Came across this post today, its got some nice tips to understand and also calculate an estimate of people coming to your site.
http://www.unilyzer.com/google-analytics-keyword-not-provided/
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The Adeo Group Blog
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Google Analytics Keyword: (Not Provided)
Friday, July 13th, 2012European Cookie Law, will your site pass the test?
Wednesday, March 7th, 2012So the countdown is on and on 26th May 2012 all UK websites must offer users opt-in consent tools to allow cookies that pass information about your browsing activities to 3rd parties.
What does this mean for your website?
Well it’s been a very grey area and getting the correct answer as to what will make your site legal or not has been tough.
We still think it’s not entirely clear, but what we do know is that 3rd party cookies must be declared, so if you use the likes of Google analytics, Facebook plugins, Twitter plugins, any analytics programs or anything else out with your site then you need to let your visitor know what you are using.
Then you need to offer them the option to accept these or reject them.
This is going to bring a whole host of issues and the following will explain the process of what could happen.
The user arrives at your site and is presented with a message, possibly at the top of the screen like this site
http://www.ico.gov.uk/for_organisations/privacy_and_electronic_communications/the_guide/cookies.aspx
so you have two options here.
- Do Nothing or
- Click Accept
So choosing option A will stop any 3rd party cookies running, this means if you use analytics for example to track users, this won’t work and the figures will be skewed essentially meaning you won’t have that valuable data you rely on to make decisions about your website.
Choosing B, well this will let things happen in the normal way, but you will notice that people can select cookies for individual elements, so they may say yes to Facebook, but no to analytics.
The consequences could be high.
The Information Commissioners Office (ICO) is the body responsible for enforcing the UK law, with powers to fine website owners up to £500,000 for serious breaches in the law.
I think the next year is going to prove very interesting to see how the larger ecommerce sites battle this.
There are companies out there offering solutions to make your site compliant, but that’s only one element, you could still miss out on that valuable analytics data.
I’d say one of the most important elements in any website is being able to track visitors and what they do while on your site. Fortunately Adeo have integrated an analytics platform that doesn’t include 3rd party cookies and this means we don’t have to ask for permission, so our own analytics won’t be skewed.
If you would like any more info, feel free to contact us as we will be integrating this in to our CMS and Ecommerce platforms.
The Future for Fashion Retail
Tuesday, February 28th, 2012If you aren’t already selling online you are missing out on a huge opportunity to reach a wider audience, but also an audience that is shopping more and more from a computer.
Retail clothes stores are reporting their worst performance in three years and the balance of 2% of these retailers reported that sales were lower than the previous year.
However it’s not all doom and gloom and as you will find internet retailers are bucking the trend with sales through their ecommerce stores.
There is a growing trend that consumers are buying a lot more of what they need on a day to day basis rather than big ticket purchases.
Disposable incomes are little under pressure and if you aren’t looking at ways to market your business online then you could be left behind.
Do you currently have a website or does your website meet the challenges of today’s online shopping?
Migrating your site to a new Ecommerce Platform
Friday, January 28th, 2011I’ve been asked by a number of clients who already have a trading website how best to tackle the migration to our RedBack Ecommerce platform so thought id write up some tips for a successful migration which pretty much applies to any migration.
It’s a pretty big decision to move on to a new platform and generally means the company has outgrown their current platform. For start-up businesses you tend to opt for a cheaper platform and then as the site grows you eventually have to move on to something that’s more suitable.
Hopefully the next few tips will help and aid your migration process.
1. Domain Name Problems
One of the main problems I come up against is transferring the domain or pointing the domain to a new server. In many cases the client doesn’t control the domain themselves and they generally have to involve other people to make this happen. So firstly you need to make sure you have control of the domain or if you don’t have then start planning to have this brought under your control.
A useful tool for this is http://whois.domaintools.com/
You can search your domain, find out what registrar hosts your domain and who owns the domain.
2. SSL Certificates
If your current site uses an SSL certificate then you will have to have this moved to the new server. Generally most SSL vendors will have instructions how to carry this out and your web developer should have a pretty good idea.
You can check if your site uses an SSL certificate by going to https://domainname
In the address bar on IE for example it has a padlock; click the padlock to find out if there is a certificate in your domains name, if not then this may be a shared certificate if the web server has any at all.
3. Organic Search Listings
So probably one of the biggest concerns is what about my organic listings, generally most existing successful sites will have good organic listings. I would say this is one of the most important things to consider. Generally the new site that’s being created will have different url’s for products, categories etc if you can have the same then that’s great, but generally that doesn’t happen so time must be spent mapping the old url’s to the new ones which improves the chances of your site losing any ranking at all. The handy 301 redirect will sort this out for you and let Google etc know where the new url’s are.
below shows how this may be laid out
redirect 301 www.domain.com/oldurl.html - - www.domain.com/newurl.html
This is handled different ways between apache servers and windows servers but if you get an excel sheet or something similar and have one column for old url’s and one for new then your new web developer should be able sort this.
4. Moving Data
Data is hugely important and you have to go out your way to get as much data transferred over to the new platform as possible, not only will this save a huge amount of time, but will also maintain order history etc which is invaluable information.
The main things you need to consider here is how easy is it to access the database on your existing site and then get an export of this in a suitable format to be imported in to your new system. Generally if you can export in a CSV format then your new developers should be able to create an import script and get this up and running on the new site.
If there is information that’s not required for the new platform then this could speed up the process of the build and also the costs may be kept down.
5. Email
Email is highly important so any loss on this service could be hugely detrimental. The fact of the matter is that moving your website shouldn’t really interfere with email unless email is hosted by the existing web company. If you are moving to a new web platform you have probably reached a size that pop3 email isn’t suitable and you should possibly be looking to a hosted exchange service, in house exchange server or what we recommend if you don’t require a huge amount of email functionality then Google apps is a great way to set up your email and very portable with a lot of good features.
If your web company hosts your email, it may be a good time to consider doing a move to another type of email hosting service and any good web company should have suggestions on this.
6. Activating the New Site
When you decide to go live on your new site, you need to allow some time. Even up to 48hrs in some cases, but over the years I have noticed that this has come down and sometimes the action can take effect pretty much immediately, but there is no guarantees of this so make sure you allow for this. Also it’s a good idea to put up a maintenance page on the old site so you don’t get orders on the old site from users who’s DNS hasn’t updated. We have also found launching a site on a Friday as a bad idea as generally the support team on at the weekend are reduced and you may find some minor issues after the new site going live.
7. Full Testing
I can’t stress how important this is, you have to try come up with every imaginable combination of ordering, returning, setting up a new account and testing new features. Usually a major fault may lie in cross browser testing, where it works fine in IE, but not in Firefox, so make sure all tests are completed before launching. Generally you won’t find everything but make sure you iron out all the major bugs.
8. New Features
Migrating to a new platform is a great time to implement some new features, its important to take note of your competitors and what they may have and listening to the needs of your customers who may have identified something that could make the site run smoother. However make sure these are planned out properly and that the developers understand exactly what’s required.
9. Don’t delete the old site
Its worth while keeping the old site running on the old server for a few weeks just in case there is data missing or you need to refer back to something. If you require longer don’t be worried about keeping it on longer until you are completely happy the new site is running correctly.
Hopefully some of these tips should help with a smooth transition to your new platform.
Ecommerce Guide for SME
Tuesday, November 23rd, 2010I came across this article on http://www.internet.com/, its written by ATG who like ourselves provide ecommerce software. Really quite interesting if you are considering going online or already are online and looking on improving your web presence.
The PDF is only 5 pages, quick to the point and covers some very useful tips to consider when looking at your online presence.
ATG have a large client list and some large brands, however looking at their platform there are a number of improvements that could be carried out to the architecture to make it more SEO friendly. I suppose for many of their sites the search engine friendliness of their cart doesn’t matter so much as they are big brands that don’t require much SEO as the brand really drives the traffic.
The development that went in to Adeo’s RedBack ecommerce software was extensive as we wanted to make this one of the most indexable platforms around the globe and the feedback is good from top UK SEO Companies.
Google Search with Website Preview
Monday, November 22nd, 2010So it’s always important to have a well designed website with the key being to convert visitors to buyers, but up until now when a user did a search on Google they didn’t know exactly what the site looked like until clicking on the link and going to the site.
Well that was up until now…. With Google’s ever changing adaptations to make our searches more accurate and quicker to find exactly what we are looking for and find a site that we like and are confident to browse on, this new supplement that allows you to preview pages before clicking is a welcome addition in my opinion.
It used to be your sites listing position, title and page description that pulled the users to make that all important click to your website, but it is becoming ever more apparent that well designed pages will have a huge impact in conversion of click through in browsers Google search.
Even more interesting is the fact that when lower level pages within your site are displayed in search results and they have a preview of the page this could really convert more click through as the pages will have a higher relevance on the search term.
What needs to be measured more is how often these site previews are updated, can we force an update or is it when the page is next crawled. Ill keep you all posted on further findings.
Ecommerce expo 2010
Wednesday, October 20th, 2010
IAd, Ipad and Iphone could this be competition to Google Advertising
Tuesday, April 13th, 2010Apple has launched the new IAd platform to compete directly with Google for advertising revenue.
The launch of the forthcoming 4.0 operating system for the Apple Iphone and Ipad could prove very interesting with the introduction of IAd.
How do we see this effecting Google, can it have any sort of major impact to the search giant.
This could open a whole host of new ways to advertise products and websites and helps many application developers who make their living from the iPhone and iPad, providing them with a new revenue stream.
At the moment most people search via their desktop, laptops etc, but the smartphone market and mobile search is ever increasing and with the advancements in technology this is going to increase with people’s busy lives and the amount of time spent travelling around the place and less in the home.
Mobile search and advertising is definitely one to keep our eye on.
Apple also revealed stronger-than-expected demand for the iPad tablet computer, with 450,000 units sold since its US release on Saturday, April 3.
The figures have impressed analysts, many of whom expect five million units to be sold by the year’s end.
Apple chief executive Steve Jobs said: “We’re making them as fast as we can.
“Our ramp is going well, but evidently we can’t quite make enough of them yet so we’re going to have to try harder.”
We are all eager for its UK release and keen to see what impact this has on the market.