Ralph van der Pauw

We’re heading towards Christmas, which is (for most) people associated with joyful memories of snow, presents, family diners and eggnog. Unfortunately not for marketers, for us it’s all about the Q4 activities. Think of campaigns to reach End-of-Year targets, optimizations for Christmas shopping and finalizing the campaign plan for next year. While it’s a busy period I will try to offer some support in looking at digital marketing for 2014 as to what I expect will be the areas to focus …

At the Adobe Summit I attended an inspiring session by John Watton, who had wrapped his session on behavioral targeting around a story of Bob the local wine salesman. Bob is a retailer who is very acquainted with his customers, which enables him to offer them the best service. The story immediately spoke to me, because it is one of those local shops you just love to visit because you know you will end up leaving with great products recommended to you by someone who knows what you …

Analytics rock stars: Roll with the pros to rock your analysis:
The first breakout session at the EMEA Summit I attended was about tips and tricks for working with Adobe Analytics & Discover. Brent Dykes who led the session, started with breaking up the analytics profession into two different areas. There’s ‘Setup-land’ which focuses on translating business goals to analytics requirements, tagging the website and building reports. The other area he defined was ‘Action-land’, this is where you focus on the optimizing – which is usually the fun part, getting value from your insights.

So the session initially started with some really basic tips on using Sitecatalyst, …

Last week I wrote a dutch blogpost regarding the implementation of SEO in a project. I promised several English colleagues to make the content available in English on my own blog.

The decision has been made: a new website is being launched! The new website is either replacing an existing website or built from scratch for a new domain. Either way both projects share similarities during the process and have the same goal: Go Live. When the new website is finally operating bug-free, the serenity seems to be reinstated. Unfortunately not for long. As soon as the organization starts …

Not to long ago I wrote a short piece on the importance of a Google+ Marketing Strategy. We’ve seen Google trying to boost the use of their social network by using their Monopoly in search, forcing SEO’s to embrace Google+. Rich Snippets are another step in some-what forcing the social network upon search engine marketers. First off, Rich Snippets are definitely NOT new. Remember those yellow star-ratings behind search results? In this post I am addressing the authorship …

Yesterday I wrote about tracking error pages with Google Analytics _trackEvent. I suggested _trackEvent over _trackPageview for it has the ability to add different dimensions to the event and you wouldn’t want 404 pages to increase your pageview count. Tim (Leighton-Boyce) pointed out that a 404 is part of the visitor session, you should be able to track if people bounce on 404 or click through on suggested links or perhaps even use a search box. A very fair point and I stand corrected. I would definitely add the _trackPageview line to the GA tracking code.

Goal …

Error pages we know as 400, 401, 403, 404, 500 are a real pain for every internet user. Sometimes they can be entertaining (mint, Blue Fountain Media and William Csete) but usually they just look plain awful or don’t even exist. A good 404 page is essential and should always help your visitor get back on track in the website navigation. This can be done by adding suggested pages, site navigation, search boxes and other elemtents, but evidently users will always be bothered because the page never returns what they are looking for. From a Search Engine Optimization (SEO) …

Last Friday I watched a video by Rick Perreault on Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO). It’s something which many marketeers seamlessly forget, focussing mainly on the direct metrics without analyzing the actual process. CRO defines the process of converting a visitor on your website into an actual customer (CR campaign A= converted visitors campaign A/total visitors of campaign A). With techniques such as Google Analytics and A/B Testing you are able to acquire essential insights in how a visitor converts and how this process can be improved. Investing in your CRO can therefore be a very effective approach in increasing the campaign’s ROI.

Check out the video by Rick:

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