a website, keeping up with preventive maintenance is an ongoing challenge.

In the past, keeping spam off your blog was comparatively easy. Basically, you would block, erase or refuse any comment that provoked the user to buy Viagra, or click on adult links. As long as you monitored the comments, you would be OK.

Now, not so much. Modern spammers have taken it up a notch, and their “junk mail” is getting past a lot of moderators.

Spam will never go away, but there are a few things you can learn that will help you better deal with it. (Read More…)