Central Perk

marți, 11 noiembrie 2014

Developing Innovative Content: What You Need to Know

Posted: 10 Nov 2014 04:16 PM PST

A few weeks ago, I attended a breakfast meeting with a bunch of entrepreneurs in the technology, space (yes, space travel), software and engineering industry. I felt so blown away by the incredible talent of the speakers. You know, there are people out there building things, like private satellite networks, bio printing facilities, quantum computers and self-driving cars. I was completely transfixed by the incredibly future facing, innovative and exceptionally inventive group in front of me. I also immediately wished I'd worked a little harder in my twenties.

After the presentations, one of the questions that came up during the Q&A session was: "what's the next big thing?"

Wow. Have you ever thought about "the next big thing"?

Part of the magic of predicting innovation is that it's really, really hard to get right. Those that can accurately predict the future (in my humble opinion) are those that tend to understand how people will respond to an idea once they're exposed to it. I think predicting this is a very special skill indeed.

Then again, we're expected to be able to predict the outcome of our marketing, all the time. While predicting it is one thing, making it happen it is a whole different ball game.

Competition for the attention of our customers is getting tougher

In our industry, when you really boil down what it is we do, we're fixing things, making things, or we're communicating things.

Most of the time, we're building content that communicates: ideas, stories, news and guidance–you get the idea. The problem is, no matter which vertical you work in, we're all competing for something: the attention of our customers.

As our customers get smarter, that competition is getting tougher and tougher.

The most successful marketers in our industry all have a special trait in common. They are good at finding new ways to communicate ideas. Take a look at classic presentations like this from Ross Hudgens to see just how powerful it can be to observe, imitate and develop an idea with astounding viral reach.

I particularly enjoy the idea of taking a piece of content and making improvements, be it through design, layout or simply updating what's there. I like it because it's actually pretty easy to do, and there's growing evidence of it happening all over the Internet. Brands are taking a second look at how they're developing their content to appeal to a wider audience, or to appeal to a viral audience (or both!).

For example; take a look at this beautiful travel guide to Vietnam (credit: travelindochina.com) or this long form guide to commercial property insurance (credit: Towergate Insurance / Builtvisible.com) for examples of brands in competitive verticals developing their existing content. In verticals where ordinary article content has been done to death, redeveloping the medium itself feels like an important next step.

Innovative isn't the same thing as technical

I've felt for a long time that there's a conflict between our interpretation of "innovative" and "technical". As I've written before, those that really understand how the web works are at a huge advantage. Learn how it's built, and you'll find yourself able to make great things happen on your own, simply by learning and experimenting.

In my opinion though, you don't have to be able to learn how to build your own site or be a developer. All you have to do is learn the vocabulary and build a broad understanding of how things work in a browser. I actually think we all need to be doing this, right now. Why?

We need more innovation in content marketing

I think our future depends on our industry's ability to innovate. Of course, you still need to have your basics in place. We'll always be T-Shaped marketers, executing a bit of technical SEO here, a bit of content strategy there. But, we're all SEOs and we know we need to acquire links, build audiences and generally think big about our ambitions. When your goal is to attract new followers, fans, links, and garner shares in their thousands, you need to do something pretty exciting to attract attention to yourself.

The vocabulary of content development

I've designed this post to be a primer on more advanced features found in innovative content development. My original MozCon 2014 presentation was designed to educate on some of the technologies we should be aware of in our content development projects and the process we follow to build things. We'll save process for another post (shout in the comments if you think that would be useful!) and focus on the "what" for now.

At Builtvisible, we're working hard on extending our in-house content development capabilities. We learn through sharing amazing examples with each other. Our policy is to always attempt to deconstruct how something might have been developed, that way, we're learning. Some of the things we see on the web are amazing–they deserve so much respect for the talent and the skills that surface the content.

Here are some examples that I think demonstrate some of the most useful types of approach for content marketers. I hope that these help as much as they've helped us, and I hope you can form a perspective of what innovative features look like in more advanced content development. Of course, do feel welcome to share your own examples in the comments, too! The more, the merrier!

The story of EBoy

eBoy: the graphic design firm whose three co-founders and sole members are widely regarded as the "godfathers" of pixel art.

The consistent styling (as well as the beautifully written content) is excellent. Technically speaking, perhaps the most clever and elegant feature is the zoom of the image positioned on the Z axis in a <canvas> container (more on this in a moment).

An event listener (jQuery) helps size the canvas appropriate to the browser window size and the z axis position shifts on scroll to create an elegant zoom effect.

View the example here: http://www.theverge.com/2014/6/17/5803850/pixel-perfect-the-story-of-eboy.

<canvas> is an HTML element which can be used to draw graphics using scripting (usually JavaScript). This can, for instance, be used to draw graphs, make photo composition or simple animations.

Colorizing the past

Take a look at Pixart Printing's Guide to Colourizing the Past (credit: Pixartprinting / Builtvisible.com) for a clever example of <canvas> in use. Here's one of the images (tip, mouse-over and click the image):

The colorization feature takes advantage of the power of the canvas element. In this case, the color version of the image is applied to the canvas as a background image, with the black and white version on a layer above. Clicking (or touching, on mobile) erases portions of the top image, revealing the color version underneath.

Chrome Experiments: Globe

Globe is "simple" global data visualization of the Earth's population growth over a set range of dates. The 3d visualization based in webGL: a JavaScript API for rendering interactive 3D graphics and 2D graphics within any compatible web browser without the use of plug-ins.

View the example here: http://globe.chromeexperiments.com/.

WebGL is a really exciting, emerging option available to content marketers who might want to experiment with immersive experiences or highly interactive, simulated environments.

Some of my favourite WebGL examples include Hello Racer and Tweetopia, a 3d Twitter Hastag visualizer.

If you'd like to see more examples of webGL in action, take a look at Chrome Experiments. Don't worry, this stuff works in the latest versions of Firefox and IE, too.

Polygon's PS4 Review

You might have seen me cover this long form concept over at Builtvisible. Polygon's Playstation 4 review is a fully featured "long form" review of Sony's much loved gaming machine. The bit that I love is the SVG visualizations:

"What's SVG?", I hear you ask!

SVG is super-fast, sharp rendering of vector images inside the browser. Unlike image files (like .jpg, .gif, .png), SVG is XML based, light on file size, loads quickly and adjusts to responsive browser widths perfectly. SVG's XML based schema lends itself to some interesting manipulation for stunning, easy to implement effects.

View Polygon's example here: http://www.polygon.com/a/ps4-review.

That line tracing animation you see is known as path animation. Essentially the path attribute in the SVG's XML can be manipulated in the DOM with a little jQuery. What you'll get is a pretty snazzy animation to keep your users eyes fixated on your content and yet another nice little effect to keep eyeballs engaged.

My favourite example of SVG execution is Lewis Lehe's Gridlocks and Bottlenecks. Gridlocks is a AngularJS, d3.js based visualization of the surprisingly technical and oft-misunderstood "gridlock" and "bottleneck" events in road traffic management.

It's also very cool:

View the example here:http://setosa.io/blog/2014/09/02/gridlock/.

I have a short vocabulary list that I expect our team to be able to explain (certainly these questions come up in an interview with us!). I think that if you can explain what these things are, as a developing content marketer you're way ahead of the curve:

HTML5
Responsive CSS (& libraries)
CSS3 (& frameworks)
JavaScript (& frameworks: jQuery, MooTools, Jade, Handlebars)
JSON (api post and response data)
webGL
HTML5 audio & video
SVG
HTML5 History API manipulation with pushState
Infinite Scroll

Want to learn more?

I've amassed a series of videos on web development that I think marketers should watch. Not necessarily to learn web development, but definitely to be able to describe what it is you'd like your own content to do. My favourite: I really loved Wes Bos's JS + HTML5 Video + Canvas tutorial. Amazing.

Innovation in content is such a huge topic but I realize I've run out of space (this is already a 1,400 word post) for now.

In my follow up, I'd like to talk about how to plan your content when it's a little more extensive than just an article, give you some tips on how to work with (or find!) a developer, and how to make the most of every component in your content to get the most from your marketing efforts.

Until then, I'd love to see your own examples of great content and questions in the comments!

Sign up for The Moz Top 10, a semimonthly mailer updating you on the top ten hottest pieces of SEO news, tips, and rad links uncovered by the Moz team. Think of it as your exclusive digest of stuff you don't have time to hunt down but want to read!

Seth's Blog : A Peter Corollary

A Peter Corollary

The original Peter Principle made perfect sense for the industrial age: "In a hierarchy, every employee tends to rise to their level of incompetence." In other words, organizations keep promoting people up the organization until the people they promote reach a job where they are now incompetent. Competence compounded until it turns into widespread incompentence.

Industrial organizations are built on competence, and the Peter Principle describes their undoing.

Consider a corollary, one for our times:

"To be promoted beyond your level of confidence."

Too often, the person who wrecks our work is us.

In every modern organization with upward mobility, good people are promoted until they get to the point where they lose their nerve.

You can check out the original Peter Principle here.

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luni, 10 noiembrie 2014

Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis

"Brink" of a New Cold War? Another Cold War Already Started? Is McCain Brain Dead?

Posted: 10 Nov 2014 06:08 PM PST

Former Soviet Union leader Mikhail Gorbachev warned on Saturday that the Ukraine crisis had brought the world to the "Brink of a New Cold War".

"The world is on the brink of a new cold war. Some say it has already begun," said [Mikhail Gorbachev] the 83-year-old former Kremlin chief in a sombre speech delivered in Berlin at an event to mark the 25th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall this weekend.

Mr Gorbachev accused the west, led by the US, of "triumphalism" after the fall of the Berlin Wall ended Soviet dominance in eastern Europe.

Trust between Russia and the west had "collapsed" in the last few months, he said, highlighting the damage done by the Ukraine crisis. He called for new initiatives to restore trust, including a lifting of personal sanctions imposed by the US and the EU on top Russian officials in response to Moscow's actions in Ukraine.

Mr Gorbachev clearly sees the west as the culprit in the crisis, having given his unequivocal backing to Mr Putin last week. He said, before arriving in Germany, that he was "absolutely convinced that Putin protects Russia's interests better than anyone else".

New Cold War Already Started

Count me in the group that says it's blatantly obvious a new cold war has already begun.

Inane sanctions by the US and Europe led by President Obama and fueled by warmongering hype from Senator John McCain and others provides sufficient evidence.

US Blowbacks and Russian Interests

The US once again is clueless when it comes to predicting global blowbacks to its inept foreign policy.

Gorbachev's statement he was "absolutely convinced that Putin protects Russia's interests better than anyone else" is well beyond reproach.

The US is not interested one iota in other country's best interests.

Arguably, the US shouldn't be.

The other side of the coin should be equally easy to see: Other countries have a need to protect their vested interests. And they will.

The US needs to understand that. It also needs to weigh the potential for blowbacks when it doesn't.

The blowbacks in Iraq, Ukraine, and Libya have been spectacular. Iran is on deck.

US Wakes Up Russian Bear

When the US meddled in the internal affairs of Ukraine, it woke up the Russian bear.

Threats to make Ukraine a member of NATO in spite of promises otherwise, then fomenting the overthrow of the prior Ukrainian government led by Viktor Yanukovych was too much for Russia to take.

The US does not like the annexation of Crimea that followed or the resultant civil war that will break Ukraine in two, although we helped cause those outcomes. (For further discussion, see Ukraine Split in Two; Expect Major Rebel Advance).

Even though the overthrow of Yanukovych was unconstitutional and the ensuing election a complete sham, the US accepted that vote. The US does not accept the vote in Crimea or the more recent rebel vote in Donetsk, labeling them "unconstitutional".

Why? The former suits US interests but the latter doesn't. That's all you need to know.

Fool's Mission to Teach Russia a Lesson

In a fool's mission to "teach Russia a lesson", the US initiated sanctions on Russia, then persuaded fools in Europe to go along. The fact of the matter is sanctions don't work.

Ironically, it was Russia who taught the US a lesson (except the US was to stupid to learn from it).

Sanctions Do Four Things (All Bad)

Cause a collapse in trade harming both sides
Cause retaliations, harming both sides
Cause public sentiment for the leader of the sanctioned country to rise
Increase the likelihood of war if economic pressure rise high enough

Is McCain Brain Dead?

McCain wants to send missiles to Eastern Europe and arms to Ukraine. And in spite of the complete foolishness of sanctions, he wants to increase them on Russia.

Besides wasting taxpayer money for the benefit of McCain's defense industry cronies, what good would any of that do? Would it increase or decrease the odds of war?

Is McCain simply too brain-dead to figure out sending missiles to Europe and weapons to Ukraine a bad idea? Another other possibility is that McCain simply does not care. A third possibility is McCain knows what he is doing and wants more wars regardless of cost.

I lean towards the idea that McCain is brain-dead, perhaps a result of captivity in Vietnam, but the question is certainly debatable.

Whatever your answer, Prepare for War: Obama Asks Congress for ISIS War Authorization; Republican Hawks Have War Plan Prepared.

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

"Stock Market Is Overvalued By 100%" Says John Hussman in Chris Martenson Interview; Financial Repression Revisited

Posted: 10 Nov 2014 11:19 AM PST

Guest Post from Peak Prosperity

In an exclusive interview of John Hussman by Peak Prosperity's Chris Martenson, Hussman says Stock Market Is Overvalued By 100%.

Chris Martenson: John Hussman is highly respected for his prodigious use of data and adherence to what it tells him about the state of the financial markets. His regular weekly market commentary is widely regarded as one of the best-researched, best-articulated publications available to money managers.

John's public appearances are rare, so we're especially grateful he made time to speak with us yesterday about the precarious state in which he sees global markets. Based on historical norms and averages, he calculates that the ZIRP and QE policies of the Fed and other world central banks have led to an overvaluation in the stock market where prices are 2 times higher than they should be:

John Hussman: What's interesting here is that if you think about equities, they're not a claim on next year's prediction of earnings by Wall Street analysts. A stock, in fact any security, is a claim on any long-term stream of cash flows that investors can expect to be delivered to them over a very long period of time.

When you look at equities you can calculate something called duration. It's essentially the effective life of a security over which you are collecting cash flows in return for the amount you pay. For the S&P 500 the duration is about 50 years. In other words it is a very, very long-term asset. The only reason you would want to price that asset based on your estimate of next year's earnings is if you were convinced that next year's earnings are actually representative of the very, very long-term stream -- and I'm talking 50 years or so of earnings that you're likely to get -- that those earnings are in a sense accurately proportional to the whole long-term stream.

What's amazing about that is that is it has never been true. It has never been true historically. If you look at corporate profits and especially corporate profit margins, they're one of the most cyclical and mean-reverting series in economics. Right now, we have corporate profits that are close to about 11% of GDP, but if you look at that series you will find that corporate profits as a share of GDP have always dropped back to about 5.5% or below in every single economic cycle including recent decades, including not only the financial crisis but 2002 and every other economic cycle we have been in.

Right now stocks as a multiple of last year's expected earnings may look only modestly over valued or modestly richly valued. Really if you look at the measures of valuation that are most correlated to the returns that stocks deliver over time say over seven years or over the next 10 years the S&P 500 in our estimation is about double the level of valuation that would give investors a normal rate of return.

So right now, we've got stocks valued at a point where we estimate the 10 year prospective return on the S&P 500 will be about 1.6 to 1.7% annualized -- talking right now with the S&P 500 at 2032 as of today's close.

Chris Martenson: I guess 1.6 or 7% doesn't sound bad if you are getting 0% on your risk-free money, I guess. But this says that any move by the Fed to normalize -- which means rates have to go up -- any move to drain liquidity from the system is going to have its own impact. If we held all things equal, a normalization effort is going to then basically expose that the stock market is roughly overvalued by 100%.

John Hussman: 100%, yes. I actually think the case is a little bit harsher than that; in fact, quite a bit harsher than that.

The idea that well, "1.7% isn't so bad" or "1.6% isn't so bad" ignores the fact that really in every market cycle and economic cycle we have had a point where stocks were fairly valued or undervalued.The only cycle in which we didn't see that was actually the 2002 low where stocks actually ended that decline at an overvalued level on a historical basis. But valuations were still relatively high on a historical basis in 2002. They got slightly undervalued in 2009, but not deeply.

On a historical basis, what's interesting is that if you look at measures of valuation that correct for the level of profit margins, you actually get about a 90% correlation with subsequent 10 year returns. That relationship has held up even over the past several decades. It has held up even over the past 5 years where the expected return that you would have forecasted based on time-tested valuations turned out to be pretty close to what you would have forecasted 10 years earlier.

Right now, like I say, we are looking at stocks that have been pressed to long-term expected returns that are really dismal. But more important than that, in every market cycle that we've seen with the mild exception of 2002, we've seen stocks price revert back to normal rates of return. In order to get to that point from here, we would have to have equities drop by about half.

Audio Podcast

Greater Fool Speculation

On his November 3, 2014 weekly commentary, Hussman comments on QE and the Massive Speculative Carry Trade.

At present, the entire global financial system has been turned into a massive speculative carry trade. A carry trade involves buying some risky asset – regardless of price or valuation – so long as the current yield on that asset exceeds the short-term risk-free interest rate. Valuations don't matter to carry-trade speculators, because the central feature of those trades is the expectation that the securities can be sold to some greater fool when the "spread" (the difference between the yield on the speculative asset and the risk-free interest rate) narrows. The strategy relies on the willingness of market participants to equate current yield (interest rate or dividend yield) with total return, ignoring the impact of price changes, or simply assuming that price changes in risky assets must be positive because low risk-free interest rates offer "no other choice" but to take risk.

The narrative of overvalued carry trades ending in collapse is one that winds through all of financial history in countries around the globe. Yet the pattern repeats because the allure of "reaching for yield" is so strong. Again, to reach for yield, regardless of price or value, is a form of myopia that not only equates yield with total return, but eventually demands the sudden and magical appearance of a crowd of greater fools in order to exit successfully. The mortgage bubble was fundamentally one enormous carry trade focused on mortgage backed securities. Currency crises around the world generally have a similar origin. At present, the high-yield debt markets and equity markets around the world are no different.

As we've detailed previously, zero-interest rate policy has very little historical evidence or compelling theory to recommend it. Rather, the policy is based on 1) the misguided belief that people consume on the basis of fluctuations in volatile asset prices and other transitory forms of income (a concept that Milton Friedman won a Nobel Prize largely for debunking), and 2) a view of the global economy as nothing more than one big interest-sensitive demand curve. See Broken Links: Fed Policy and the Growing Gap Between Wall Street and Main Street to review the reasons why suppressed interest rates have had such weak impact on global growth, despite fueling the third equity market bubble in 15 years.

The fact is that financial repression – suppressing nominal interest rates and attempting to drive real interest rates to negative levels – does nothing to help the real economy. ...

Mish Take

I side with Hussman and have been in his camp for a number of years. Make calls like this and you look foolish until the bust happens.

To paraphrase John (I cannot find the exact historical quote) "The choice is whether one looks foolish during the runup, or during the inevitable decline."

Financial Repression Revisited

Fed policy certainly represents financial repression at its finest. It's very much behind the income inequality that Fed Chair Janet Yellen moans about all the time.

That was a central idea I presented in my interview with Gordon Long. See Gordon Long Video Interview of Mish: Topic - Financial Repression (and How to Defend Yourself From It).

Forcing stock, bond and other asset prices higher only helps those who hold stocks, bonds and assets (the wealthy, not the poor).

When stocks rise, it also drives CEO pay higher and higher via performance incentives and stock options. That money is not taken back when stocks crash.

The irony is stunning. If Yellen wants to understand the central cause of income inequality, all she has to do is look in a mirror.

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

Damn Cool Pics

Guy Does Hilarious Impressions Of Famous Female Celebrities

Posted: 10 Nov 2014 10:18 AM PST

17-year-old Liam Martin has 1.8 million Instagram and is dominating social media right now thanks to his ridiculous posts of him dressed up as female celebrities. Some of these are so close, you can't even tell them apart.

This Real Life “Back To The Future” DeLorean Is A Dream Come True

Posted: 10 Nov 2014 09:51 AM PST

Quick & Easy Guide to Tracking Across Multiple Domains & Subdomains in Google Analytics

Posted: 09 Nov 2014 04:13 PM PST

Posted by Tom.Capper

Out of the box, Google Analytics handles being deployed across multiple domains or subdomains extremely poorly. This is easily the most common critical problem in Google Analytics, despite its being relatively easy to fix.

Depending on your situation, one or more of a few simple steps may be appropriate. Look for the entry in the left-hand column below that best describes your situation, and make sure you've taken the steps listed on the right:

Situation	Implementation Check-list
Single subdomain	Standard Google Analytics
Multiple subdomains or domains, which are treated as separate sites	Separate tracking ID for each (sub)domain
Multiple subdomains on a single domain which are treated as a single site	Ignore self-referrals Prepend hostname to request URIs Ga.js / doubleclick.js only: set domain name
Multiple domains with one or more subdomains that are treated as a single site	Ignore self-referrals Prepend hostname to request URIs Cross domain linking

As a word of warning, several steps in this document differ according to the tracking code in use, and in these cases I suggest options for each tracking code type. If you're unsure of your current implementation:

ga.js / doubeclick.js: Your source code will contain several "_gaq.push" commands
analytics.js tracking code: Your source code will contain "ga('create'" and "ga('send'" commands
Google Tag Manager: You have an analytics tag in your Google Tag Manager account (which I will assume is set to "Universal Analytics")

If you have updated your Google Analytics interface to Universal Analytics but you're still using the old code, you should follow the recommendations for the old (ga.js / doubleclick.js) tracking code here.

Using separate tracking IDs

Tracking IDs are the unique codes that you're given when you create a Google Analytics property, and look something like "UA-123456-1". Any page with that tracking ID, regardless of the site it's on, will send data to that property.

While it is possible to use the same tracking ID across multiple domains or subdomains and then view them each in isolation using filtered views, the only advantage of doing so is having access to one aggregated view. For the data in this aggregated view to be meaningful, it will need to ignore self-referrals, and this is configured at the property level, meaning that all views will ignore self-referrals, thus leaving the (sub)domain-specific views with a load of "direct" traffic that actually came from sister sites.

This means that you end up choosing between incorrect data in your aggregate view and incorrect data in your specific view. If you do want to be able to have meaningful data in both specific and aggregate views, you could consider having one tracking ID that's used across all sites and additional tracking IDs for each individual site. For details on implementation, check Google's guidelines here (and also here if you use Google Tag Manager).

Ignoring self-referrals

A "self-referral" is when one of the sources of traffic to your own site is your own site. They make it very difficult to work out what channels are being effective in driving conversions, because they leave you with missing data for some sessions.

Self referrals don't just screw up your attribution data. They also trigger new sessions, thus ruining your key metrics and making it extremely hard to track the routes individuals take through your site. Fortunately, they're really easy to deal with.

If you have the old ga.js (or doubleclick.js) tracking code, simply add your domains as ignored referrers in your tracking code:

If you need to ignore multiple domains using ga.js or doubleclick.js tracking code, add multiple lines like this one. In either case, make sure that they come between the "setAccount" and "trackPageview" lines.

If you're using analytics.js tracking code, it's even easier:

Navigate to Admin -> Tracking Info -> Referral Exclusion list, and you can add any referrers you want to ignore. Note that although this feature can appear in your Google Analytics user interface even if you're using the old ga.js tracking code, it will only work with analytics.js.

Prepend hostname to request URIs

A "hostname" is the name that Google Analytics gives to the subdomain that a pageview originated from. Request URIs are the names you see in reports when you set a dimension like "landing page", "page" or "previous page path".

Any view that includes data from multiple domains or subdomains runs the risk of aggregating data from multiple pages and considering them the same page. For example, if your site includes "blog.example.com/index.html" and "example.com/index.html", these will be merged in reports under "/index.html", and you'll never have any idea how effective or otherwise your blog and homepage are.

You can overcome this using an advanced filter:

In the example, this means that we'd see "www.example.com/index.html" as a page in reports, rather than just "/index.html", and metrics that rely on telling the difference between the pages will report their real levels.

Ga.js / doubleclick.js only: Set domain name

For users of the new analytics.js tracking code or a Universal Analytics tag in Google Tag Manager, this step is unnecessary: Unless configured to do otherwise, the cookie is now automatically stored at the highest level possible so as to avoid being subdomain-specific. However, when using the old tracking code, Google Analytics needs a cookie location to be set in the tracking code so that it doesn't lose it when moving between subdomains.

All this means in practice is a simple additional line in your tracking code, between the "_setAccount" and "_trackPageview" lines:

This should always be set to your domain without any subdomain - e.g. moz.com, distilled.net - not www.moz.com or www.distilled.net.

Cross-domain linking

By default, Google Analytics looks for a cookie on the same domain as the page. If it doesn't find one, it assumes that a new visit has just begun, and starts a new session. When moving between domains, the cookie cannot be transferred, so information about the session must be passed by "decorating" links with tracking information.

Don't panic; this recently got dozens of times easier with the advent of the autoLink plugin for analytics.js. If your site spans multiple domains and you're not already using Google's latest analytics tracking code, this feature should justify the upgrade on its own.

If you can't upgrade for any reason, I won't cover the necessary steps for the old ga.js tracking code in this post, but you can find Google's documentation here.

If you're using on-page analytics.js tracking code, you can implement the autoLink plugin by making some modifications to your tracking code:

Tells analytics.js to check whether the linker parameter exists in the URL and is less than 2 minutes old
Loads the autoLink plugin
The autoLink command is passed domains and two parameters. The first sets whether the linking parameters are in the anchor (rather than the query) portion of the URL, and the second enables form decoration (as well as link decoration).

In Google Tag Manager, it's easier still, and just requires two additional options in your Universal Analytics tag:

In conclusion

Setting up analytics to properly handle multiple domains or subdomains isn't difficult, and not bothering will invalidate your data. If you have any questions or tips, please share them in the comments below.

marți, 11 noiembrie 2014

Developing Innovative Content: What You Need to Know

Developing Innovative Content: What You Need to Know

Competition for the attention of our customers is getting tougher

Innovative isn't the same thing as technical

We need more innovation in content marketing

The vocabulary of content development

The story of EBoy

Colorizing the past

Chrome Experiments: Globe

Polygon's PS4 Review

Want to learn more?

Seth's Blog : A Peter Corollary

A Peter Corollary

More Recent Articles

luni, 10 noiembrie 2014

Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis

Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis

Damn Cool Pics

Damn Cool Pics

Quick & Easy Guide to Tracking Across Multiple Domains & Subdomains in Google Analytics