For any business no matter what the size, it is always important to know your marketing effectiveness. Google Analytics is a system many businesses use to give insights into their website traffic so they can better strengthen their marketing efforts and have a higher converting website.

The consumer is a key component in every business so the more you know about them the better. Analytics help you monitor and gain more information about them through:

1. Traffic — How many people visit your site every day? What links/sites do they come from? Where around the world are they located? Is the traffic consistent? What keywords led them to your site?
2. Demographics— Who are the people coming to your site? Are they buying your services/ products? Are they new or returning customers? How did they view your site?
3. Behavior— What pages do they view? What is there average time on your site? Did they find the information they were looking for?

We will break down all of these individually in the next few posts, along with a guide on how to best use Google Analytics for your business.

A Content Management System, also known as a CMS, is becoming a very popular piece of software to install with your website. The most common examples include Joomla, Drupal, Expression Engine and Wordpress. There are a lot of benefits and reasons why you should have your website with a CMS but I want to share with you the top three.

1. Change content without knowing code— This is by far the best and most useful benefit because it makes it possible for anyone in the company to edit the content without having to go into the code. It is similar to updating and editing a Word document and although the interface will change depending on what system you use, the functionality will be the same.
2. Helps with SEO— Sites that change and update their content on a regular basis give the appearance of their business being more active. Fresh content also helps with SEO as well because the search engines give higher emphasis to new content. Plus it never hurts to keep all your customers in the loop about new products and news.
3. Immediate changes— Another huge benefit is seeing your changes immediately. So let’s say you see a spelling error or a piece of information changed, you can go into your administrative area and make changes that take effect immediately on your site. This rules out having to get in touch with your developer and waiting a few days, which is always good for both parties involved.

Best of all you can’t even tell if a site has a CMS or not. The website can still be beautifully designed and editable!

As technology and innovation increase, so do the different capabilities in website design. As with any industry though, just because you can do it doesn’t mean you should do it!  There is always the temptation to add as many cool new techniques to your website, but editing and using only the most beneficial to your industry is always the best option.

Below is a list of five of my top pet peeves in websites from a designer’s point of view. Please keep in mind that these are just my personal opinions and are in no way things you should never use; just make sure you have a reason to use them.

1. All-flash websites — When you use flash it eliminates people viewing your site from a mobile device or browser that blocks certain content. Also depending on load time, people could leave your site being frustrated with the length of time it takes for your site to load. There was a time when flash was a big part of the web design community but it is being faded out more and more with new programming languages and techniques.
2. Enter pages— It can be hard sometimes to even get people to your website in general. Why then would you want them to have to choose to enter your site again from a landing page? Its like you are saying, “Are you really sure you want to see this site?”
3. Resizing the browser window— One of the challenges of web design is to get a website to look correctly on browsers of all sizes. I have obviously put my browser window to the correct size that I want on my screen, so when a website resizes it to work best with their site, I get annoyed and I’m just going to resize it back.
4. Videos and music that auto play— I may have my volume on my computer turned up to hear my email alerts or have headphones on. So when I am unsuspecting of the noise from your site and it happens, I won’t try and pause it but instead just quickly exit out of the page to get it to stop. Why not let people decide if they want to listen to your video/music instead of forcing them to? Unless you are a musician you do not need music on your site.
5. Newsletter pop-ups— Having newsletter pop-ups on your site increases the amount of people who sign up for your newsletter. Having it pop-up on every page though will only annoy people. When researching a pop up to apply to your site, make sure you have the ability to control how often a viewer sees it.

What are some of your pet peeves in web design?

Trends are showing that users are shifting how they access the web, moving away from the desktop and quickly toward mobile.

Interactive Program Manager Jen Largent shared her ultimate takeaway after attending SXSW and An Event Apart on this subject.  She outlines key assumptions in how web experiences have been created up to now:

We have assumed that users:

• Are in a stationary location (probably indoors).
• View the web on a desktop or laptop computer.
• Have a generous amount of screen real estate.
• Have a dedicated power supply and network connection.

Now contrast these thoughts to some truly startling statistics *:

• In Q4 of 2010, smartphone sales surpassed PC sales.
• Mobile phones are predicted to overtake PCs as the most common way people access the web by 2013—two short years away.
• The average smartphone user visits up to 24 websites a day. We’re not talking about apps, but actual websites accessed via mobile browsers.

Read the complete article The Web As We Know It Is Dead to learn more about why mobile first makes sense and how you can begin to employ a responsive web design  approach that responds to the user’s behavior and environment based on screen size, platform and orientation. View some examples of responsive web design.

*Bruce Lawson from Opera and Luke Wroblewski of A List Apart, Ideation + Design

Organize product information in the same way

Design is very much about the organization of information. It’s important that customers can quickly find the information they need and it’s presented in a thoughtful way. It’s like anticipating their questions.

If your catalog is really well organized and customers and dealers love it, it only makes sense to translate that experience to web navigation.

Check out how we turned the table of contents from this catalog directly into the main navigation on the Website.

Read More:
5 Ways to Integrate Your Company’s Website with Your Other Communications: Part 1
5 Ways to Integrate Your Company’s Website with Your Other Communications: Part 2
5 Ways to Integrate Your Company’s Website with Your Other Communications: Part 3
5 Ways to Integrate Your Company’s Website with Your Other Communications: Part 4