I am frequently asked about online tools for managing event registrations, so this time I dug up an analysis Mark wrote while evaluating which tool we would use here at Pure Visibility. It’s not an exhaustive list; rather, we focused on some of the most inexpensive event management services and the major points of differentiation between them.

Eventbrite
We chose Eventbrite because there is no charge for free events (like our Donuts & Search Engine Marketing) and they charge 2.5% of the ticket price for paid events with a maximum charge of $9.95. They recently implemented a survey feature which is convenient, and they also allow you to accept many types of payment methods. They allow a little bit of customization to the event page for your event and they offer many different ways to promote your events (feeds, buttons, etc.) They offer good reporting features, the ability to print name badges, and the ability to offer discounts.

Brown Paper Tickets
This is a free solution that allows you to set up a page on the Brown Paper Ticket site where you can post events and links to your site. You cannot actually sell tickets through the site; they use a 3rd party which charges the same fee as Eventbrite (2.5%). Eventbrite is more of an all in one solution whereas this site is more like a Craigslist for events.

RegOnline
RegOnline appears to be a good tool, but they charge no matter what type of event you are hosting (free or paid events.) $4.75 per registrant for events under 120 attendees, and $3.50 per registrant plus $150 for events with more than 120 attendees. There is also a charge to accept credit card payments. It appears that they offer more customization and support with registration forms/event webpage; they allow you to print name badges, and have some good reporting features. It has many of the same features as Eventbrite, but the price point made Eventbrite win out.

Briefly, What is Google AdWords

Google AdWords is a marketing program that gives advertisers the ability to place ads next to search engine results, and next to content relevant to your products and services on sites partnered with Google.  AdWords offers other advertising opportunities, but primarily this is the focus of the program.

The actual setup of an account entails bidding on keywords, circulating ads for those keywords, and paying an amount less than or equal to the amount of your bid when a visitor clicks on your ad.

Google AdWords Management : How The Costs Stack Up

AdWords management can seem pricey, and it is for local companies.  For small companies unaccustomed to budgeting much at all for advertising, the costs can be impractical.  But for those with high-value leads, with web-users actively searching for their product or service online, they should not be discouraged by the price of managing an account.  Costs associated with pay per click advertising are easy to control, and results are highly traceable. Tracking is such that a company can be highly certain, or 100% certain, that a contract or sale originated from AdWords advertising.  Often one or a few contracts is enough to cover the initial investment associated with experimenting with this type of advertising.  A highly acceptable cost considering the potential growth it can offer.  Large companies also have good incentive to advertise with Google AdWords if:

• They are worried about smaller companies cutting into their profits.

• They market with a heavy emphasis on generating sales and are interested in getting good returns (ROI) on their advertising costs.

• Want to establish a brand presence on the web.  Although a couple lines of text in the typical AdWords ad does not provide much opportunity to communicate your brand message, AdWords does bring visitors to your site where there is plenty of opportunity to provide a full brand experience.

To really see how the costs of AdWords management stack up, you need to start with a value calculation.

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I consider myself to be all about change (even before Barack Obama) and feel like if I don’t shake things up in my life every few months then things will get boring. So, you would think when I found out about the new AdWords interface that I would be one of the first on board, but I’m not. I can’t figure out exactly why I’ve resisted using the new interface, but I know part of the reason is because I’m so used to the old interface when I’m not working in the Desktop Editor. This week I finally buckled down and faced this change head on and decided to start using the new interface with a couple of my accounts, after all we are all going to be forced to use this new interface soon.

The new interface looks like the Desktop Editor in terms of navigation. There is a navigational tree along the left that allows you to quickly jump from ad group to ad group and campaign to campaign. In my opinion this is a big improvement over the old interface because the most time consuming thing was moving throughout a large account and waiting for pages to load. Anther big change in the new interface is the addition of graphs that look a lot like Google Analytics graphs. This should make it easier to identify trends in your AdWords accounts where with the old interface you had to either generate reports look at the change history or look at Analytics data to identify long term trends. I imagine these graphs could be very useful for monitoring accounts, but I haven’t found anything interesting yet. Another change that I like is that you can actually edit keywords, previously if you wanted to change a keyword’s matching or spelling you were forced to delete the term and add the changed term back to the account.

So you might think, wow there’s a bunch of new useful features, I should switch to the new interface right away, but not so fast. One of my biggest gripes is how much information is crammed into the new interface window. I have a fairly large monitor (1680×1050 resolution) and I noticed that I needed to have my Firefox window taking up most of the screen in order to see all the information within the new interface. So, I decided to set my screen resolution 1024×768 (which is what a lot of internet users have) and my hunch was correct that it is terrible to navigate throughout the new interface unless you like scrolling left and right as well as up and down. Another big issue I have is just moving around the new interface is choppy and overall pretty sloppy. The new interface is beta like most Google roll outs, but from what I hear they are switching to this new interface in the next few months, so I hope these issues are fixed before the launch. Maybe it’s because I’m using Firefox and on a Mac but even so I don’t think this is ready for prime-time. Overall it has some good new features, but I am not sold yet. Has anyone else used the new interface? I’m interested to know what other people think.

When we talk about how to build your online sales engine here at Pure Visibility, it’s common for us to use Google in our examples. That generates two common questions:

1. Does Pure Visibility work with other search engines?
2. How much share of the search market does Google really have?

Yes, we do work with all of the major search engines (Google, Yahoo! and MSN) as well as secondary players. It just so happens that Google holds the largest share of search, as well as the most comprehensive screening for agency participants, so you hear us talk about Google more often for both reasons. (It’s no secret we’re proud to be the only agency in the Midwest that holds combined certifications as a Google AdWords Company, Analytics Partner and Urchin Reseller!)

As far as market share goes, a recent USA Today article quotes a comScore study that finds Google is clearly the leader with “nearly 64% of the more than 14 billion US searches. Runner-up Yahoo had just a 20.5% share.”

And now you know the rest of the story.

Two months ago, Google Analytics Motion Charts were hot. Now, they’re not, at least if we trust the amount of traffic coming to this blog looking for information on the charts and the amount of new content being produced around this feature. Is this a natural consequence of time since the feature was released, or is there something about the Motion Charts that make them less-than-user friendly? Did Google possibly goof?

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I would like to point you to a favorite article on the topic of Facebook vs. LinkedIn, but after browsing a couple pages of Google results I’m here writing because there was a disappointing amount of industry-centric commentary. We’ve got A-List bloggers scorning one or both systems (hardly a “use case” or fair comparison for the average business person); pundits debating which network will succeed, and scenarios describing the use of these systems in getting (and unintentionally losing) jobs, etc.

While all of that analysis has its place, what do Facebook and LinkedIn offer to the average business person? Here’s my “elevator pitch” answer…

LinkedIn
If you’ve got a business card or a resume, you need to be on LinkedIn. It’s a tool for sharing professional recommendations, which means you belong here if you’re working on growing your business or your professional network. Period.

Facebook
If you want to get back in touch with your buddies from college and high school, join FaceBook. That’s what it was designed for, and what it still does best.

For a little more detail on both LinkedIn and Facebook, read on: Read More

What exactly IS the difference between Urchin and Google Analytics? From a technical perspective the list is pretty long, but the major differences are described here in this chart:

As a preliminary start, we hope this helps give you some sense of the differences in the two tools. If you want more information, just drop me a line and I can help go into greater detail with you!

As is often the case, when I fall in love with a product I’m not shy about recommending it! Lately, TweetDeck and Hootsuite are in my bag of commonly recommended tools, much to the puzzlement of Twitter friends who are curious about the advantage of using both. Mystery solved! Here’s why TweetDeck and Hootsuite are better together:

TweetDeck manages my Tweeps
Hootsuite manages my Tweeting

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Pure Visibility was well represented last week at the Internet User Experience 2009 conference. In addition to helping out behind the scenes, our Co-Founder and Visionary, Linda Girard, was a keynote speaker (“Bringing the Left Brain and Right Brain Together Online: Branding + Optimization”) and participated in a panel on Branding, Search Engine Optimization, and Usability.

The fifth year of the conference was bigger than ever. Attendance was up 50% – an impressive feat in the current economic climate! Beside the outstanding attendance this year, there were speakers from HFI, Adaptive Path, Organic, Enlighten, EA Games, UserCentric, Quicken Loans, Menlo Innovations, and a little-known company named Google. The talks were excellent and once again this conference has proven to be an excellent opportunity to learn about usability and online marketing.

Several weeks ago I had the pleasure of speaking on Web Analytics to Katherine Lawrence’s SI 422 – Evaluation of Systems and Services course at University of Michigan. I was very impressed by the course syllabus, and the interest level of the students in the specifics of web tracking and analysis. Here are some thought’s on what makes this class a good model for undergrad courses in information science:
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