Great evening out tonight! Nice to see former clients, colleagues and potential customers :-) Alex of Public Insite gave a great overview of a project they did about a site promoting healthy lunch ideas…
Public Insite sponsored the event including 2 drinks per person and some munchies - very kind Alex!

See photos: http://picasaweb.google.com/darlenemoore/WAW or on Facebook - the photos are open to all.

I think this is the first ever Web Analytics Wednesday put on in Ottawa! There is an unofficial competition to see if we can get more people to turn up than Santa Barbara can!

We are meeting in the Snug Pub room at the Preston St. Heart & Crown (corner of Preston and Aberdeen). Alex Langshur of PublicInsite will present a short case study on tracking and analyzing a web-based social marketing initiative, followed by discussion and appetizers.

Come meet your colleagues in the Ottawa & Gatineau web analytics / site optimization community and let everyone know you are attending by registering (for free) at http://www.webanalyticsdemystified.com.

See you there!

Follow Web Analytics Wednesday Conversations on Twitter…

I am going to run a series of posts about optimizing your PPC Campaigns - getting a bigger bang for your buck. They may not be in order so pick and choose your reading!

At some point in recent history, Google AdWords has allowed the visual separation of your AdGroup by Google Search Engine, Google Partners and Content Network - in the past you could only see Google and Partners combined and then the content network.

By separating these out, you can identify for example that you are not getting as many conversions from the partner network and therefore may decide not to include this network in your bidding strategy.

Google has come a very long way - there was a day not too long ago where you could not control your bid for the content network separate from the Google Search Network. Now if they would just allow us to control bids separately for the Partner Network, I’ll be happy.

I’ll post screenshots in the next day or two!

As far as I know, the latest Common Look and Feel Guidelines must be implemented by December of this year - that is 2 months away.
Recently, CRTC (Canada Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission) launched a National Do Not Call List for Canadian’s. Today I Googled
“Canada’s do not call list” and had trouble finding the official website where I could put my number on this list. My bad - CRTC has called it the National Do Not Call List - not Canada’s Do Not Call List - very similar to the US National Do Not Call Registry. *argh* The list applies to Canada only therefore I believe it should have the word Canada in the name of the list. American’s never put America or USA in the name of anything so we can expect that but Canadians think differently and this should be reflected in names of organizations, lists, etc. that are maintained by our government.
My next pet peeve is that this (likely new) website does not yet conform to CLF 2.0 which is due to be implemented by Dec 2008 - so did they launch a new website with a plan to revamp it within 2 months? I checked the CRTC home page and I see by the lack of the maple leaf in the header that the entire CRTC has not yet undergone CLF 2.0 so it makes sense that the Do Not Call List lacks the new appearance as well.
Last beef. I searched for Canada’s Do Not Call List and had to hunt to find what I was looking for - after major newspapers, Wikipedia, and a CRTC press release from 2006. Part of launching a new website should be an SEO strategy to ensure visibility in search engines for a variety of phrases that Canadians might use when they desire to add their name to this list.
Perhaps between Jan and Dec when many government departments are eager to use up their budget we will see some increased visibility of this page in the search engines?
…[/rant]

Get more from Google Analytics by tomorrow morning by following some great configuration ideas posted by Highland Business Research

1. Set up your goals
2. Set up on-site search
3. Creating multiple profiles of the same site
4. Define Filters
5. If you’re selling anything at all, switch the e-commerce tracking on

If you would like assistance setting up your Google Analytics account or perhaps an audit of your data to get an understanding of how you are doing, contact us for a quote!