Wouldn’t it be nice not to have sticky notes with important passwords scribbled on them lying by your desk or hanging on your monitor in plain sight? Wouldn’t it be convenient to have access to your documents or reports or messages from clients without having to traverse through your infinitely long email folders?

Similarly, wouldn’t it be fantastic to be able to work from your office, your comfy couch at home, or a nearby coffee shop, or better yet, your daughter’s ballet class?

The Good Old Days

Coming from an academic background, I was used to having to carry around passwords in a KeePass folder or remembering to upload the latest version of the MS Project folder if I needed to work from home. Or, uploading all working documents to the intranet before logging out for the day.

In the last few months I have been at Pure Visibility, my routines and processes have changed quite drastically. And, for the better, I must say.

Now: Pure Visibility Project Management

Even though it initially felt like several things to recall every time I did my project management tasks, now it is like second nature and I wonder if I know any other way at all! Messages from team members and clients are safely stored on Basecamp, a convenient tool that helps me sift through my emails and ensures that our team has one place to access message threads, reports, documents, milestones, or you name it, pertaining to client requests.

Do you have really long message threads with attachments that need to be distributed to your team as well as archived? No worries – use MailManagr, and it doesn’t mess up the file formats and the syntax is quite intuitive.

Our wiki, Socialtext, is where we store our internal procedures, policies, operations information, and everything else useful to us in our daily work. Having a wiki keeps everything centrally located and it’s very easy to add, edit, and delete information; and, to train new team members!

Passwords, as we all know, are not only sensitive data but ever-changing to ensure the continued security of systems. The latter making it quite taxing for teams to keep in sync with the IT folks, and may result in major inconveniences at off-site meetings if a system is not available as soon as the password is changed. LastPass to the rescue – not only can you access this without having to carry a jump-drive with KeePass or other local programs, now, we can use the cloud to distribute it on the fly.

Need to log billable time on a daily basis, Harvest, an online time tracking and invoicing system helps us switch from projects/tasks with an easy to use interface and multiple customizable options. Indeed, creating projects and sub-projects along with discipline tasks is a breeze, thus helping us keep this application in sync with our internal Basecamp and Wiki.

Meeting your clients in person at their office or stepping out for a quick coffee to catch up with your team? You know these expenses add up and at the end of the month filling out expense reports to get reimbursed can be cumbersome, and quite frankly, off-putting. Well, it’s not if you have Expensify, this nifty program is available online bundled with a convenient app for smartphones.

Click a photo of the receipt and upload it using your phone, or scan and upload receipts to the website. It’s even conveniently linked up to our company credit cards and assembles our credit charges, too. Our set-up is quite fancy, in that managers can approve team members’ expenses online as well. Better yet, it will send reminders to managers for approvals to ensure we meet our company deadlines. No more excuses to submit or approve expense reports now, is there?

To acquaint myself with our clients, I used the Wiki, Basecamp, project documentation, and reports but another invaluable resource is our CRM, Salesforce.com. It gives me on-the-fly access to ever-changing client details like contact information, titles, and accounts information. And, it is a great way to log information on our prospective clients as well, such as emails, phone calls, and sales details. So, the communication thread is easily available and sorted to help any (new) team member catch up at any time during the sales cycle.

Google Documents is a wonderful collaborative tool that we use not only internally to share documents or spreadsheets by multiple team members; but it has become a lifesaver for client collaboration tasks as well. Whether sharing budget forecasts, time planning, tasks distribution, and even for social purposes like emergency phone numbers to go out for a cup of coffee!

Another neat program I’m familiar with these days is WebEx, which is an online web conferencing solution. Ideally, we’d love to be able to meet in person every time but we all know how difficult that can be, however with Webex’s phone and chat options as well as the ability to share screens among participants, we are a step closer to achieving the face-to-face time.

All I can say is: at the end of the day, I don’t carry a bunch of paper documents; or a special drive with passwords; or slips of paper with my daily time sheet; or wads of receipts to submit my expenses. I just pack up my laptop and I am off to continue work wherever I please.

Well, almost anywhere I please, that is—as I sit precariously on this particular ledge balancing my laptop on one leg and looking for a wireless signal at my daughter’s dance studio! Nevertheless, I enjoy the convenience of the cloud for project management work, as well as the comfort of knowing I didn’t forget something important on my desk, or worse, somewhere else!

Ann Arbor is home to an annual conference, Internet User Experience, which covers web site design, graphics, branding, social media, and more. 2011 was another successful year for the conference and was well attended by a variety of user experience and marketing professionals.

Pure Visibility’s Michael Beasley served as master of ceremonies once again this year, and also presented a 5 minute talk during the Ignite session on “What Every UXer Needs to Know about SEO.”

What Every UXer Needs to Know about SEO

http://igniteshow.com/videos/what-every-uxer-needs-know-about-seo

This multi-disciplinary approach is typical of Pure Visibility, where we bring together experts from different fields to help our clients’ online marketing.

With Google’s bid-per-call feature in AdWords, you can now set separate max bids for clicks and calls. Many businesses benefit from customers calling their office or shop, for example if you own a local pizza joint or flower shop. Some people prefer to book a cruise over the phone, getting advice from the company’s operator.

Some businesses may even be willing to pay more for a phone call than a click. This post will give you an explanation of Google’s call extensions and their features, how to measure your phone calls, and how to bid on calls.

Displaying a phone number within your ads is recommended for most businesses that can effectively turn calls into sales. Here are just a few advantages to adding call extensions to your ads.

• Distinguishes your ad. Anything you can do to help your ad stick out is a positive.
• Makes it easier to contact you. If someone is searching for your phone number they can find it easier if it’s listed within your ad.
• Advanced call metrics. More data! Call metrics within AdWords gives you insight into your calls, including area code and call duration.

What Are Call Extensions and the Related Various Features?

You can add different features to your AdWords ads, which Google calls “ad extensions.” These include adding things like a Google Places listing or sitelinks to your ad.

Again, remember that adding any feature to your ad can help set it apart from others. To access these features, click the “Ad extensions” tab within the AdWords online interface. From there you can add call extensions.

There are several things to take note of when using call extensions. The following list of terms can become confusing if you don’t know what each means:

• Call extensions – Adds any phone number you choose to your ad.
• Google forwarding number – Select “Show a Google forwarding phone number on all eligible ads and devices” when setting up call extensions, to place a dynamic 800 number within your ad that Google uses to report data on your phone calls. If you do not select this option a phone number will only appear on “high end” mobile phones.
• Call metrics – The data which Google reports to you on your calls. Includes duration of call, area code, and other information.
• Click-to-call - This mobile-only feature allows users to call your phone number directly by clicking on your ad.

How to Measure the Effectiveness of Call Extensions

From within the Dimensions tab, pull down the View menu and select “Call details”. This report shows the data collected on each of your calls. The duration of the call and area code can give you great insight. Try downloading this report by clicking on the downward pointing arrow. Open the spreadsheet to analyze the data further.

You can also add phone details from the Column menu in the Campaigns tab. Data like number of phone calls and the average price-per-call can be viewed, down to the adgroup level.

Bid-per-calls

When call extensions were first introduced, all phone calls were charged $1. Google now allows you to bid separately on phone calls and clicks. Say Susie at your office has a very warm personality and does a great job of making sales over the phone.

A phone call may be worth more to you than a visit to your e-commerce site. Simply increase the bid on your phone calls. This can improve the position of your ad while still keeping the price-per-click the same.

As with any new feature within AdWords, it is important to test. So give call extensions a try but pay attention to the results. If sales increase, make sure to take Susie out for a nice cup of coffee!

• Interview customers
• Develop website personas
• Conduct a usability study on your website – watch how users interact
• Do keyword research for your industry – try out Google Insights, a free tool based on real world search history

In the spirit of autumn, Halloween and this weekend’s Thanksgiving holiday, the team at Pure Visibility took some time out to visit our local pumpkin patch at Wasem Farm. Donuts, cider and a few dozen pumpkins later, we had a great fall afternoon. Be sure to check out all of the photos on our Facebook page! From the PV Team to yours, have a wonderful holiday weekend!

Matt Cutts and the rest of the Mountain View Gang have been busy lately. While Google is constantly making changes to their search algorithm, over 500 a year, the last two weeks have seen a series of updates that greatly impact search results. Businesses need to keep tabs on Google’s changes in their ranking system in order to maintain an effective online marketing strategy. Here are some of the most important updates and what they mean for your business.

Freshness Update

Last summer Google completed their Caffeine update. It allowed Big G to index the web faster, giving more recent and relevant results. In early November, a similar update was made, placing even more importance on the “freshness” of content.

Say you’re looking for information on the Michigan Brewer’s Guild Winter Festival. Google will now place more emphasis on content relating to the upcoming festival instead of info from 2010 or 2009. Sports scores, breaking news, and other searches that are time sensitive, will now show up in search results within a matter of minutes.

Relevant, Original Content

Google is continuing to emphasize original content. Several of the recent updates relate to this. Snippets are the brief piece of content that Google displays under the link in the search results page. As Google continues to improve their “understanding of web page structure,” they will place more relevant snippets of actual content within search results. Less emphasis will be placed on headers and titles. This means the content of your latest blog post needs to be relevant, not just the title.

Another update is placing less emphasis on duplicate “boilerplate” anchor text. Say your internal link structure includes a dozen pages pointing to your blog post on “pineapple recipes.” If each link text is easy pineapple recipes, they will still only be counted as one “link vote.” This is to combat sites from gaining “link juice” simply by linking to one section of the site over and over.

Continuing with original content, Google loves the original source. Including tags like “rel=author” helps the friendly Google bot to tell what is firsthand content and what is being rehashed and reshared to generate traffic.

Take this blog post for example. While I am discussing content that has previously been published and linking to it, I am also providing amazing original insight into what it means for your business. When blogging, don’t just cut and paste from an original article. Provide added value and your own opinions or experience. Make it your own complimentary piece instead of a simple summary.

WARNING!

Matty C. does provide the following disclaimer to keep you from ruining your web team’s pre-holiday work schedule:

Before you go wild tuning your anchor text or thinking about your web presence for Icelandic users, please remember that this is only a sampling of the hundreds of changes we make to our search algorithms in a given year…

The takeaway is, and always should be, to create original and appealing content. Content is still King. You can never go wrong by providing valuable and popular content. Google’s latest updates make it even more important to have a dynamic, engaging, and updated web presence. So keep uploading those YouTube videos, writing new blog posts, and sharing everything on your new Google+ Page! Happy SEMing!

The knee-jerk answer to this is, “Yes, people are looking for everything online.” To an extent this is a pretty fair answer; active consumers are connected to the internet with phones, tablets, computers… and have internet access just about all the time – from their phone, at McDonalds, with portable devices, etc.

Marketing has changed, and is continuing to do so, as more devices gain access to the Internet and more locations become practical places from which to connect. These days, people have a vast amount of information at their fingertips, a number of convenient ways to access it, and search engines act as gateways for finding what they need.

This move has caused a shift in advertising as companies scramble to get to where the people are – the yellow pages has moved online (and to a large extent is integrated into search engines); television shows, music, social activity has moved online.

All of this alters the format of display advertising and creates a struggle for companies to monetize from advertising because traditional methods are not suitable; magazines and newspapers have moved online (to the consternation of publishers because of the general “free-ness” of content on the internet).

Google continues to benefit from all of this, as it fuels the transition and answers people’s queries. If you check Google’s stock, you’ll probably see that a lot of the transition has already happened, as almost all of their revenue comes from advertisements that people click on (online).

But Are People Really Searching for My Business Online?

The easiest way to check whether people are searching for your particular business services or products is to use the Google Keyword Tool. From this tool you can see “Local Monthly Searches” which is how many times people search for a business like yours from the location you have selected (probably the United States if you left the default setting).

If you are logged into a Google account you can even change the columns to see the average cost per click advertisers pay when they bid on the term. Unless your product is very new, or if your product is not particularly well-defined in the market, you will probably see search volume for terms that are specifically for your product.

Search advertising is good at answering existing demand. Even if you have a particular niche that can be covered by a group of salespeople, you might supplement those efforts with search advertising. Answering inquiries for your products when they occur is probably going to work better than an unsolicited contact. Search advertising might also reveal unexpected or peripheral markets where you wouldn’t have a sales team assigned.

Probably a better question than “Are people searching for my business” would be “is it cost effective and practical for me to target search engine users?”

Is It Cost Effective and Practical for Me to Target Search Engine Users?

If you are just now asking whether people are searching for your business online, you might already be late to the game. But asking whether it makes sense to get involved with paid search/search advertising/AdWords/SEO/social media, is different than asking if people actually search online for your products.

I think I established that they most likely do, and it takes about five minutes to find out. But whether it is cost effective and practical to make an online marketing effort is a completely different topic. Obviously the answer varies by the type of business you have.

Are you a local business that wouldn’t typically advertise? Are you a franchise? Are you thinking of starting an e-commerce site? Is your business international? Is your business a branded household name? Is your business so large that it is more concerned with reputation management than acquiring customers through marketing?

For any business, here are a couple of easier questions to start with:

• Are your competitors advertising on search engines?
• Based on search query data, what kind of market share are you losing by not actively marketing with search engines?

Hopefully you’ve gained a little insight here on how to start thinking about your online marketing efforts.

On Tuesday November 8, 2011, Pure Visibility’s Linda Girard & Jeremy Lopatin were featured as the moderator and a panelist for Ann Arbor Spark’s Marketing Round Table. Check out the video below for all the action.

Marketing Roundtable – November 8, 2011 from AnnArborUSA on Vimeo.

Approaching web analytics as a new user can be daunting because of the complexity of the tools. There’s no one right way to do it, but a good way is to have problems to solve or a question that needs to be answered.

Integrating analytics into our user experience practice started with the need to get clear answers to specific questions. We had questions like “How many users will we alienate if we optimize this site for a 1024 by 768 screen resolution?” which is the less open-ended version of “What screen resolution should we use to optimize our site?” (The answer, it turns out, is “all of them”).

There’s a clear answer in the Google Analytics’ Visitors > Technology > Browser & OS report. Or, at least, as clear as anything gets when you deal with anything as messy as user behavior.

Another good initial analytics/UX question is “How many of our site visitors are using a mobile device?” This is a better way of asking “Should we invest in a mobile site right now?” (The answer is “yes” and you may want to focus on designing the mobile version first, before the desktop version). Google Analytics makes this easy, through the Visitors > Mobile > Overview report.

Neither of these questions lead to terribly deep insights, but that’s the point of your first few forays into web analytics. Take a little time to get accustomed to the interface of your analytics tool and to ask the sorts of questions that analytics can actually answer. That’s why it’s good to start small and get some early wins. Have fun!

Entrepreneurs, business owners, marketing directors, and SEO enthusiasts:

Join Pure Visibility’s visionary, Linda Girard as she moderates her annual SPARK Marketing Roundtable event – Search, Social, Mobile Marketing Trends. Linda and her panel will discuss industry trends and how they will impact your business and budgets. Here’s your opportunity to engage with experts who will share stories that directly influence your 2012 marketing planning.