Conversion Matters

It really fucks up the writing editor.  I wondered what was going on just now…

I’m off to Europe for a month next week, and consequently I’ve been looking for travel insurance and it’s really the first time I’ve had to look for insurance - Aside from student insurance for uni!I figured it would be pretty pointless searching for ‘cheap travel insurance’ or something similar as all I’d get would be a load of hyper-optimised crap.Consequently I thought I’d give the aggregators a shot. I tried MoneySuperMarket, confused and something called SquareMouth.

SquareMouth

SquareMouth, weird name by the way, where who I looked at first. It was super quick getting my quote but they were ridiculously expensive? One was £307.80 ?!?! That’s almost as much as my month long interrail ticket!

So they ruled themselves out instantly.

The site reminded me of an OS Commerce site or something too, maybe a directory, I’m not entirely sure but it feels pretty dated.

Confused

I was pretty annoyed with the confused website.

Firstly, the quote form was in a popup. How unnecessary is that? I’ve got about 50 tabs open. I LIKE having it all in one window.

They also insisted that I had to give them my email address, “no we’re not spammers, honest gov”. Yeh so I’ll be expecting lots of ‘reminders’ about their ‘great offers’ and other crap.

The email thing was particularly annoying as the other sites I looked at didn’t ask for my address.

Their tab indexing was all over the place! Yeh so, maybe you should try tabbing through your quote forms next time you change the order of the questions…

Some people have a phobia of using the mouse - it’s trackpad at most here…

MoneySuperMarket

Onto the most offensive site but also the one, ironically I’m likely to get my travel insurance from.They have the most god-awful quote button I’ve ever seen. Did they get a 3 year old chipmunk in on work experience week? I could have puked a better button myself. It’s like < blink >BUY OUR QUOTE< /blink > but worse.

Check it out:

These pictures don’t actually do the badness enough justice, I can assure when it’s flashing every half a second it’s the worst eye sore.

I can’t believe that such a massive, successful(?) company can employ designers/project managers who think that kind of button is decent and is going to help increase conversions.

What the fuck were they thinking? Have they just come back from 1999?! They might as well add a background .wav file or something too..

All things said and done though, their quotes were by far the cheapest and they’ll probably be getting my business.

Inspired by a post over here I present 500 keywords people have used to find this site for your general amusement and amazement!

adam taylor
setting up a blog
conversation matters
harry potter porn
adding google analytics tracking to 1shoppingcart
the big social media marketing myth
1shoppingcart google analytics
google analytics tutorial
conversion matters
google ecommerce
setting up google analytics
facebook dying
google analytics 1shoppingcart
google analytics ecommerce tracking
tesco compare
checkout conversion rates
google ecommerce tracking
seo trends
tesco compare advert
google analytics utm:t
harrypotterxxx
harrypotterxxx.com
adam taylor facebook
beginners guide to making money online
facebook is dying
google analytics howto
http://www.shepetivka.org.ua
is facebook dying
setting up blog
starting a search engine
harry potter porn”"
analytics _udn site
exclude social media filter
google analytics e-commerce tutorial
google analytics ecommerce
google analytics ecommerce tutorial
google e-commerce tracking
relative vs absolute links
tesco price comparison advert
adam taylor”"
checkout conversion rate
(more…)

Sorry I haven’t posted in a while, feel like saving myself until I have something unique to say, anyway I need a job in July so I thought I’d pimp myself out on my blog for a start.

So briefly:

I spent a year as a ‘Junior Web Developer’ at a UK search conversion agency in London, where I was taught Perl, MySQL, Linux etc.

I’m currently a first year undergraduate student at the University of Durham studying Computer Science where we’re being taught Java, SQL, computer systems and lots of maths.

I’m also interested in analytics, blogging, social media and search engine optimisation.

I can work in either London, Newcaslte/Durham or around the Bath area.

I’m not hugely hopefully about getting a decent job just for a month (especially just through my blog) but we’ll see. It can only be for July because I’m at university until the end of June and then I’m going to go interrailing around Europe in August.

If anyone wants anymore information just drop me an email using the contact form.

A few weeks ago I received an email asking if I wanted to review a new internet marketing product, The 26 Week Internet Marketing Plan [aff link] and I figured I may as well.

Essentially the 26 Week Internet Marketing Plan is an informational product designed to teach a beginner about internet marketing. It covers a wide variety of topics and is quite a comprehensive package.

It was created by the people at Purple Internet Marketing a British internet marketing company.

What’s included in the 26 Week Internet Marketing Plan?

In the box you get four workbooks, four DVDs, eight CDs, a poster and a tshirt.

What does the 26 Week Internet Marketing Plan cover?

The 26 Week Internet Marketing Plan is broken down into four main phases:

1. Website Structure - this covers the planning and creating of your website: keyword research, site architecture etc
2. Automation & Launch - this is about blogging, building email lists, and using press releases and pay per click to market the launch of your website/product.
3. Broaden Your Base - this phase is pretty much all about link building: directories, forums, articles etc. Pretty standard stuff.
4. Broaden Your Horizon - the focus in this phase is social media, widgets and other marketing techniques.

Is the 26 Week Internet Marketing Plan any good?

In a word: yes. The DVDs are essentially a video of a training seminar where David Bain is teaching a group of business men and women about internet marketing. It is slickly produced. There are no wobbly cameras or dodgy audio in the 26 Week Internet Marketing Plan and it covers a lot of topics.

The target audience will be absolute beginners to online marketing as it is all fairly straight forward stuff that you could easily learn from blogs and forums but it’s convenient to have it all in one easily accessible format.

The workbooks are transcripts of the DVD with space for writing notes. Which is nice for reinforcing what you’ve watched on the DVD.

There were a few things I thought were a bit odd about it, for example, there is quite a long section about wordpress and blogging which goes as specific as to discus plugins yet fails to mention plugins I see as being essential, like the All-In-One SEO Pack. Also the whole thing felt not very cutting edge, information wise. It seems to be all the same things that have been said over and over: create great content, submit to some directories, write some articles, start a blog, participate in forums social media…. etc etc but I guess you could argue not much has changed?

Summary

If you’re new to internet marketing and want a convenient, easily accessible introduction to the field you could do far worse than purchase the 26 Week Internet Marketing Plan [aff link], which I should mention is retailing for £399, however, if you already have an idea about internet marketing and are reading some of the top blogs then you’ll be fine without it.

I may have suggested you should consider Aaron Wall’s SEO Book but he has recently changed his business model and is no longer offering the ebook.

The 26 Week Internet Marketing Plan probably fills a void in the market, not replacing SEO Book, but offering an alternative, which, money-wise, is probably more viable than something like Internet Marketing Ninjas (although they’re all slightly different products).

Photo Credit.

Every other day there is a post about the top 10 webmaster/SEO/webdeveloper [insert person here] toolbars/addons etc. that people use and it does, admittedly, get a bit boring. However, I thought I’d quickly share with you what I have and why because I actually find them rather useful.

Firefox Addons I couldn’t live without!

I have a few addons which I don’t really use but here are the ones that are actually useful:

• Web Development
  • Web Developer Toolbar - this has soooo many features that it is an essential toolbar for any webmaster or geek interested in web development. Think it was one of the first firefox addons I installed.
  • Firebug - similar to the web developer toolbar this is another one that is really useful for web developers/designers, especially if you do a lot of JavaScript. It is a really powerful tool if you learn to use it properly.
  • Cookie Editor - again probably more useful for the web developers out there but never-the-less worthy of a mention. It allows you to quickly edit/delete cookies.
  • IE Tab - this is pretty simple. Allows you to render a page as internet explorer would without needing to leave firefox. Really, really useful.
  • Live HTTP Headers - allows you to see all the individual header requests, status codes etc. as you load a page. Very useful.
  • Colorzilla - so you’ve just setup a new template and are heading off to set up some blended adsense units but have no idea what the colour codes are on the site? Well this handy plugin has an eyedrop whatsit thing that allows you to get the code for any colour on a web page. Great time saver!
• SEO
  • Search Status - this is quite handy, shows PageRank, Alexa rank and Compete rank as well as allowing you to check a load of things about a page.
  • SEO Quake - turn this on to see lots of useful information about a domain/page when searching in Google etc.
  • User Agent Switcher - want to see what Googlebot sees? Then use this plugin to easily change your user agent.
• Social Media
  • Stumpleupon - a social site that’s fun, interesting and a great time waster!
  • Del.ico.us - don’t lose that interesting page; tag it with del.icio.us instead.
  • Social Media For Firefox - the concept behind this is great: shows you how many times a page has been dugg/stumbled/redd/del.icio.us’d. From my experience, doesn’t appear to be entirely accurate but it should still help with working out what to submit where.
  • Twitterfox - this makes keeping up and replying to tweets dead easy, they just popup while your browsing.
• Misc.
  • Down Them All - ever wanted to download all the .jpgs/.mp3s etc on a page quickly? This addon allows you to do just that. I think it supports regex too!

Web apps/sites I can’t live without!

• Facebook - yes some people don’t like it but it’s undoubtedly my most visited website (probably because I’m a student..)
• Google Reader - couldn’t live without this, it’s how I keep up to date on all blogs I read.
• Twitter - ok so I used to not see the point in Twitter but it’s actually really good for having short conversations, sharing links etc. You’re definitely missing out if you don’t use it.
• Stumbleupon and del.icio.us - you may have guessed from the addons above that I really like Stumbleupon and del.icio.us. I use Stumbleupon because I find it interesting and fun and I’m trying to build up more of a power user account there because I feel it’s the social sharing/bookmarking website I enjoy the most and one I actually waste an hour or so a day on! I use del.icio.us because it’s useful to have a central repository of all my bookmarks. I mostly just tag interesting blog posts that I’ve read but will probably forget about.

Applications I couldn’t live without!

There is only really one application I would say I can’t live without and that is: Launchy. What is it? Well it’s a free launcher application so basically you hit Alt-Space and a little box pops up and you start typing iTun.. and then you can load iTunes. Much quicker than the start menu/desktop etc. Massive time saver.

Actually that is a lie, I couldn’t live without MSN Messenger either. Everyone I know (pretty much) uses MSN Messenger. With a mix of messenger/facebook it pretty much negates the need for e-mail amongst my close friends.

I just purchased an ebook about domaining (affiliate link btw) on the recommendation of TheMadHat. I kind of see domaining as a dark art, something I don’t really know anything about and I’m hoping this book will change that.

I’m not really expecting to flip any domains for $xxxxx any time soon but I figured if I could at least purchase more valuable domains for my web properties I’m planning to build that in itself will be valuable knowledge.

Anyway, I’ll try and give a bit more of an in-depth review of it later when I’ve read some more. So far it seems pretty good though. Don’t get put off by the spammy sales page - you can get two chapters for free so you might as well try it out. It’s always good to attempt and diversify income streams.

So anyone who uses Facebook must be aware of the multitude of applications that you get ‘invited’ to try and most people find it a bit annoying.

One of the reasons a lot of people don’t like them is because by default they completely clutter up your profile page. However, often the applications are intriguing. And it’s possible to add an application without actually adding it to your profile or really letting anyone know you’ve added it.

The following has happened to me twice now. I can’t remember what the first application was but the second was ‘What kind of lingerie are you’. I thought to myself, hey I’m bored, this will waste two minutes. However, it wasn’t something I really wanted other people to know I was looking at ;] so I unticked all the boxes that would place it on my profile. I went through and answered all the questions and was ready to find out if I was a thong or a pair of boxers when I came to a page that says I must invite 20 people before I can view the results.

Hold on a minute.. is this allowed? It’s a very sneaky marketing trick. It’s a sure fire way to increase application exposure. I felt quite angered by this yesterday when I started writing this, though now most of that emotion has faded away but I still think it’s wrong of the application developers to force people into inviting people. There was literally no other way of seeing the results so I just deleted the application.

I think facebook need to look into this, application developers shouldn’t be allowed to force people into inviting their friends to use the application. I still don’t know what type of lingerie I am :[…

I just unsubscribed from techmeme, read/write web and mashable ‘cos they try to steal too much of my precious time. I figured I must be missing some of the more valuable posts just ‘cos I’m getting so clogged up with posts from those three sites alone.

I’m just not that good at using the Google reader interface and I don’t know all the tricks so I tend to use the little scrollable box on my igoogle homepage.

Already I’m seeing a bunch of quality articles I probably would have missed before.

Perhaps it’s time you take a quick glance through your feed list.

It’s nearly 2008, another year has passed, so it must be time to formulate some rough plans for the year ahead.

Personally I have two sets of goals: ‘real life’ goals and online goals.

Real Life Goals

My real life goals are pretty simple. I want to carry on having an awesome time at university. The first term has been so much fun and I’m pretty happy with how the works going!

Online Goals

My online goals are also pretty straightforward: make enough cash online to not have to worry about how much beer I’m drinking at uni!

How am I going to achieve this? Well so far I have my eye on two actionable projects:

• eBay affiliate sites
• Mini niche sites

Once I have say, 20-50, mini niche sites and 10-20 eBay sites then I think that will be a pretty solid foundation for further ventures. I just need to find the time to make the websites.

What will your goals be for 2008?

Are you going to be blogging harder, faster, stronger? I’m not. It’s not very profitable unless you’re really unique. I’ll probably only be blogging when I feel I have something genuinely interesting to say. I’m bored of seeing the same regurgitated shit across the blogosphere and I don’t feel the need to participate.

Are you going to try and build your online empire? That’s what I’m going to do. I want to build 50 sites that make me $3 a day. It’s going to be a lot easier than making the next facebook. Once I’ve got the cash from that then I’ll think about the next facebook ;).

Are you going to expand your business? I’ve been doing a little freelance analytics work, which I wouldn’t mind doing more of but I doubt I’ll have much time while I’m at uni.

Are you going to embrace social media? While I’m an avid user of facebook I’m certainly not a power user on any social networks and I would really like to be but at the moment I just don’t have the time. Everyone seems to think when you’re at uni you have loads of free time but I can tell you that with the partying, the studying and the sleeping to recover there’s not a lot of time left!

Some random stats from 2007

The majority of people who found this blog in the past year, were looking for harry potter porn (I should probably try changing that next year). After that it was google analytics tutorials.

I got the most referals from stumbleupon, more than Google. I’m quite happy with that.

The blog that sent me the most traffic was davidnaylor.co.uk. That’s just from commenting though.

My top content was the big social media marketing mix.

Right I’m bored now, have a good new year!