The people at SimplyMeasured have compiled a great list of free tools you can use to analyze your brand’s reach on popular social channels. Take a look, try ’em out, and bolster the data you’re already getting from SocialMention, Google Analytics, etc.
So apparently Yahoo! Mail thinks it needs to emulate Gmail. Not very bright. If Yahoo users wanted Gmail, they’d use Gmail and not Yahoo! Mail, right!? A couple days ago Yahoo decided to get rid of some of the most useful elements of their user interface, the tabbed calendar and email paradigm. I sure wish they’d roll it all back, especially for paid users of the service – we didn’t ask for these changes! I’ve already sent feedback to Yahoo… what do you think about Yahoo’s changes? (thanks for the rant bandwidth!)
This post I saw on LinkedIn caught my eye. The author argues that there’s too much clicking involved when performing common tasks using ‘modern’ CMS tools. I have to admit, I’ve often thought this myself, but when I think again about all the hard work expended when hand-coding websites in the past, maybe the clicking isn’t so bad? Of course it could be better, and I think that’s the point of the post. It’s about time to re-evaluate how we use (should use) our CMS tools and demand better interfaces.
Pinterest just brought it’s web analytics offering to the public this past week. It is aimed at business users of the platform. The idea is to help business owners understand what content is being pinned from the business site. There are a few hoops to jump through to get this analytics tool, but the price is right! The biggest items are switching to the newest ‘look’ in Pinterest’s interface and verifying ownership of the website for which you want to view data.
While I personally can either take or leave Facebook, I am interested in search, and a lot of folks are at least trying to monetize Facebook. So FB’s latest tweak makes for a little blog post for the new year! Anyway, this new update in Facebook, while currently in limited beta, is aimed at making its search functionality more powerful and easy to use. According to the article at the link above, the first four parameters are to be: People, Photos, Places and Interests. Apparently there is a waitlist to get this feature, so FB can monitor usage during the rollout. Wouldn’t you like to be privvy to those analytics! (Thanks go to my colleague Brian Reilly at RevD for his timely LinkedIn post about Graph Search!)
It’s a new term I heard yesterday. “Hate” Surfing is when a business owner surfs the web looking around to see what others have posted about her business, such as negative comments, etc. This is part of the bigger picture called Reputation Management, and it also helps businesses to constantly improve their operation and offerings.
New topics around Responsive Design such as Responsive Content and Responsive Content Thinking are emerging, and this ClickZ article handles these in a Feb. 1 post titled Responsive Design, Nimble Architecture. The bottom line is that a lot of upfront preparation and thought go into achieving a responsive site and good information architecture is essential. Web analytics can play an essential part of migrating an existing site into a new information architecture and responsive design. On the other hand, implementing a new design/architecture is a great time for a web analytics implementation checkup.
Most of my posts are probably ‘toolbox posts’ as it turns out. Ever wondered which of two sites load the fastest? A site called Which Loads Faster can help you win bets, or at least get a handle on what is going on when two web sites load in the browser. Use the site to perform a test between two sites in the splash screen when you first hit the site, or select your own matchups. Have fun learning!
IA people, it’s time to get excited! Mockingbird is a nominally priced web-based wireframing tool which works in your browser. It was created by San Francisco based Some Character.
This well laid-out writeup of mobile web experience delivery came through a LinkedIn discussion today. I enjoyed reading it, because it mentioned the Responsive Web Design concept, which I can’t seem to get enough of. The following methods are detailed, and pros and cons for each delivery method are listed:
Enjoy!
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