Central Perk

miercuri, 27 noiembrie 2013

Checkout Page Optimization: Just Follow the F.A.C.T.S.

Posted: 26 Nov 2013 03:15 PM PST

Posted by Yoast

Editor's note: This post was co-authored by Joost de Valk and his brother Thijs de Valk.

At Yoast, we've recently written about how we've drastically changed our checkout page. This process and our findings gave us the idea to do a best practice of sorts on checkout pages. As it is, a lot of checkout pages are far from optimal, and this short film from Google Analytics is rather harsh but lays it out quite well:

There are some elements to a checkout page that, in general, really help your conversion rate. Ignore these findings at your own peril. I'll be looking at the following factors, all of which have a serious impact on your conversion rate: Focus, Assurance, Clarity, Time, and Social proof.

Focus

A page needs focus for people to understand what it is you want. On the checkout page this is doubly true; if your focus isn't on the process of checking out, people will get confused. And confused people don't convert.

An easy way to add focus to your checkout page is to implement calls to action. Calls to action are somewhat of a science, and people have performed a lot of tests to find the call to action that will work on any website. However, we believe it all depends on context.

Call to action

You should always use a color for your call to action (CTA) that stands out in your design. Usually we recommend people use a color they haven't already used in their design (or at least that page). Next, bigger is better. The bigger you make your CTA, the more attention it will draw to itself, thus the more focus it will render.

Obviously the size of your button needs to stay workable. Also think about the shape of your CTA. We like to use calls to action that are shaped like an arrow, because they give people a sense of direction. The shape of your CTA alone will give people a sense of forward movement, which is associated with all things positive:

Lastly, the copy on your CTA is of importance as well. In general, be short and concise. People don't like reading buttons, they just want to know where it leads.

Clutter

Especially on your checkout page, you need to remove as much clutter as possible. By clutter we mean "mess" on your website that distracts from the main goal. Any element on a page that's not aimed toward that page's main goal is clutter, and too much clutter makes your page lose focus altogether.

Clutter that is "outbound" (takes your visitor to another page) is especially bad. Make sure that the most important thing on the page is your checkout process. This can mean removing breadcrumbs, products you're cross-selling and sometimes even a "continue shopping" button.

Assurance

Assurance is something people crave. People have to feel safe on your website and its pages, because if they don't, they simply won't spend their money there. So be sure to give them the safest feeling possible.

Safety signs

One of the most important things is to assure people your website is ok using safety signsâ€"signs that mean the page/site you're currently viewing is free from malware and is "hacker proof." People want a visible affirmation that the page they're viewing is safe, especially if that page is the checkout page. They want assurance that their money will be safe. So don't just expect people to understand your website is safe; show it.

Payment methods

People want to know as soon as possible if you're offering the payment method they want to use. So it's best to show the credit card logos of the companies you support. If you support PayPal, include that as well, obviously. To avoid clutter, we've done this on our checkout page:

Logos

This way, it actually adds clarity to the payment options, assures people we have their kind of payment method, and reduces clutter by not showing it somewhere else.

Unexpected costs

As in the video, people do not like to be surprised at the counter. That's why unexpected costs are the #1 reason people abandon their shopping carts. To prevent this, you need to assure people that there won't be any unexpected costs. This can be as simple as adding a line like "there will be no additional costs" next to the total of the visitor's shopping cart.

Clarity

Clarity and conversion are often mentioned in the same sentence. If your copy and your pages aren't clear, they just won't convert as much as they could. So be sure to make your checkout page process as clear as possible.

Progress bar

A progress bar gives people insight in how far along the process of checking out they are, and also adds the positive effect of gamification. This gamification effect means people will want to get to the next step as fast as possible. On our own checkout page we've decided to have people always step in on the second step. The first step is choosing a product:

The reason we do this, is because the visitor has already taken the hardest and biggest step in your process: he chose a product he wants to buy! So validate that step and make them feel good about it. This way the visitor has already done part of the process without any effort.

Product images

It has to be very clear that the product people have added to their shopping cart is actually the product they want. Showing pictures of your product is by far the easiest way to do this. An added bonus is that (decent) pictures actually increase your conversion rate.

Inline validation

Another form of clarity is inline validation. This makes it very clear for users whether they've correctly filled in the field or not:

validation1 Error

This kind of immediate feedback is very clear and actually makes people more likely to complete the entire form. And in fact, creating inline validation for your form fields isn't hard at all, as we explained in a post on the technical aspects of implementing inline validation recently.

Time

Time plays an important role in your conversion rate. You literally just have seconds for your page to load and convince your visitor that they should stay on that page.

Site speed

In order to convince your visitors within that few-second window, your site needs to be fast enough. Having a website that's too slow, can literally cost you money. This is especially important if you have a (large) user base on mobile devices.

Cookie expire time

You can actually have your website "remember" what people added to their shopping cart. This information is stored in cookies, and you can determine how long this information will be stored. Only 50% of your shopping cart visitors will buy within an hour. After that, it takes people a lot longer to make a decision.

If you want 80% of your shopping cart visitors to buy what they added to the cart, you'd have to save those items for 7 days. Doing this will make sure people can leave your website, come back later and simply pick up where they left off. This makes it a lot easier for people and removes the risk of having people go through the choice and thought process of picking one of your products twice.

Social proof

Social proof is a powerful way to persuade people. There's nothing more useful for influencing people than other people telling them your product is awesome. Social proof works because people will get more confidence in a product if they, for instance, read good reviews from other people. The manufacturer of a product is always going to say their product is fantastic. Having other people talk about it, simply makes it more objective, and thus more trustworthy.

However, you have to take care, because social proof can also seriously backfire. You have to make sure you're using positive social proof. Positive social proof means providing people with things they can gain from using your product, instead of what they're risking not to gain (negative social proof). Telling people what they're risking, or worse, how many other people are risking it, can have the exact opposite effect of what you're trying to achieve. People will only find more reason not to use your product.

Testimonials

Testimonials are stories or pieces of text from actual users about your product. If positive, these can have great impact on people. Always be sure to use as much information of the person giving the testimonial as possible. Adding pictures has been found to increase trust, even if the picture didn't make any sense at all. However, a picture of a face always draws more attention:

This actually has a drawback, because people looking right at you will keep your attention. If at all possible, it's best to have the eyes of the person in the picture pointed to an important element on your page, such as your call-to-action.

Lately we've been reading a lot about 'mini stories'. These are basically testimonials, but written like short stories. When written right, mini stories are supposed to have a kind of seductive effect on people.

Numbers

Telling people how many went before them in buying your products persuades people to also buy your products, especially if it's a high number. This is due to multiple things, among which peer pressure is probably the most important. It's basically trust based on numbers. Peer pressure means people are afraid to "stay behind" if a lot of other people have already done something. When using this tactic, be sure to use the exact number of people who've bought something or signed up, and to not round anything up. It turns out that for your visitors exact numbers are more believable.

Authority

Telling people what other important people or businesses have used your product or service is a great way of persuading people. Especially if you use the kind of people and businesses you know your visitors will like. This is all because of the Halo Effect, which means people's impression of you can be influenced by their overall impression of you. So if you make that overall impression more positive by naming those great names working with you, they'll think more highly of you.

Up to you

Your checkout page needs every much bit of thought as the rest of your website. In fact, if you manage to convert more people here, this will be the closest thing to direct money you'll ever find in Conversion Rate Optimization. So what do you think? Let us know!

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Automate Your SEO Reporting by Exporting Your Leads into Excel

Posted: 26 Nov 2013 03:02 AM PST

Posted by Brian_Harnish

This post was originally in YouMoz, and was promoted to the main blog because it provides great value and interest to our community. The author's views are entirely his or her own and may not reflect the views of Moz, Inc.

For any SEO who collects email leads from web forms, the dreaded part of their existence tends to be the end of the month, when it comes to reporting conversion results to clientsâ€"verifying, re-verifying, downloading, and exporting them to generate the all-important month-end reports. It can take hours and can be very tedious, but the information gleaned from this process is well worth it. There are, however, ways to optimize your workflow to the point that it almost feels like cheating your way through the process.

By using standalone programs or macros (mini scripts within a program), a project that would normally take hours turns into minutes, and I want to take this opportunity to teach you how to do this on your own. I will use a standalone program and a macro that I found through my research to demonstrate the process so you can get a better idea of what is involved.

How to scrape leads from your Gmail (or almost any other email client)

There are a wide variety of ways to scrape leads from Gmail. You can spend the money to get a program like UBot that will help you automate the task without much effort. You can get a program like iMacros, and spend the time learning how to build proper macros that will scrape from your email box. You can spend the time to learn how to program scripts using Grease Monkey, or you can program your own stand-alone scripts. Whatever you do, you will want a solution that is as quick and easy as possible and helps to automate the task without adding much effort. I found a program on Black Hat World that is made to work on Windows, so you Mac users will need to install Windows to use it. You can download the program here .

While I am aware of the hesitation involved in downloading anything from black-hat websites, my own tests of this tool have worked out well. There are comments and reviews about this tool around the web, and it seems to work well for many users. My own research has not found an instance of this tool doing anything nefarious behind the scenes, and I would not hesitate to use it in my own email scraping.

How it works

This program works by accessing the Gmail account that is added to it and exporting the To:, From:, Body:, and Date: fields from each email. Here is how to use it:

Select the email settings you wish to use to download your emails. You can select To:, From:, Subject, and Date. The "Body" export is disabled; according to the tool's creator it would end up scraping all of the HTML.
Enter your username. This is your full email address (username@domainname.com).
Enter your password.
Enter the server and port number you wish to use. By default, it's set to pop.gmail.com and port # 995.
Select whether or not you wish to use a secure connection. This will allow the program to access Gmail whether or not a secure connection is available. If your email does not actually require a secure connection, be sure to uncheck the box.
Once these settings are selected, it will save a file in the email extractor folder with a name that looks like this: 10-1-2013-1-00 AM_Username@gmail.com.

This program is quite useful for those who either do not have or just don't use Microsoft Outlook. If you have Outlook but are not comfortable with downloading and using this program, you can set Gmail to send your messages to Outlook, and then set up Outlook macros to to export all messages to Excel (covered later in this article).

Be sure you don't violate your host's terms of service

This program can also work for other email hosts. Try it! Be sure to put in your applicable login details, and you should be able to scrape your emails without any trouble. However, be sure that you are actually allowed to scrape email from your host. Not all hosts will allow you to do so. Before using egregious scraping on your email account, just double check your terms of service (ToS) so that you don't accidentally get yourself banned from your email service. Why would an email service not allow scraping? Well, it can cause bandwidth issues if you have hundreds upon hundreds of thousands of emails to export. If this becomes an issue, you may raise an eyebrow or two at your email provider. So, be sure that you really want to do this if you want to place such a large load of use on the email services. The author of this article is not responsible for things that may happen if you do not follow specific terms of service regulations. For your reference, here are the terms of service from several common providers:

Gmail ToS: Gmail does not have any terms that specifically prohibit scraping emails. While Gmail does state you may not access it using a method other than the interface, this is a very gray area that does not provide examples. If someone is collecting lead information for a valid reason like monthly reporting for their own use, there shouldn't be an issue. If, however, someone is using access via another method in order to take down the Gmail service, then I would imagine this is where the Terms of Service here comes into play. And this is why I mentioned the large bandwidth usage that downloading thousands of emails can cause to a server, for example. Be sure you really want to proceed before doing so and make sure you won't be somehow banned from your email service as a result. We are not responsible for egregious misuse of a service with intentions to cause interference of the service through significant bandwidth use.

MSN ToS: Does not have any terms that ban exporting emails using any of these methods to export emails. (Be sure to read your own ToS).

Yahoo! ToS: Does not seem to have any terms that prohibit exporting emails. (Be sure to read your own TOS).

Hostgator email limits: While ToS doesn't specifically seem to limit scraping or exporting of emails, there are policies and limits in place. According to Hostgator's mail policy and limits page, "Each connecting IP is limited to 30 POP checks per hour." Possible interference issues with Hostgator services and this software can occur if you are using the software 100s of times per hour, for example. However, because it uses at least one pop check in order to download your emails, you shouldn't have too many issues unless you continue multiple downloads of emails from your account per hour. In which case, you will "likely get a password error indicating that the login is incorrect." Such an issue corrects itself within an hour and the email checking will automatically unlock.

Also according to their mail policy and limits page, their VPS plan and Dedicated do not have the same restrictions as their shared accounts do, so you will probably have more success with high-volume scraping on your own private servers.

A fair warning, however: I haven't specifically tested this with Hostgator, so be sure to use caution when exporting too many times.

Importing your scraped file into Excel

Once you have scraped your email and it saves it as a text file, it shows up all garbled. What we want to do now is import it into Excel so it displays all of the tab-delimited items as columns, so that we don't have to manually copy and paste every single one. To do this, let's open up our file in Excel by clicking on File > Import.

It will ask you: What type of file do you want to import? By default it has selected the CSV format but let's select the text file format since our program saved this to a text file.

Now, click the file that you want to open and click on "Get Data." The text import wizard will pop up showing you settings to choose from. Select the "Delimited" option unless it is already checked by default. Then click on Next.

In this step you can set the delimiters that your data contains. Remember when we selected the semicolon back while importing our file? Select the semicolon option here. Then, let's click on next.

Here, we can set up our columns and set the data format. For our purposes, however, let's just go with the default options.

Now, it will ask you where you want to put the data. You have a choice of Existing Sheet (which starts at =$A$1), new sheet, and pivot table. For the purposes of this article, let's just go with the default and click on OK.

Here, you see we have perfectly aligned columns and data without much work. Now you can move forward with formatting these columns and data in whatever orientations or pivot tables you like.

How to download leads from Outlook to Excel

For those who use Outlook, depending on your version, it can be cumbersome to get the data out of the program and can take longer than in just about every other program. Thankfully, Outlook features macros which can be used to export all of your data in the span of just a few seconds!

Step 1: Find or create the macro script you want to use

There are a ton of options and configurations available for this task. For our purposes, we will use modified versions of the scripts located here.

Before we get started, we will need to get the basic code from the very first code snippet, shown below. This code only exports the Subject, Received Time, and Sender of the email message. Our goal is to modify this script so that our new code will extract the entire body of the message and output it to the spreadsheet as well. Don't worry! I am going over each line of code that we modify in this tutorial! This way, you will understand exactly what we are doing and why.

  Sub ExportMessagesToExcel()    Dim olkMsg As Object, _       excApp As Object, _       excWkb As Object, _       excWks As Object, _       intRow As Integer, _       intVersion As Integer, _       strFilename As String    strFilename = InputBox("Enter a filename (including path) to save the exported messages to.", "Export Messages to Excel")    If strFilename <> "" Then       intVersion = GetOutlookVersion()       Set excApp = CreateObject("Excel.Application")       Set excWkb = excApp.Workbooks.Add()<br>  Set excWks = excWkb.ActiveSheet       'Write Excel Column Headers       With excWks          .Cells(1, 1) = "Subject"          .Cells(1, 2) = "Received"          .Cells(1, 3) = "Sender"    End With    intRow = 2    'Write messages to spreadsheet    For Each olkMsg In Application.ActiveExplorer.CurrentFolder.Items       'Only export messages, not receipts or appointment requests, etc.       If olkMsg.Class = olMail Then          'Add a row for each field in the message you want to export          excWks.Cells(intRow, 1) = olkMsg.Subject          excWks.Cells(intRow, 2) = olkMsg.ReceivedTime          excWks.Cells(intRow, 3) = GetSMTPAddress(olkMsg, intVersion)          intRow = intRow + 1       End If    Next       Set olkMsg = Nothing       excWkb.SaveAs strFilename       excWkb.Close    End If    Set excWks = Nothing    Set excWkb = Nothing    Set excApp = Nothing    MsgBox "Process complete.  A total of " & intRow - 2 & " messages were exported.", vbInformation + vbOKOnly, "Export messages to Excel"  End Sub  Private Function GetSMTPAddress(Item As Outlook.MailItem, intOutlookVersion As Integer) As String    Dim olkSnd As Outlook.AddressEntry, olkEnt As Object    On Error Resume Next    Select Case intOutlookVersion       Case Is < 14          If Item.SenderEmailType = "EX" Then             GetSMTPAddress = SMTP2007(Item)          Else             GetSMTPAddress = Item.SenderEmailAddress          End If       Case Else          Set olkSnd = Item.Sender          If olkSnd.AddressEntryUserType = olExchangeUserAddressEntry Then             Set olkEnt = olkSnd.GetExchangeUser             GetSMTPAddress = olkEnt.PrimarySmtpAddress          Else             GetSMTPAddress = Item.SenderEmailAddress          End If    End Select    On Error GoTo 0    Set olkPrp = Nothing    Set olkSnd = Nothing    Set olkEnt = Nothing  End Function

In order to get started, fire up your version of Outlook. I'm using a relatively old dinosaur version (Outlook 2003), but the steps can easily be found online for all versions. Most Windows versions should allow you to use Alt+11 to open the Visual Basic code editor, which we are going to fire up next. To do this, follow these steps:

Step 1: Click on Tools.
Step 2: Click on Macro.
Step 3: Click on Visual Basic Editor.

Next, we are going to copy and paste our code here into the editor window. Now, I used the revision 1 script and modified the original version to extract text from the body by coding the following lines. One after line 19, and one after line 29:

.Cells(1, 4) = "Message" <-- This line tells the macro program to add another column to the first row that is labeled "Message". This will add a new column that displays the text extracted from the email. This one was added after line 19.

.excWks.Cells(intRow, 4) = olkMsg.Body <-- This line tells the macro program to extract the message text from the Body of the email. This way, we have an extremely easy and fast method of verifying all of our important conversion emails that we are going to be using in our reporting.

Now that we have our script ready, let's go to the Visual Basic macro editor.

In the project window underneath the project, right-click within the window, click on insert, and then click on module. This will bring up a VbaProject.OTM file that you can add your code into, as shown in the following screenshot:

Once you have made your desired modifications (or if you desire to use the original script and copied and pasted it, just click on the floppy disk in the upper left hand corner and save the file. Or you can use Ctrl+S to save it. Then, close the Visual Basic editor.

Next, we're going to run our newly modified macro! First, make sure the folder that you want is selected and all the leads you want to export to an excel spreadsheet are in that folder. Then, let's click on Tools > Macro > Macros.

Next, you will see a Macros window pop up. We need to click on the macro we want to run, and then click on run.

True to the nature of the script, you will be prompted with a dialog box that asks you what you want to name your file. Let's call it "ExcelExportTest". It will save it into your My Documents folder. Fire up Excel, and open your brand new spreadsheet. Here is the final version of our example, complete with all extracted elements of that folder:

Wrap-up

By using these methods, it is possible to greatly reduce the time that you spend on manually verifying and copying/pasting leads from your email box. It will be completely automated! Once you get the hang of using these methods, most of your time will be spent in the formatting phase that comes next. So, it will be necessary to spend this time adding some proper formatting that will help make your reports beautiful and impactful.

The First-Ever White House Student Film Festival

Featured

The First-Ever White House Student Film Festival

We're launching our first-ever White House Student Film Festival -- and we're inviting K-12 students from around the country to create and submit one- to three-minute short web videos. Finalists could have their videos screened at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave, and posted on the White House website. It might just be cooler than having your homework up on the fridge.

The topic: Highlighting the importance of technology in the classroom -- and imagining how technology will change the educational experience for kids in the future.

Find out how you or someone you know can apply.

Content Marketing in 2014 – What Should You Be Doing?

Posted: 27 Nov 2013 01:14 AM PST

Content Marketing was one of the big buzz words of 2013, but as the year draws to close what should we be looking out for in 2014 and how can we make sure our content strategies stay fresh and relevant?

Here are my predictions on what's going to be important during the coming year and some tips on how to make sure your content remains useful both for your readers and for your clients.

Relevance
The most important feature of any piece of content is that it's relevant. However, relevant can mean a number of things. A piece of content might be relevant in terms of:
• Timing
• Answering a reader's question
• Providing necessary information

As you can see, relevant content covers a variety of content types, so let's take a closer look.

Timing
Since Google started providing "News" search, timing has been a great way to drive traffic to your site. Also, as every SEO knows, fresh, regularly published content encourages Google to index your site more frequently and can help to improve your rankings. So news-based content is a clear win-win – right?

Not necessarily – there are a few problems with news-based content that need to be taken into consideration. Firstly, you have to get it out fast. In order for your news-based content to do well you have to get it published as quickly as possible, before everyone else has written their piece on it. If you don't, your piece will get lost in the barrage of other articles on the same subject. Also, the market quickly reaches saturation point with these kinds of articles, meaning no-one will be interested in reading your hard work.

Secondly, you have to have something interesting and original to say. There's no point quickly sending out a news-based article if it's going to be the same as every other piece written. You need to make sure your post stands out and says something different. A unique viewpoint on a news-based article can be hard to find but if you can manage it, you should be able to produce something really special and successful.

Thirdly, all of these requirements mean you need a considerable amount of resource in order to pull off a successful news piece. Don't underestimate the importance of having the proper resource for this kind of work – you need someone who can be completely dedicated to researching whatever incident has just occurred, gathering all the necessary information, formulating an original concept, writing the piece, and publishing it. If you can't allow for this, then you're unlikely to produce a high quality, successful piece of content.

So, if you can incorporate these elements into your news articles then you're sure to be onto something great. Just be careful not to waste time producing something that will simply vanish into the depths of the internet, never to be read by anyone.

Answering a reader's question
Although the Hummingbird update appears to have had quite a subtle effect so far, it is a very important indicator in terms of where Google plans to move search. For those of you who missed it, the Hummingbird update has shown Google's clear move to search that is based on answering specific question asked by users. The shift is away from explicit keyword usage towards a more nuanced understanding of what information it is that the user is searching for. As a result, content that directly answers questions that users are asking is likely to start doing better and better over the coming year.

In order to utilise this change in emphasis, content producers need to really start focusing on what it is that their readers need. What are they searching for? What are they interested in? What do they want to understand? If you can figure out the answers to these questions then you should be able to create a wonderful hub of content, full of user-friendly articles. Even better, Google should start to direct users to your content, as it will be answering the very questions they are asking. Plus, if you're actually managing to produce helpful, informative answers, then your users are likely to share them, meaning even more exposure and traffic to your site. This works for both on-site and off-site content, so keep it at the top of your list when producing content.

Providing necessary information
How many times have you visited a website, been interested, but then realised a crucial piece of information you needed before making a purchase or calling up to discuss the offered services was missing? It's a frustrating issue for users, and one I see occurring time and again when I work through websites. What many of us forget when working on our own or clients' websites is that a user can only access the information we provide. So if we miss something important, no matter how minor it may seem to us, the user has no way of finding it out. As a result, they are likely to go elsewhere in order to find a service that provides them with the information.

In other words, when you're producing on-site content, make sure you cover every possible query your users may have in detail. This could be anything from product dimensions, to what hours your phone lines are open, to what your delivery times are, to what your returns/refunds policy is – the list is endless. The job of your on-site content is to persuade people to buy your products/services, so making sure they have all the information they could possibly need to make that decision is vital. This also ties in with ensuring that your content answers people's questions – so keep that concept in mind here.

Measuring Success

The next big issue is measuring your content's success. Over the past year people have been heavily focused on social media and people's engagement with content through these channels. However, as many of us have learnt, engagement does not necessarily equal conversions. Of course, increasing brand awareness is important, and getting your name out there matters. However, in order to determine whether your content is being successful you need to start measuring conversions.

Demonstrating successful conversions is vital to a content team. Companies like to see people engaging with and talking about their brand but, at the end of the day, money and conversion are what matter. And the only way a business will see any return on their investment in content, is if your content pushes people onto their website and then through to conversions.

As such, the time of measuring retweets and Facebook likes is likely to draw to a close, as brands will start looking to traffic numbers and click-through rates to justify their expenditure on content. As content writers we will need to ensure that our content is absolutely on-point if we're going to convince the powers that be to keep spending money on our services – another reason why relevancy is going to be even more important!
Personalisation
Sitting alongside both relevancy and encouraging conversion is the concept of personalisation. Google has explicitly stated that search is going to become more and more personalised over the next few years. As such, we are going to have to ensure that our content is ever more personalised to our users than ever before in order to prevent it from falling by the wayside and remaining unread and unloved.

As such, understanding our audience is going to become more important than ever. Vague personas simply won't cut it anymore. We're going to have to sit down and do some much more thorough analyse of the kinds of customers our sites bring in, how they get there, where they enter and where they drop off. Without an in-depth understanding of our users and their mind-sets content marketers are doomed to repeat old mistakes and the websites they work for will suffer as a result.

Thorough auditing of your website – specifically main landing pages and pages with high bounce rates or exit figures – will be essential to this process. Figure out where your users are coming from and then come up with ways to both increase the number of them coming from these sources as well as ways to create more entry points like this. Similarly, determine which pages are successful at retaining users and which cause them to drop off. Learn from what you already have that works, and adapt the poorly-performing pages so that they are more closely aligned with those that do well.

It sounds simple, but so many people seem to be unable to learn from the mistakes they are presented with on a daily basis. To assist you with improving the quality of your website, you can even consider conducting a survey – asking users what they like and don't like about your website, in order to help you to tailor it even more to their likings.
So there you have it – those are my three big predictions for the upcoming year. If you want your content to be successful you'll need to ensure it's relevant, personalised, and can be measured. Of course, there's a host of other factors that need to be combined to create an effective content marketing strategy, but I'd say that these three factors will be the most important during 2014.

What do you think? Do you have any other ideas about what's going to be big over the next year? Let me know in the comments section!

The post Content Marketing in 2014 – What Should You Be Doing? appeared first on White Noise.

Seth's Blog : Resting smiley face

Resting smiley face

When no one is looking and you're not trying, what shows on your face?

We have a default setting, an arrangement of muscles that gives our mouth and eyes a look. Some have, as a friend of mine says, "resting bitchy face." People rely so much on reading faces that even though you might not intend it, people are making an assumption about your mood and your approachability.

Interesting question: What's the 'resting face' of your brand, your business, your website? In the ordinary course of business, when no one is really focused on trying, what do your emails, signage and word choices telegraph about you?

Over time, many businesses devolve into an efficient yet foreboding default. It takes effort to move uphill, to put a smile into your voice and your typical interactions.

What could be worth more effort than that, though?

• Email to a friend •

marți, 26 noiembrie 2013

Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis

Reader Reflections on Socialism Theory vs. Practice
Record Number of French Corporate Bankruptcies; Socialist Theory vs. Practice; What Went Wrong?
Jobs vs. Employment Analysis Suggests Huge Obamacare Impact (And Way Less Job Growth than Anyone Thinks)

Reader Reflections on Socialism Theory vs. Practice

Posted: 26 Nov 2013 07:50 PM PST

In response to Record Number of French Corporate Bankruptcies; Socialist Theory vs. Practice; What Went Wrong? I received a number of noteworthy comments via email and as direct comment to my blog.

Reader Jay commented ...

The first thing all you capitalism bashers need to understand is that capitalism is not what we have in this country. We have crony capitalism/socialism/fascism at work right now. We have never had real capitalism.

Jay replied to the ridiculous comment by "ClimbingSand " The rich have socialism, the poor have dog eat dog Capitalism.

Acting Man Commented ...

Via email, Pater Tenebrarum at the Acting Man Blog hit the nail precisely on the head. Here is his comment:

I would point out that socialism works neither in practice nor in theory. It is already the theory that is wrong, as the concept must fail due to the calculation problem. Economic calculation is literally impossible under socialism, and so no rational socialistic economy is possible. If the whole world were to adopt socialism, we would soon live from hand to mouth, as the division of labor would completely collapse within a few short years.

Thanks Pater!

I take this opportunity to point out that his blog is still having "technical difficulties", related to his current host. Pater is looking for an new host site, and hopefully his blog will be back up, and running soon.

Pater has taught me a lot over the years. He is the person who introduced me to Austrian economics.

I highly recommend bookmarking his site. It will be back up soon.

Mike "Mish" Shedlock
http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com

Record Number of French Corporate Bankruptcies; Socialist Theory vs. Practice; What Went Wrong?

Posted: 26 Nov 2013 12:16 PM PST

The number of French business bankruptcies hit a record in the third quarter of 2013 and the yearly total is on a pace that will come close to the total reached in the dark days of the great financial collapse in 2009.

Via translation here are a few articles from Le Monde.

Corporate Liquidations Reaching New Heights in France

The newspaper L'Autre Journal has filed for bankruptcy.

Michel Butel, the former boss of the newspaper does not admit defeat so far, and promises new adventures. But under another name ...

In the last twelve months, 43,981 companies were liquidated after having filed for bankruptcy, according to the records of the credit insurer Coface. This is a record number of third quarter bankruptcies.

Mory Ducros, Largest Bankruptcy in France for a Year

With 5,200 jobs at stake, the bankruptcy of transport company Mory Ducros is in social terms the heaviest recorded bankruptcy this year. The previous failure of this magnitude was Neo Security, the second largest French security firm, which was declared insolvent in April 2012. At the time, it employed him as more than 5,000 people.

Some 62,500 company s should file for bankruptcy this year, almost as much as during the dark year of 2009, according to credit insurer Coface. The number of bankruptcies may be slightly lower in 2014.

Ayrault Wants to "Save as Many Transport Jobs" as Possible

Transport company Mory Ducros, which employs 5,200 people in France, announced during a special Works Council (EWC) on Friday its request for receivership with the Commercial Court of Pontoise and the appointment of a temporary administrator.

Unions of the company are very pessimistic. "It is feared between 2,000 and 3,000 job cuts," said Fabian Tosolini, national secretary of the Federation of Transport of the French Democratic Confederation of Labour (CFDT). This is one of the biggest bankruptcy filings since the start of François Hollande term, and one of the largest ever happened to France since the collapse of Moulinex in 2001.

Following the bankruptcy announcement, Prime Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault commented "We are looking for all solutions, site by site, with the social partners, of course. Where we can find the buyers, everything will be done to save the maximum number of jobs. This is a very difficult job."

Arnaud Montebourg, the Minister of Industrial Renewal, is "mobilized" on this issue. Potential buyers have expressed interest but no proposal has been expressed.

Frédéric Cuvillier, Minister of State Transport added "Everything will be studied: first how to consolidate the rescue at least 2,000 jobs, and then look at how we can ensure the recovery or offer jobs to those who are victims of this plan." The Minister announced that he wanted "to meet as soon as possible" with management and the unions.

The prime minister, the minister of industrial renewal, and the minister of state transport are all mobilized. How comforting.

Understanding Montebourg

To understand Montebourg, take a look at some "Made in France" images.

Montebourg "advertises Made in France" while holding Moulinex blenders and wearing classical "marinière" shirts.
He is literally the object of tons of sarcastic comments and gags.

When telecom operator Free was awarded the fourth mobile license in France and launched its very low cost service, Montebourg said that Free had done more for purchasing power of French people than all the actions of then president Nicolas Sarkozy.

But when Montebourg became Minister he started a very aggressive campaign against Free and its pricing, accusing them of destroying French jobs.

The above Montebourg clip courtesy of reader "AC" who lives in France (see Made in France: Montebourg Ridiculed in Text and Pictures; France Goes After "Red Bull" Energy Drinks to Finance Social Security).

Hopefully "AC" will not be arrested for "insulting the president". That's not precisely a joke. (See Founder of French Website "Hollande Resignation" Arrested, Car Impounded for "Insulting the President")

More on Montebourg

If you are interested in other absurdities by the Minister of Industrial Renewal, simply search my blog for Arnaud Montebourg.

What Went Wrong?

The answer to this question should be obvious: The socialist policies of president Francois Hollande went deeply wrong.

In particular, I would like to point out my June 8, 2012 post Hollande About to Wreck France With Economically Insane Proposal: "Make Layoffs So Expensive For Companies That It's Not Worth It".

Hollande's layoff clampdown solution according to Labour Minister Michel Sapin is to "make layoffs so expensive for companies that it's not worth it." ....

To which I commented: Ongoing, if it's difficult to fire people, companies will not hire them in the first place.

Couple that preposterous idea with a set of tax hikes so huge that even the socialists complained:

See Hollande's Tax Everything Plan Blows Sky High With Riots by Farmers

Socialist Theory vs. Practice

In theory, Hollande proposed "Make Layoffs So Expensive For Companies That It's Not Worth It". In practice, his policies harmed many companies so badly they could not possibly stay in business!

Mike "Mish" Shedlock
http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com

Jobs vs. Employment Analysis Suggests Huge Obamacare Impact (And Way Less Job Growth than Anyone Thinks)

Posted: 26 Nov 2013 03:12 AM PST

Every month (on average), for about a year, there has been a startling discrepancy between employment as measured by the household survey and jobs as reported by the establishment survey.

I believe the discrepancy is yet another Obamacare artifact.

Jobs vs. Employment Discussion

Before diving into the details, it is important to understand limits on data, and how the BLS measures jobs in the establishment survey vs. employment in the household survey.

Establishment Survey: If you work one hour that counts as a job. There is no difference between one hour and 50 hours.
Establishment Survey: If you work multiple jobs you are counted twice. The BLS does not weed out duplicate social security numbers.

Household Survey: If you work one hour or 80 you are employed.
Household Survey: If you work a total of 35 hours you are considered a full time employee. If you work 25 hours at one job and 10 hours at another, you are a fulltime employee.

Recall that the definition of fulltime under Obamacare is 30 hours, but fulltime to the BLS is 35 hours.

Next, consider what happens under Obamacare if someone working 34 hours is cut back to 25 hours, then picks up another parttime job.

Obamacare Effect

Prior to Obamacare
34 hours worked = 1 parttime job household survey
34 hours worked = 1 job establishment survey

Enter obamacare
Person cut back to 25 hours and takes a second job for 10 hours
Here is the new math

25 + 10 = 1 fulltime job on the household survey.
25 + 10 = 2 jobs on the establishment survey.

In my example, the household survey totals up all the hours and says, voilla! (35 hours = full time). So a few extra hours that people pick up working 2 part time jobs now throws someone into full time status – thus no surge in part-time employment, but there is a surge in jobs.

I am quite sure this is what is happening, but I cannot prove it.

Household Survey Normalized

The BLS has a chart (shown below) that normalizes the household survey to the establishment survey, but that just transfers establishment survey double-counting to the household survey!

I contacted the BLS and asked if they could please weed out duplicate social security numbers. They can't because they do not capture social security numbers.

This is not a fault of the BLS. They wish they had more data but they don't.

Does Any Available Data Lend Credence to My Theory?

Yes, and overwhelmingly so. An unusual discrepancy between the household and establishment surveys is the key to the puzzle.

Household survey: http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/series/CE16OV
Establishment Survey: http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/series/PAYEMS

Numbers are in thousands.

October Employment and Jobs vs. October in Prior Years

Category	Oct-08	Oct-09	Oct-10	Oct-11	Oct-12	Oct-13
Employed Household	144,802	138,421	139,097	140,314	143,328	143,568
Jobs Establishment	135,905	129,614	130,156	132,094	134,225	136,554

Year-Over-Year Gains or Losses vs. Prior Years

Category	Oct-09	Oct-10	Oct-11	Oct-12	Oct-13
Yoy Change Household	(6,381)	676	1,217	3,014	240
Yoy Change establishment	(6,291)	542	1,938	2,131	2,329
Monthly Average Household	-532	56	101	251	20
Monthly Average Establishment	-524	45	162	178	194

Fore the year ending October 2009, 2010, 2011, and 2012, the household survey and the establishment survey were very well aligned.

However, something happened between October 2012 and October 2013. In the last year, the household survey says employment rose by 20,000 a month while jobs rose by 194,000 per month!

Let's drill down by month and take a look.

Month-over-Month Gains or losses vs. Prior Month

Month	Household	Establishment	M/M Change HH	M/M Change Establishment
Sep-12	142974	134065
Oct-12	143328	134225	354	160
Nov-12	143277	134472	-51	247
Dec-12	143305	134691	28	219
Jan-13	143322	134839	17	148
Feb-13	143492	135171	170	332
Mar-13	143286	135313	-206	142
Apr-13	143579	135512	293	199
May-13	143898	135688	319	176
Jun-13	144058	135860	160	172
Jul-13	144285	135949	227	89
Aug-13	144170	136187	-115	238
Sep-13	144303	136350	133	163
Oct-13	143568	136554	-735	204

Because of the government shutdown, some will object (and rightfully so) about October. So let's throw that month away.

12-Month Results Excluding October 2013

Month	Household	Establishment
Oct 2012-September 2013	1329	2489
12 Month Avg Excluding October 2013	111	207

Even after eliminating the government shutdown effect, the difference between the two surveys is still huge.

From October 2012 through September 2013, the household survey suggests employment rose by an average of 111,000 per month. The establishment survey suggests 207,000 jobs per month on average.

Which is correct?

Actually because of what they measure, both might be. Thus my blog subtitle "And Way Less Job Growth than Anyone Thinks" is not technically accurate.

Practically speaking however, job growth has been nowhere near as good as it looks. People picking up a second parttime job following cutbacks in hours does not do a thing for the economy except perhaps waste gasoline.

However, in spite of strong evidence, this is still a theory. To prove it, we need to weed out duplicate social security numbers. The BLS can't, but ADP can. I contacted them twice but to no avail.

I would like ADP to crunch the data and determine how many duplicate social security numbers show up vs. the same months in prior years. If I am wrong it won't be the first time. But let's have a look at the numbers and see what they say.

Mike "Mish" Shedlock
http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com