Website analytics…a marketers’ boon and holder of a wealth of information.  But what makes them good?  A whole lotta things and we will cover a few of them in depth in the paragraphs to come.  In the past we did a general overview of why website analytics were so important to businesses that had a presence online and we would like to offer a review of a free website analytics tracker that is both fun to use and very informative: GoingUp.com.

General Overview:

Snazzy colors, easy sign up, multiple implentation choices (types of code you insert into your site code to start tracking), and a great looking and informative UI, make this website analytics choice very promising.  The presentation of information is logically sound and almost all ajax driven, which makes for a nice look and feel overall.  Information tracked is extensive and coupled with graphs, charts and maps, the information is easy to comprehend and use.

Other things of notice:

• Multiple websites can be tracked with one free account
• Many choices regarding how info is displayed and what info is displayed
• Bulk Domain Analyzer (allows you to compare the Alexa page rank and Google page rank of multiple domains)
• SEO and Ranking tools (very helpful in determining SEO stats for comparison)

Information gathering:

GoingUp.com collects information regularly from the sites you include in your account.  They are rarely real-time though so make sure to account for how old the info is when doing comparisons to other marketing info.  Information gathered is pretty standard info: visitor count, visitor time on website, visitor locations (city), visitor operating system, visitor internet connection speed, etc.  This info is pretty standard for analytics and there is quite a bit of it. GoingUp.com uses tabs and menus to divide out the info which can be somewhat confusing.  Their information layout though is pretty easy to work with and that is what makes this anaytics option shine.

Website Performance:

So far GoingUp.com‘s service has not really affected my site load time.  The only complaint I have is that while the page is loading (for the first time) it has a small advertising link that shows up at the top of the page.  It is there for all of about 1/2 a second or so, depending on the connection, but I did notice it.

The Interface:

As mentioned before, the interface offers alot as far as ease of use and eye-candy are concerned.  With bright bold colors and many ajax affects, it looks great and is fun to use.  One thing to consider, it does take a zippy connection to get the full benefit of the analytics info GoingUp.com gives you.  This is mainly because of all of the ajax loads and the sheer amount of information loading at one time in the UI.  If you don’t have a fast internet connection, it can get downright annoying waiting for the GoingUp.com’s UI to load up.

Ending Thoughts

Overall, I likey.  The information presented is useful and presented in a way that makes it less boring to interact with.  With many options for changes in how information is displayed, you can bet that you will find a configuration to make you happy.  The perks are numerous with the SEO tools that are easy to use and pretty quick in their analysis of submitted pages, tips for improving SEO for sites that are registered in the system and the wealth of information that analytics offer in the first place.  The only thing I didn’t like about GoingUp.com was the load time of the backend UI with a less than optimal internet connection.  If you have a speedy connect and you want great analytics info at your fingertips, feel free to check out GoingUp.com.

Please feel free to leave your comments, suggestions, rants and raves by submitting a comment to this post.

Thank you and as always, for help with all of your web needs (websites, marketing, search engine optimization)  always think of Big Cloud Media.

Big Cloud Media

Posted in The Buzz on { February 15th, 2010 } ~ 4 Comments

Tagged with: analytics • Big Cloud Media • GoingUp.com • review • web analytics • web analytics review • website analytics

Hey folks. As your Arlington based Website Design / Marketing company, we want to make sure and keep you in the know with tips and things to watch out for so you can start improving your company presence online and your marketing efforts overall.

Today we will discuss tracking because if you can’t measure it, you can’t use it.  This is a simple concept that is often skipped over when going through the day to day activities of running a business and that is tracking information. I’m not talking about tracking sales and profits and all that. I am talking about tracking the events that cause your sales and revenue to go up. Now regardless of whether or not you have a service or product you are selling, you need to be sure to track the events that cause your sales so you can then capitalize on them and generate even more business.

So how do I track events?

There are several ways of tracking events online including website analytics and the built in analytics programs many email blasters and online advertising systems have built in. These numbers and figures are often over-looked but oh so important as they tell you what happened when and where specifically for those marketing efforts.  This info is crucial for determining whether or not that marketing effort (SEO, advertising online, directory listing, mass-emailer, etc.) is worth continuing.  Once you know what is effective, you can then try to duplicate that effectiveness across the board.

Tracking offline is often more difficult to keep up with but also just as important.  It could be as simple as asking the new clients that phone in where they found you or including it in the conversation when you meet with them.  For those selling products, you can include the “where did you find us?” question in the shopping cart sign up (online) or just ask the person buying from you and write it down.

Tracking does not need to be high-tech to be effective at giving you a bigger picture of where your marketing is working and where it isn’t.  Often times, asking your clients where they found you or how they heard of you can be great for tracking and conversational.

The point is folks, if you don’t track, you are losing out on bundles of info that you can use to get the edge upping the ROI from your marketing efforts.  Ultimately, if you can’t track it, you can’t tell how effective it is and then you end up with money spent ineffective marketing without the expected return.

I hope this post has been helpful for your business and I encourage you to start tracking as much as possible as soon as possible.  Here at Big Cloud Media we specialize in tracking.  We also specialize in installing tracking tools online, analyzing website analytics, comparing real-world numbers with online and offline marketing results and much more.  This is our passion so if you feel you don’t have the time to do it or the know how, we can help.  Once tracking is in place, you can then start seeing the benefits of it in the more effective marketing and the increased sales and client numbers that result from it.

Thanks for reading and contact us today if you would like to have a consultation about your online marketing and how to make it more effective.

Big Cloud Media

ps.  feel free to leave a comment about this topic or send it to someone you think will benefit.

Posted in The Big Cloud, The Buzz on { February 2nd, 2010 } ~ 3 Comments

Tagged with: analysis • analytics • consultation • effective • effectiveness • marketing • passion • ROI • specialize • tools • Tracking • web anlytics • website analytics • websites

How many times have you looked at your website and wondered just how effective it is?  Have you ever wondered where the people that visit are coming from or what search terms they used to get there?  If you have wondered these things, you are reading the right post because we are going to look into the awesome world of website analytics and go over some of the key info you can gather using them.

Why do analytics matter?

Through analyzing website analytics, you can gather info about the activities of your website visitors which you  can then compare to your marketing actions, giving you a big picture view of what is going on with your website and how effective it and your marketing is.  Combine this info with information that you collect regularly about your clients and you can start to understand why your visitors do what they do when they go to your website, be it buying, calling or leaving.  As in any situation, the more you know, the better the decisions you can make.

What can analytics track?

In this post, I will be talking about Google Analytics because that is what I use for me and my clients and that is what I am most familiar with.  Using Google Analytics you can track over time:

• Visitor Trends
• # of visits
• Referring websites (where they came from)
• Search terms used to find your site
• Location (down to the city) of visitors
• Visitor operationg systems and browsers
• Visitor connection speeds
• Popular pages
• Visitor time on the site, etc.

The list above is actually only a fraction of the information you collect on your visitors through analytics.  The beauty of it is that you can make changes to the site and compare the analytics results to the results before the changes were made, giving you a way to trend your visitor activities and really get a great idea of the effectiveness of those changes.

Where Can I Get Analytics?

Here is the best part of all of this, website analytics are free.  Go to Google.com/analytics, and sign up for them.  From there, copy and past the tracking code into the bottom of your website pages (right before your ending </body> tag), check your Google Analytics page to make sure it is working and you are good to go.  There are a slew of other website analytics companies that you can get your analytics from, so don’t think Google Analytics are the only ones.  I am most familiar with Google Analytics so that’s what I wrote on.

Analyzing the Analytics

If you need help analyzing your analytics, contact us right away because that’s one of the things we do and we do it well.  Call us at 210-373-7352 with any questions you have and we will be happy to help you.

I hope this has been informative and helpful to you.  If you don’t have analytics on your site, get them and start gathering the info.  Information is powerful and the more you have, the more effective your site and your company can be.

God bless.

Koji Flowers (Big Cloud Media)

Posted in The Big Cloud on { August 21st, 2009 } ~ 3 Comments

Tagged with: analytics • analyzing • Big Cloud Media • business • companies • effective • effectiveness • Google Analytics • Information • trends • visitor • visitors • website • websites

Notice something a little different? Well I hope so cuz we recently finished the revamp of our old website. It is not the final version because we are always looking to improve our work, but it will do for now. Through this new website we can do much more with the functionality and that was a key segment in the redesign.

For those of you who just loved the old one, you can still find it if you go to www.bigcloudmedia.com/oldsite.

Stay tuned for our post discussing the importance of analytics on your website.  They are super important so don’t miss it.

One last thing…if you have any questions regarding websites, marketing, web-marketing or anything under the sun, leave us a comment with your question in it and we will get you an answer out as soon as possible.

Thank you and God bless.

Koji Flowers (Big Cloud Media)

Posted in The Big Cloud on { August 21st, 2009 } ~ No Comments

Tagged with: analytics • Big Cloud Media • functionality • new • questions • redesign • website • websites