Archive for December, 2008

Reports Now Track RSS Feeds

Thursday, December 18th, 2008

You can now track RSS feeds (one for now) and see a weekly total of the number of posts over the past 6 months. The purpose is to give you the ability to see if spikes in conversions or promotion activity on your site is related to the number of blog posts, events, press releases, etc. running for that week. This gives you insight into the latest trends and helps you discover new ways to improve your marketing tactics.

RSS feeds can be added through the settings page. It can take a couple of hours before your feed is archived so it may take some time before the results show on your report page.

Design Updates, New Feature, and Bug Fixes

Tuesday, December 16th, 2008

Some minor bug updates and design fixes have been rolled out. There was a bug preventing admins from adding new users. This has been resolved. Some minor design changes were made to the forms and a new permission level called “analyst” was added to allow users to only browse the visitor history and report pages. This is great for the people you want to have report access but shouldn’t be able to make updates to your web content and promotions.

Please post any issues to the forum.

Web Site Conversion and Promotion Activity Reports

Thursday, December 11th, 2008

I’m excited to announce that Phase 1 of our report functionality is now available. With any reporting option there is a huge amount of data and complexity that can be displayed. Our goal was to keep the reporting function as simple as possible. One of the most frustrating things with web analytics applications is that they gather so much information that you have no idea where to begin when you look at the data. With this in mind, we created a very simple first pass at a reporting page that will deliver the kind of statistics you need to make quick business decisions.

Conversion Data

The first level of data shows the number of conversions you are receiving on your web site. To track conversions, simply add the standard Marketing for Mavens JavaScript code to the page you want to track conversions on, add that page URL into the page tracking section of the Marketing for Mavens application, and make sure the conversion box is checked. Now your page conversions will show on the report page.

The second level of data is click-through data for each promotion in your account. You can see, per week, which promotions are receiving the highest level of activity allowing you to quickly assess what promotions should be removed or redesigned to improve the response rates.

conversion and promotion activity graph

All of this information has been combined into one chart at the top of the report page so you can quickly spot the peaks and see how each page or promotion is tracking over time. Additional report functionality will be added over the next couple of weeks.

Right now, the next phase is scheduled to include RSS tracking. This will allow you to track blog posts, event data, or any other RSS related activity to see if the spikes in conversions and promotion activity match with the spikes in the events and content publishing activities that you’re doing on a weekly basis. The reporting page will remain fluid for now. Nothing is written in stone so please provide your feedback. It’s the only way to ensure that we can deliver the best report functionality that you need.

Information Architecture: Helping People Understand the Importance of IA

Wednesday, December 3rd, 2008

Information architecture (IA) is extremely important when creating a new site or redesigning an existing one. The problem is that many people don’t understand the importance of this key step.

SEO: What Are You Doing With the Traffic That Comes to Your Site?

Tuesday, December 2nd, 2008

It’s a tough economy for most companies. Layoffs and budget cuts are happening everywhere and companies are being forced to do more with less. Web Marketing has picked up as the web is a cheaper way to reach customers by providing a higher return on your investment. SEO, in particular, has become an even hotter topic as the focus turns towards “free” and “low cost” ways to promote a company and drive traffic. However, driving traffic is only part of the equation. It’s what you do with this traffic once people get to your site that really matters.

At Marketing for Mavens, we’ve worked hard over the past year to deliver a product that helps you do more with less while also providing a better user experience for the people visiting your web site. If your traffic was to remain the same for the next year, our service will help you make the most of that traffic, helping you drive more leads than ever before.

Marketing for Mavens matches your promotions and offers to each individual visitor based on the pages they view on your web site. This allows you to target your content more effectively while providing a better user experience. This is an automated process. You provide the content and Marketing for Mavens will match it to your visitors. It’s simple to setup and you can be testing the effectiveness of our service in a matter of minutes.

We are currently offering a free beta program that is running through the next few months. Once the beta ends (targeting March 09), the service will continue to be available for free with some limitations. Let us help you make the most of your marketing budget and see how matching your promotions to your visitors can more effectively help you turn visitors and happy customers.