amy cham :: pixels + people

Web 2.0 Analytics presentation

I just got back from tonight's meetup, and the feedback has been pretty good so far.  I really enjoyed giving the presentation, and I hope that people found useful tidbits that they'll be able to use in their own analytics projects!  The presentation focused on using urchinTracker to flag user interaction points and understand how their non-pageview interactions are affecting your goal conversions.  I used Google Analytics as the example platform, but I'm guessing other javascript-based packages have some similar mechanism available.

If you're interested, I've PDF'd my presentation in notes view.

Updated: Dorian Benkoil of Teeming Media (a strategic digital media editorial and business consultancy, helping companies manage their digital media toward specific business objectives) was nice enough to record the presentation audio for us last night.  You can listen to the mp3 here. (You'll want to turn the volume up on your speakers.)

Were you there?  What did you think?  How will you use Google's urchinTracker in your next analytics project?  How have you used this technique in the past?

Hear ye, hear me!

Are you in NYC?  I'll be giving a talk on capturing analytics to measure audience interactions with Flash and Ajax (and general non-pageload interactions) at tomorrow night's Web Analytics De-Mystified Meetup!  I went to the inaugural meetup for this group, and it was a very enthusiastic bunch of people from a wide range of professional backgrounds.  This is my first opportunity to do this kind of thing, and I am very psyched!  The talk will focus on using Google Analytics to flag interaction points and use the knowledge to better understand how RIA's and other interactive site features are used and impacting goal conversions.  I won't get too techie, just the gist of how it works so you know what to ask your developer for and some ideas for how to use the technique (the how-to for getting the code in is available from Google).

If you're interested in analytics and are free tomorrow at 7pm, come by!

Irked at LinkedIn

'Kay then...in the past I have indicated my affinity for LinkedIn. In general, I really like it, even more so now that it appears they have hired actual customer service people to respond to emails.

Today, however, I am rather irritated with my friend.  I got the following in my messages inbox yesterday:

Now, as one who creates and builds web content, I fully appreciate the need to support free content and services with advertising revenue.  Even those of us who do this because we think it's fun still want to make some money, right? Go forth and prosper!!!

Here's the thing that's bugging me...I'm a paying customer.  If I am not paying for a service or content, I fully expect to be advertised to.  I have no objection to the ads sprinkled through my Facebook stream...it's my payment for a service that I enjoy.  But if I am paying $150 per year for a business account on LinkedIn, I do NOT expect to start wading through junkmail in my messages.  (Why Hilton seems to think I'm an event planner is beyond me.)

LinkedIn, don't waste your goodwill sending ads to paying customers (and brand advocates) like me, especially ones as poorly targeted as this one.  I can live with the on-page text ads, but things like this just gunk up an otherwise valuable and well-purposed communication channel and waste my time.

This is not what we are paying you for.

Want one: Chargepod

This is what I need.  The Chargepod lets you choose up to six manufacturer-specific device adapters to charge off of a single plug. Each adapter has a short little cord on it, attached to a central hub, keeping everything all kinds of nice and neat.

As someone who is constantly hauling around a bunch of chargers on every trip--iPod, camera, phone, headset, laptop, PDA and possibly a video camera, I give this device a big YAY! (It is supposed to be able to handle a good chunk of that list.)

Here's hoping they've got all my devices available!

(Note: edited to correct product functionality statement.)

Web 101: The Three-Column CSS Layout

Wendy Piersall of eMomsAtHome.com has launched her second “How To” Group Research Project, where she invites her readers to contribute “How To” articles across a wide range of blogging, web development, entrepreneurship and internet marketing topics and awards prizes for the top articles.

I was in the midst of wrapping up school during the first one, but this time around I’m jumping in on beginning CSS! I’m sharing the topic with Lucy Nixon of WebLucent.com; she’ll guide you through the "What is CSS?" phase and font formatting techniques, and I’m giving you the rundown on how to build a table-free three-column page layout with CSS! (Lucy's article focuses on WordPress users. Aside from the mechanics of using the WP interface, the CSS info is the same for everyone regardless of platform.)

In a rush? Download the final CSS and sample HTML.

Why Use CSS?

For several years, web designers relied on tables to create their columns and hold things like images in their proper places.  Today, many still do.  In some ways, tables are very intuitive to use—they stretch when they need to, and they keep items aligned in neat rows, columns, and grids. 

So why use CSS instead?  The tables method has some drawbacks:

• Mistakes are tricky to catch.  Forget a closing <td> or <tr> and you can get very strange results. Additionally, when your entire page relies on a table to hold it together, unrelated parts of the page can have a major impact on each other.  For me, the most frustrating of these was the tendency for a sliced-image heading to fall apart because something further down the page was a couple of pixels too wide.
• The code is ungainly and tedious to work with. Tables-based layouts can get very, very messy.  In the old days, it was very easy to end up with 6 or 7 levels of tables nested within each other. (In other words, a cell of the outside table would contain a smaller table, which had another smaller table within one of its cells, and so on.)  This made it very tedious to find the part of the page you needed to edit, make your edit, and then ensure that your change did not affect the numerous other tables that came into contact with that part of the page. Furthermore, if you didn’t have a CMS or includes, layout changes had to be made on every single page.  With CSS layouts, the CSS file controls the positioning on all the pages, making it fast and easy to reposition something.
• File sizes are bigger.  The same page layout can result in a file 3 to 7 times, or more, if it is done with tables instead of CSS.  Additionally, once the CSS file is loaded and cached, the formatting for the layout does not need to be loaded again.  An extra 15 or 20 kilobytes doesn’t sound like much in today’s broadband, multimedia-heavy environment, but if you run a high-traffic site, it can chip away at your bandwidth resources; if you have mobile users, every kilobyte counts when you’re sending it over the often-sluggish mobile networks.
• It’s not very accessible. Alternative devices, like screen readers, expect a table to hold tabular data, not align your navigation next to your text.  They use this assumption to decide how to read a page.  If your content is all in tables, the sequencing can become garbled and difficult to follow for someone using such a device.

So that’s the why and wherefore of CSS vs. tables.  Hopefully, that’s enough motivation for you to learn a new trick or two.  If you’re ready to bring your layouts into the 21st century, read on…

iPhone: Wildfire or flameout?

So, I'm not sure I qualify as a "pundit," but Seth Godin wants to know what all us chatterboxes think will happen when the iPhone comes out.

When it was first presented, I posted a rant about what I felt were iPhone (and Apple) shortcomings.  I was, suffice to say, disappointed with a few small but, in my opinion, inexcusable gaffes.

Seth thinks it will be a blowout success. 

I can't say I quite agree.  Don't get me wrong...I think it will be a very strong product launch, and sell pretty hot for the first 6-12 months.  Beyond that, I'm not so sure. I think that there is going to be a lot of room for dissatisfaction with smudgy screens, the data network selection, limitations on application sources, and Cingular lock-in.  With it's richie-rich price tag and proliferation of lookalikes, even small beefs could become a major hurdle.

So that's my prediction. Hot launch, fairly quick fizzle.  I think it will do well by normal standards, but disappoint against the hype.

Anyone else want to take a crack at this?  What do you think?

Web 2.0 Expo: Behavioral Targeting with Basem Nayfeh

This live blogging deal is harder than it looks!  I got 20 minutes of charging since the last session...here's hoping my battery holds out!

Here's my last one for today, then I must stop and work on other things. I'll get my notes blogged over the coming week.

Basen Nayfeh of RevenueScience....how do we overcome the shotgun approach to advertising?

I would like to preface this one...I am not sure how I feel about this topic. As a marketer, the ability to capture cross-page and cross-site behaviors is exciting and I definitely see the benefit to both marketers and consumers, but as a consumer I always feel a little anxious about someone tracking me across sites.  I know they do it, and I willingly let Google see not only my searches but me email, RSS choices, and draft documents, but I'm still not wholly comfortable with it.

Still, this is a valuable area to be familiar with. I hope that one day the privacy issues will be somehow  adequately dealt with to ensure that our behaviors are not tied to our ID, but I don't today know how this will occur.  Also, the same principles can be applied within your own website even if you choose not to partner with anyone else.

Web 2.0 Expo: RSS Feeds & Blog Marketing Panel

Up next...a panel on RSS feeds & blog marketing.

I've taken more of a paraphrasing trascript-y approach with this one, as it is an area I have not really done anything in. As always, these are NOT verbatim quotes, just me trying to keep up and get the point across.

Web 2.0 Expo: Akin Arikan on Measuring Web 2.0

It's 10:41, and we are back in room 2002 waiting for Akin Arikan, of Unica Corporation, to start his talk, "Top 5 Do's and Don'ts for Measuring Web 2.0." 

(It's the last day of the conference, and I am very sad to go.  The people here are great, the sessions have been awesome, the companies are extremely cool, and I love being back with people who consider jeans 'business casual' as long as you are wearing shoes. Oh, and the weather has been a steady 55-60 degrees with sun and a few clouds.)

Web 2.0 Expo: David Berkowitz on SEO and SEM trends

Okay...looking at the many tabs of notes I have in OneNote (handy program if you've never tried it), I've decided to try something new. Live blogging!

David Berkowitz of 360i is about to start his talk on SEO and SEM trends, and instead of adding to my notes, I'm going to try writing my summary as it happens.

Please note, this entailed very fast typing while listening and watching, and the recap includes my own interjections.  So don't take anything as a direct quote.

Let's see how this goes, shall we?