Ever wanted to know just how well a campaign has gone? This great service from CrazyEgg.com can show you analytics in a whole new light and it’s FREE! Well not completely free, depending on your traffic volume requirements.

This service is great for optimizing landing pages or looking at increasing your advertising revenue if you are a publisher.

So how does it work?

• Sign up and create an account
• Enter in the URL page you want to track
• Insert the tracking code on that page
• Start tracking – it’s that easy

The difference between crazyegg.com and other services is that it offers so many variations to visualise your data and it’s LIVE data too.

1. Heatmaps – this is a great way to picture where the people are clicking on your landing page. It gives you an instant visual impact or ‘hot spots’ on that particular page
2. Confetti – shows you where the clicks are coming from, the volume of clicks, search terms and much more. Confetti is a great way to visual the various colours and where they are mostly congregated on the page
3. Overlay – this element shows you the volume of clicks that were generated on the page, either it be the buttons on the page, images or forms and also gives you a breakdown in % volumes where the people were referred from
4. List – this shows you basically identified objects (meaning main pages) that have been clicked on and also unidentified (which in most cases means links or buttons). It will also give you a % volume on the popularity of that object

Other great advantages that include in the paid version of the service is that you are able to share the data with clients, bosses or friends. You can also block certain IPs if you feel suspicious of them. Also have crazyegg.com send you notifications via email or RSS, this can help you keep on track of your campaign or advertising.

I’ve been using this service for just over a month now – and I think it’s great. It’s simple and easy to use and gives me the data that I need in order to help my clients achieve their goals. So thumbs up and let’s hope they keep improving their services.

Popularity: 72% [?]

Undoubtably the best free web analytics software is Google Analytics – When Google first released this service i was lucky enough to be on the beta test and drive it before most others did and even version one was a very powerful tool for any webmaster. Several years have now passed and the very latest iteration of Google Analytics was launched not too long ago, bringing a much improved interface and the ability to compare information in real time with the flash header is a big step forward.

Google Analytics gives users the ability to track conversions, pageviews, unique browsers, keyword referrals and so much more and i highly recommend that if you have never used an analytics based software before, practise with this first because it is an easy to use, powerful piece of software which will help improve your sites performance and your understanding of your visitors!

More to come including a how to guide for Google Analytics

Popularity: 31% [?]

Ok, so everybody on earth has used Google or Yahoo or some kind of search engine. So chances are, you have come across paid search campaigns before! Did you recognize the ads as paid?.. Chances are if you have been around the internet for long enough you would be used to these ads and they probably blend into your everyday searching without causing a stir.

Did you know that quite often people are paying $1,5 or even $50 per click to get traffic via these paid links??! You may think, why the hell would somebody pay $50 per click? Well the truth is, that if you were making $100 per click, paying $50 isnt that bad! – It’s sort of like poker, you are never going to be 100% sure that spending $50 on a click is going to pay off every time, but by making the educated decision and the “right play” more often than not that click is going to deliver a good return on investment!

Paid search is a science and the basics premise behind it is to buy clicks that are valuable to your website and get a good ROI from the campaign as a whole. Lots of individual elements come together across the whole campaign to deliver the end results. Paid search combines elements of marketing, advertising, copywriting, analytics, accounting and many other smaller elements together.

The main differences between paid search and organic search is that paid search can deliver instant traffic on demand which is highly accountable and can be constantly optimised towards many different end goals including a lower cost per click, higher traffic volumes, more conversions or any other metric which you desire.

Paid search isnt going to do everything for your business, it wont make your site convert better if it sucks. It wont do the ironing for you or cook you dinner It CAN however deliver real value to your business by getting your brand in front of consumers when they are in the right frame of mind to purchase your products or become a loyal follower of your message. The difference between an average search marketing campaign and a good one can be the difference between buying a ferrari or a fiat!!

I haven’t gone into too much detail in thos post about the inner workings of SEM but stay tuned for some far more detailed insights into the world of paid search!

Popularity: 13% [?]