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In the online marketing world, much is made of the ability to pinpoint the exact source of a particular consumer activity – whether the person clicked on a banner ad, an organic search result or a link in social media, for example. This has led many online proponents to tout the traceability of online campaigns, especially in comparison to traditional offline marketing tactics where impact is difficult to determine for a medium like outdoor or print advertising.

However, for all the capabilities of technology online, the actual adoption of complex attribution models to credit various sources for various consumer actions has been quite low due to resource constraints and the lack of a dominant model or tool.Enterprise tools do exist that attempt to crack this paradigm, but as of yet, these methods have yet to trickle down to the masses. Instead, advertisers generally rely on a “last click” attribution model where the last click a user made before completing a particular conversion event gets credit for the entirety of the event, regardless of user actions taken prior to that last click. This marginalizes the power of the events that led to that last click and creates a situation where different marketing tactics are devalued inaccurately.

We believe that 2012 will be a year where complex analytics attribution becomes a major consideration for clients due to a confluence of factors – increasing availability of complex attribution tools, increasing education about attribution itself, and the increasing need for greater visibility into user motivations as online audiences continue to fragment. Advertisers who dedicate resources towards implementing these attribution tactics will be rewarded with greater insight into not only what marketing tactics best drive consumer action, but also what combination of marketing tactics lead to the greatest result.

– Mike ZeMans, Chief Experience Officer

The search marketing landscape on January 1, 2012 will look far different than it did at the start of 2011. 2011 marked a stark shift in search marketing away from a monolithic experience towards a personalized experience for all searchers. More than ever, searchers on Google will have distinctly personalized and unique search experiences even when using identical keyword searches. This means search marketers will no longer be able to focus solely on keywords, but rather on how their content resonates with various audiences based on demographic and psychographic profiling.

With the rise of mobile technology has come the availability of vast data resources for better aligning users with their desired content.  Mobile phones contain data on everything from a user’s current location to who their friends are and what kinds of apps they purchase; all of which can be used to better focus marketing on the individual user. Even searchers on desktop computers are experiencing a vastly more personalized search experience with Google’s personalized results and their continued push toward offering incentives for users to utilize Google products such as Google+ and the +1 button.

Simultaneously, this will offer new opportunities for savvy search marketers to capture these newly personalized search result rankings by taking advantage of emerging standards for semantic web information in concert with existing best practices. As monolithic search rankings erode, websites taking advantage of emerging standards will rise to fill these gaps for users, in a highly relevant way.

 - Matt Parisi, Search Marketing Manager

The days of cramming all of your content above the proverbial fold are fading. Designers are now utilizing the entire screen area to showcase content and media in more engaging ways. The long held “digital fold” concept was a carryover rule from the newspaper industry. Though logic dictates the placement of the most important information to lure a visitor into your site at the top, it in no way means you need to shove everything plus the kitchen sink up into the top portion of every webpage.

Scrolling these days is a “give in” to just about all digital experiences. And with the rapid proliferation of handheld devices, scrolling is interactive and admittedly fun. Yes, it is wise to make a good first impression, however, we’ve discovered the precious real estate that lies below the 600 pixel fold.
- Drew Vanhecke, Art Director

Accessibility on mobile devices continues to become a major concern. Devs are now trying to bridge the gap between desktop and mobile devices. It’s all about display and CSS is the super glue that makes the magic happen.

It all started thanks to Apple’s decision to not allow Flash on iOS. Eventually this hit home when clients began asking if their sites could be iPad friendly. The shift from Flash to HTML 5 has been a long treacherous road, especially here at Sitelab. This year we made a major push to create HTML 5 replacement and backups for our existing sites, but with accessibility comes limitations. HTML 5 does have its own set of challenges like local data storage limitations, compromised security, and browser compatibility. However for us Devs there is no love for Flash. The thrill is gone.

Adobe must also be seeing the writing on the wall. They made two major acquisitions that clearly shows it’s preparing itself for a Post-Flash era. In 2011 Adobe purchased PhoneGap & Typekit. PhoneGap is a platform that allows you to create native mobile applications using HTML 5. Typekit is a subscription service that allows developers to embed custom fonts using the latest CSS attributes. Adobe is jumping on the HTML 5 bandwagon before it’s too late.

As we move away from Flash-based animations, developers are forced to re-think what the most efficient way to utilize HTML 5 is. It turns out an overuse of JavaScript can actually lead to the same problems we have with Flash. Large scripts take significant processing power. On mobile devices this becomes an issue. When it comes to development, efficiency and simplicity is the key. Fortunately, both iOS and Android support the latest and greatest of CSS3. That includes fancy stuff like animations and transitions. In addition, both platforms render CSS significantly faster than JavaScript. When it comes to mobile web development, CSS3 is the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.

Isaac Gonzalez, Web Developer

Just like everyone else, I feel a little sad when the holidays are over and it’s time to go back to work. But come the second week in January, I remember how much I love this industry and am glad to get back in the swing of things. Clients are back from vacation, this year’s budgets are in place, and they want us to do cool stuff!

To make the transition back to work a little easier, last week I asked some of my fellow SiteLabbers to predict what trend they’ve seen, heard or explored in 2011 that will continue to develop in 2012. Every day this week I’ll be unveiling a new trend, starting with mine.

[Monday] Social Media Trend: A Divergence of the Social Media Fatigued
[Tuesday] Web Development Trend: The Rise of CSS
[Wednesday] Design Trend: Life Below 600px
[Thursday] SEO Trend: Search Fragmentation
[Friday] Analytics Trend: Increasingly Complex Attribution

Social Media Trend 2012: A Divergence of the Social Media Fatigued and the Rise of the Niche

Facebook and Twitter have been around so long that it’s a part of our everyday lives, right? For most of us, yes. But recently, I’ve been hearing a couple different schools of thought. The first is “It’s just too much. Facebook. There’s the ticker, and the news feed, and brand updates, and subscriptions. I don’t really use Facebook that much anymore – just for sharing pictures with my family.” The second, more commonly heard one is “Do you use Pinterest/Tumblr/Etsy/Squidoo/Punchfork/insert-niche-social-media-site-name here?”

I predict that Facebook and Twitter with their timelines and profile changes will remain the “commodities” of social media and maintain the furthest reach. However, I think many people will splinter off to Pinterest, Google+ (Ok, maybe not Google+), and other niche social media sites that are not yet “watered-down”, but rather allow them to create and share content they really want and that’s community-specific.

And though these niche social sites will be the origin of the content creation and curation, integration with Facebook and Twitter for administration and sharing will be required for a niche site’s success. It will be important for us brand marketers to keep this in mind as we look for new opportunities to reach our true fans.

Recipes Curator sites like Punchfork.com and Foodgawker.com that pull in recipes from branded sites are sprouting up all over the place. People don’t want to create profiles on multiple brands sites. Rather, they choose 1 or 2 of these sites to create profiles on and then save, organize, and share (with others in the community) all of their recipes there.

Images (and video) will continue to be a focus in 2012. Facebook timeline images are larger and Twitter’s are more prominent. Instagram has reached the masses and Pinterest is basically all images with a little user-generated text. Most people don’t feel they have the time nor do they want to read a lot of text. Along the same lines, the popularity of infographics will continue to increase dramatically. Infographics will be used more and more as strategic marketing tools to share statistical data and visually represent complex topics. – Jenn Barber, Social Media Strategist

It has been about three months now since SiteLab first wrote about Google encrypting search results for users logged in to a Google account. Many search marketers were troubled by the news and wondered how this would impact the overall measurement of organic search traffic to websites.

Before this change you were able to see not only what keyword/query was used to reach your site but also data showing how traffic from each term performed; a very valuable insight when determining strategy, optimizations and overall success.  Read the official “Making search more secure” blogpost from Google.

Google software engineer Matt Cutts stated that only single digit search volume would be impacted by this switch, meaning no more than 9.9% of searches would essentially be “hidden”. We’ve been monitoring this closely and have some stats that show the percentage of searches being impacted and what steps can be taken to minimize the loss of data.

Client Case Studies – % of Organic Traffic Identified as Keyword Source, “Not Provided”

• Client #1- 14.35%
• Client #2- 13.05%
• Client #3- 12.92%
• Client #4- 14.27
• Client #5- 13.24%

Top 10 Keywords for Client #1 with 14.35% "Not Provided" Shown in Blue

You can see the trend is almost at the 15% mark in each instance. These clients were simply chosen at random, but it’s also important to note that during our research we observed cases where up to 29% of incoming organic traffic was all grouped under the new (not provided) keyword source.

The trend sure seems to indicate that this figure won’t be getting smaller in the foreseeable future, so what are some ways you can gain back the insight lost from this missing data?

First of all, you’re not going to get this information back, at least not through Google Analytics. There are a number of ways for you to break down the value and importance of this new (not provided) group, but there’s no way you can get the invaluable information back that has been taken away. That said, what you’re losing is only currently a small portion of data, 10-15% off the top. For now, the impact is relatively low but the takeaway should be that now is the time to diversify your analytics sources and end reliance on a single source of data. Here are a few other venues to get analytics data and ideas for how to track these types of metrics to help with strategizing, optimizing or measuring success of an organic campaign.

Other Analytics Sources

1. PPC - If you run any PPC accounts, whether through Google or another platform, you can see performance indicators through the reporting features on those programs. A tactic sometimes used when starting an organic campaign for a new client or a new business altogether is to launch a low-end PPC campaign to test your keywords before devoting too much time and effort unknowingly on the terms. This testing will show which keywords are the highest converting, most valuable sources of traffic and be a good indicator of organic keyword performance once rankings are attained. Google currently does not encrypt keyword referral data in paid search campaigns, creating a situation where you can essentially “buy” more performance data where you might be lacking insight.
2. Site Search Data – If you have a site search option you have a great source of information showing what topics are most important to your site visitors. Looking at the types of searches, terms used and how they speak about the product are all valuable tools in assessing the value of a term.
3. Webmaster Tools – If you use Google Analytics, you should also have a Google Webmaster Tools account setup and synced with the analytics platform. If not, you should do this immediately (link?). It’s free and will add a whole new level of insight to your site management and optimizations. Webmaster Tools shows data for which search queries resulted in an impression and how many clicks were generated. Unfortunately, this isn’t quite as useful as the lost data, but this information can help fill in some gaps.

In summary, it’s really a sad state of affairs that this data has been taken away from marketers by Google. Especially when considering this information is available for paid advertisers of Google’s AdWords product and this information essentially helps Google’s search results be better by allowing marketers insights into what users want. The best way to combat this loss of data is through a multi-faceted approach to diversify your data sources. Also, don’t forget to continue analyzing the stats for your (not provided) traffic in order to gain insights into how you may be able to better serve that increasingly large segment of traffic.

SiteLab has added another organization to its growing client roster.  Welcome aboard Grace Presbytery.

Grace Presbytery is the governing body of 166 Presbyterian churches in north and northeast Texas, and is one of several Presbytery’s that make up the Synod, whichcovers a four state region. Grace plans to utilize the new website to communicate with its congregations, church leaders, teachers, youth and young adults.

The old site has historically functioned as web portal for visitors, but was extremely labor intensive for Grace Presbytery’s limited staff to maintain. The current websites’ overall design and functionality has successfully provided a vehicle to showcase Presbyterian news and events that occur in a 4 state region, and has served Grace well for many years. The new and improved site will provide visitors all of the same existing features and functionality as before, but will also utilize large scale and powerful photography to build community through story telling. This new approach will proactively make the Presbyterian Faith more readily available to all website visitors. 

The new site will also contain a variety of tools that will make it easier for church leaders to conveniently get the resources they need. The scope of our engagement with Grace also includes creating a Mobile Version of the site, translation of the site content into a variety of different languages, and assistance in unifying all electronic campaigns.

If your organization is planning a website redesign or is rethinking your current online marketing strategy, I’d love to help make it successful! Lori@sitelab.com or 214-906-6633.

Everywhere I go, friends and family, co-workers, and clients, are “pinning” their favorite finds to the virtual boards they’ve created on Pinterest. At work, a fellow account manager noticed a huge spike in traffic that after some investigation was attributed to the referring site. My best friend and bride-to-be is always asking me to check out her “wedding board” for feedback on bridesmaids dress and accessories selection. And clients have asked me to look into using Pinterest for marketing their website recipes to the millions of users who are sharing them already (and causing those fortuitous spikes in website traffic!).

For those of you who aren’t “pinning” yet (trust me, you will), let me explain what Pinterest is. Pinterest is a virtual pinboard, started by a former Facebook executive, that allows you to “pick up” things you like from the web and “pin” and organize them on 1 or more of the “pinboards” you’ve created with appropriate metadata. Once there, you can follow other “pinners”, “repin” and like the things you see in the community, and invite friends to join you. Side note: I haven’t seen so many occurrences of a site being used interchangeably as a noun, verb, and proper noun since a little company (hint: starts with a G) that you may or may not have heard about, came out.

The site is now pulling in more pageviews than Etsy and has grown 2,000% since June, with more than 421 million pageviews and 3 million users since October. And for those brands who have seen success marketing to Mommy Bloggers in the past, you will be happy to know that from May to October 2011, there was an 1100% increase in unique mom visitors to Pinterest. And the icing on the proverbial cake? Moms spend an average of 13.7 minutes per visit. Yeah, it’s pretty much going to be the next big thing.

So, last week, I decided to find out what all this “pinning” business was about and opened an account through an invitation I received from a friend. Note that you can go to Pinterest.com and request an invite like I did over a week ago; I’m still waiting.

All I can say is prepare to be addicted. Read the rest of this entry »

It’s been quite a year for us, and as it draws to a close, we’d like to thank you. We’ve grown this year, and we couldn’t have done it without our clients, partners, fans and followers.

This year has marked the return of some old friends to SiteLab, including our VP of Operations, Kent McIntosh and Art Director Drew Vanhecke.

Some fresh faces have joined the crew as well, including: Director of Business Development, Lori Barber; web developer extraordinaire, Cassandra Gelvin; awesome account managers Anthony Miller & Jenn Manriquez; and online community builder, Christine Lai.

We’ve mastered some new tricks this year too!  So, we have more to offer in:

• Social Media Contests and Promotions
• Video Production
• Custom Content Development
• Reaching New Audiences in Unique Ways through Search
• The Latest and Greatest in Mobile Marketing and Optimization

Want to learn more about these services, or need help developing an online marketing strategy to reach your 2012 business goals? It’s not too late, contact us today to get started.

Being an intern at Sitelab has been a great experience. I have certainly seen and done a lot during my time here. I thought it would be just as great to share the top 10 things I have learned this year:

10.  There are many alternative uses for lemons / lemon juice like cleaning copper by making a paste of lemon juice and baking soda or throwing lemon peels down the garbage disposal to get rid of smells!

9.  Avocados are a fruit and taste great in desserts!

8.  My favorite procrastination sites like Stumble Upon and Pinterest are at least helping someone (by driving traffic to client’s sites)…not me during finals week

7.  People are really absurd and funny on social media especially Twitter. I guess it’s because you can be anonymous to some degree. If you don’t believe me, just check out the trending topics on any given day to see what I mean. At least one could definitely be considered, how do you say, inappropriate.

6. No need to whistle while you work at Sitelab! You can listen to your music with your headphones on and it’s okay.

5.  I thought that growing up simultaneously with social media would at least make me knowledgeable/on top of this realm but the constantly changing interfaces and adding of new features has taught me otherwise. I’ve had to learn to adapt and implement something new and different regularly (ex. from Facebook’s sidebar to the latest timeline).

4.  To add on #5, because everything is always updating and being enhanced there is always something to do and work on. My To-Do list is never fully crossed off and staying organized is really important in such a fast-paced industry.

3.  Always be on the look out for interesting and relevant information for any of our clients and fellow Sitelabbers. Anything can be spur conversations on Facebook, Twitter, and of course, the office Yammer.

2.  Work hard, play hard is definitely a motto that holds true at Sitelab. Everyone in the office puts more than 110% into their clients and work and everyone puts 110% into their playtime. I mean check out the carved pumpkins from Halloween!

1.  And most importantly…there is always something to learn and people to learn from. Being the youngest member of the Sitelab team, I always notice the collaboration and growth among every level and division of the office.

With that in mind, I’m taking an even stronger initiative to learn as much as I can as my new years resolution!