After years of experience in content strategy and technology leadership, Atlantic BT is proud to add a powerful new tool to our arsenal of expertise. We acquired Blazeâs automated content audit platform after using it to audit and analyze the web content for some of our top clients.
What Is Blaze?
This new content audit platform will be Atlantic BTâs first software-as-a-service, giving us a new and versatile way to empower our clients with digital content strategy. Blaze automates the process of crawling a web domain and sorting its pages into appropriate categories. The platform also makes it easy to share notes, insights, and ideas across a team with universal dashboards and communication tools.
Hereâs a short video created by the Blaze team to explain how the platform works:
Blaze and Atlantic BT
Atlantic BTâs employees led the way in ABT acquiring Blaze, having relied on the platform for their content audit work for multiple clients. According to Senior Writer/Content Strategist Allan Maule:
âItâs a really stellar tool. When Iâm reviewing a clientâs existing content and webpages, Blaze makes it simple for me to assess everything a client has put out into the world, how well itâs gathering traffic, and share my notes on every relevant detail with the rest of my team. Iâm looking forward to seeing how my programming colleagues make this tool even better.â
Atlantic BTâs developers are already at work adding new features and capabilities to Blaze, as well as improving the interface of the platform. Look for more details about these improvements later this year, with demos to begin in November.
âWe could not be more excited to add Blaze to our digital solutions at Atlantic BT,â said ABT VP of Experience Eileen Allen, âBoth current and future Blaze users have a lot to look forward to when we relaunch the platform.â
10 million people. Some of them grew up with the Internet. Others were retired when Google became a commonplace verb. But these 10 millionâthe population of the state of North Carolinaâall needed easy digital access to state government services on NC.gov.
And the existing web interface wasnât cutting it. The legacy NC.gov site offered an extensive catagory of links rather than mobile- and user-friendly navigation. While some citizens were able to find what they needed on NC.gov, the larger share of the population became frustrated with the legacy website. This led them to call the NC agency office directly rather than searching for the information onlineâtaking up the valuable time of state workers and taxpayers.
In short, the state of North Carolina needed a complete overhaul of their digital home on NC.gov. And Atlantic BT was the digital partner chosen to do the job.
Designing and Developing the New NC.gov
Creating the new NC.gov was a huge undertakingâAtlantic BT needed to analyze 75,000+ webpages across more than 10 different agency sites, then collate this content into a unified structure which was easy for citizens of all backgrounds to consume.
This took persona workshops. This took content strategy. Â This took UX design, iteration, testing, and development. By leading with content strategy and persona-based discovery, Atlantic BT crafted a mobile-optimized experience for NC.gov while empowering state employees to own and update content on their agenciesâ sites.
A New Site Design and a Lasting Partnership
Thanks to NC.govâs new Drupal-based content management, stakeholders across NC government can now update site content themselves to serve citizens faster and more effectively. The new NC.gov not only saw a 6% increase in page views across the site, but also improved site bounce rates by 38% for organic traffic.
What do you expect at a standard brick and mortar store? Imagine it. You approach the building and see the logo clearly displayed. You can see the store hours and contact information on the door. An associate opens the door for you and greets you by name. Then, maybe he or she tells you promotions based on what you bought here before. You browse by going to clearly marked sections of the store. You can pick the products up and see the pieces at every angle. If you need to make a decision, you can pick both up and compare and contrast. If you need any help finding what you need, itâs easy to ask workers how to find it and what product will be best for you. Eventually you go up to the register, maybe take out a rewards program card, buy the product, and leave happy.
Thereâs no reason someone canât have that experience in your eCommerce platform. In the words of Bob Willet, former President of Best Buy International and CIO of Best Buy,
âThe sooner we drop the âeâ out of âeCommerceâ and just call it commerce, the better.â
The customer service and customer experience you provide, whether in the digital or âin real lifeâ sphere, should follow the same standards. In fact, it should be better. According to Accentureâs 2014 Holiday Survey, 58% of customers expect a personalized experience when they shop online and 77% of customers expect consistent experiences across all channels. That means whether theyâre using a smartphone, a tablet, a laptop, or a desktop, people are expecting the same experience. How can you provide that? Simpleâuse what tools your platform already gives you. Major eCommerce platforms like Magento come with a variety of custom features to create the kind of experiences people want from a brick and mortar, and much more. Here are 5 simple ways to use eCommerce tools to create that experience.
1. Use Pre-Built Responsive Themes as Reference
To have any chance at a good customer experience at all, an eCommerce site has to be usable on mobile devices. People should be able to easily buy your product whether theyâre on a desktop, tablet or a smartphone. It should be as easy to buy products on a phone as it is to send a snarky tweet.
Luckily, major eCommerce platforms usually have a variety of responsive themes and tools for you to use. For example, Magento offers a lot of different options in Magento Connect. Donât lose what makes your website responsive, but feel free to adjust themes and plugins as you need to make your store uniquely you. The same Accentuate Holiday Survey found Smartphone users interact with their phones 150 times a dayâthatâs every 6 minutes. If one of those 150 times a customer finds you, they should be able to buy from you immediately. If they have to remind themselves to try your website again on a desktop, youâre going to be forgotten. Donât let that happen: use the resources Magento and other platforms provide to create an experience customers donât want to put down.
While we could argue about whether or not this legal advantage should have been granted in the first place, it is more important today that your eCommerce store embrace 1-click functionality. Besides being a major improvement to your siteâs user experience, 1-click ordering makes it easier and faster for your loyal customers to purchase from you. Bottom line: this means more sales.
3. Enable Account Creation and Integrate More Payment Methods
Beyond being responsive, one of the best things you can do is allow the creation of custom accounts. This makes it easier on you and your customers. With the information you get from account creation, you can add customers to your mailing list, setup reward programs, and even integrate suggestive selling. On the customer side, checking out becomes even easier with saved information and a customizable checkout flow. In addition, no matter where your customers are and what language they speak, they can buy from you.
In addition, donât forget to let people pay with their preferred method of payment. Major eCommerce platforms like Magento, Shopify, and WooCommerce have the power not only to accept traditional debit and credit cards but also payment services like PayPal, Google Wallet, and Apple Pay. Just make sure your platform is PA-DSS validated and PCI compliant to legally accept electronic payments. According to the Federal Reserveâs 2015 report on Consumers and Mobile financial services, here is how people paid on mobile last year:
Most Commonly Reported Mobile Payments Services in 2015
Paypal
43%
Starbucks
11%
Google Wallet
9%
Apple Pay
5%
The same report found that 39% percent of all mobile payments made a point-of-sale payment using their phone. By accepting more payments, youâre allowing more customers to pay in the method they want from whatever device they want to shop on.
4. Use Social Media Tools
With few exceptions, our lives are ruled by social media: Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Reddit, Instagram, and more platforms every day. These social platforms determine what stories we see and what things we want to buy.
Whether youâre solely an eCommerce business or have a storefront in addition to brick-and-mortar stores, you need to have a social media campaign. Itâs just good business. According to the Business Insider, âFacebook accounts for 50% of total social referrals and 64% of total social revenue.â In addition, despite having a user base 6.5x smaller than Twitter, Pinterest drives 16% of traffic to eCommerce sites. There are many tools and add-ons you can use to connect to social media accounts and manage posting. Make sure to integrate those tools to drive more engagement with your site.
5. Have Great Content
Itâs easy to forget about content, but beyond images, design, and payment, people need to like what theyâre reading. Your style and tone is essential to your brand and engaging your customer base. When you think about the content in your platform, remember the three Sâs via Magento U:
Searchableâ Make sure if a customer is searching for a product, they will find yours. That means the title and description of the product should be relevant to what people are searching for.
Snackableâ This term refers to users multitasking and finding small pieces of content and consuming it while they do other things. Whether these content pieces are ads, tweets or facebook posts from your company, you need to have content that can be consumed in small amounts in order to draw in new customers.
Shareableâ The more people who share your content on social media the better. People sharing actually improves your Google search rank (not to mention having more people find you is a good thing). This in mind, be sure to make your content worth sharing.
For extra credit, the content that most people want to see is video content. According to Ooyalaâs recent report, more people are watching video content than ever. In fact, using only the data from the video Ooyala hosts, mobile video âmade up of 48% of all video views in the quarter, up 14% from a year ago and up 129% from 2014â. Video is a rapidly growing source of content which can only get you more eyes on your site. Â
Whether you use compelling videos, keyword rich blog posts, or stunning images, great content will bring more eyes and more sales.
If you do these things for your eCommerce platform, you can create a customer experience beyond what they can get at a brick and mortar. These are only some of the things you can do with eCommerce. For more help in creating great experiences for your store, contact us to get started.
Is your eCommerce platform optimized for mobile? It better be. With more smartphones in the hands of consumers, more people are finding and shopping from businesses on mobile browsers. Skeptical? Take a look at the numbers.
Who Uses Smartphones?
66% of Americans own a smartphone.
15% of Americans say they have a limited ways to get online other than their mobile phone.
10% of Americans do not have any other form of high-speed Internet access beyond a smartphone.
What Are Mobile Users Doing on Their Devices?
89% of time spent on smartphones is to access the Internet. So you know mobile users are most likely online when theyâre on their smartphones.
What Do People Do When Theyâre on the Internet?
64% of all Internet usage is spent on making online purchases, and 86% of all Internet usage is spent doing general searches and browsing. Whatâs more, people expect responsive and high-speed websites on mobile: 47% of consumers expect a web page to load in 2 seconds or less, and 40% of people abandon a website that takes more than 3 seconds to load.
Itâs easy to be skeptical about loading speedâafter all, how much difference does a few seconds really make? Think of it like this: Imagine youâre making $100,000 per day on your eCommerce siteâ a 1 second page delay could potentially cost you $2.5 million in lost sales every year.
On Black Friday in 2015:
36%
57.2%
Online Sales From Mobile Shopping
Online Shopping-Related Traffic from Smartphones and Tablets
Overall, smartphones were used 2x more this year on mobile shopping. In addition, people are also using smartphones to research and make purchases all year long. The lesson? Commerce happens everywhere and so should your business. Make sure you include mobile in your Magento eCommerce plans.
What Can You Do to Engage Mobile Shoppers?
To cater to mobile devices, follow these 3 simple steps:
1) Check Your Analytics
Make sure your site performs well on browsers for desktop and mobile. You can see that by looking at how long people are staying on your website and what theyâre doing.
2) Get a Responsive Theme
Most major eCommerce platforms have a variety of responsive themes you can use for your store. If youâre personalizing a theme for your brand, make sure you keep the elements that make it responsive.
3) Utilize Mobile Marketing
So many people use their phones to find businesses near them. So for mobile, itâs necessary to to do local-based ads and make sure your address is registered with Google.
If you have questions or ideas on mobile eCommerce, feel free to share them in the comments section below and we’ll be quick to respond.
Pokemon GO is taking over. After its US release July 5th and upcoming release in other countries throughout the rest of the month, it now seems like everyoneâs trying to become a Pokemon Master. According to SimilarWeb’s Digital Vision, itâs been downloaded by
â5.16% of all Android devices in the US. If that doesnât seem like much, consider that by Thursday, July 7th, Pokemon GO was already installed on more US Android phones than Tinderâ.
In addition, more than 60% of those who have downloaded the app in the US are using it daily.
Pokemon GO is an app that uses your phoneâs GPS and clock to make Pokemon âappearâ around you. It also uses your camera so you can âcatchâ them in real time, of course depending on your location and time. It takes the plot of Pokemon games where you try to catalog as many Pokemon as you can in your Pokedex for scientists and implements the quest to become a Pokemon Master. The difference is that you can do it in the âreal worldâ. People are catching Mareep in parking lots, Nidoran in convenience stores, and Tangelas in malls.
Believe it or not, Pokemon GO has a lot to teach usâand Iâm not talking about whether or not your apartment complex has a Rattata infestation. The way that Nintendo has created this virtual reality and the way you play the game is a brilliant example of how to conduct a successful marketing campaign. Here are 5 lessons from Pokemon GO you can use to digitally promote your business:
When youâre playing Pokemon GO and youâre not where the Pokemon are, you start walking to make sure you get there. If youâre strolling through a park and you see there are some Blastoise if you start moving leftâyou go left. Why would it be different in marketing? You need to target the consumers in the places where people actually are buying your product. When you catch Pokemon, you donât stay in the same place hoping one will just pop upâyou go to the place where itâs well-populated. As a digital marketer you have the power of analytics to show you which customers you need to catch and how to target them with the right ads.
Letâs take this point further. Youâre not going to go to a different country to find Pokemon; youâre going to look near your home. Just as people search for Pokemon while walking near their favorite stores, their places of work, and around their neighborhoods, people are also trying to find your business on their smartphones. When people want to find somewhere to shop or eat, theyâre trying to find the business thatâs closest to them. By targeting locations near your business and registering your address and information to Google Maps, you can help your customers find you.
2. Have a Flexible Approach
via Pokemon Wiki
When youâre trying to catch a particularly difficult Pokemon or battling at the Gym, you need to be able to adjust the technique youâre using. Is the Pokemon too far away to throw the ball accurately? Get closer. Does the ball keep missing and rolling away? Try not to throw it so hard. Is tackling not working? Try using the âSlashâ move or something more powerful.
Just like battling and catching Pokemon, itâs important to have a flexible marketing Strategy so you can take different approaches to different problems. Just as you look at the type of Pokemon to see how to attack it, you should also look at your analytics to see how you can fix a marketing problem. Analytics can show you how long people are staying on your site, what demographics are ending up on your site, and what search terms are leading people there. All these findings can help you refine your approach. If the most people found your service using a particular search term, test that out and try to amplify it. If people arenât lasting long on your site, try to determine if there are performance issues. By using data to form multiple strategies and testing new tactics, you can get closer to being a marketing master.
Anyone familiar at all with the Pokemon universe is aware of the threat of a criminal element, or Team Rocket. Pokemon trainers are sworn to protect their Pokemon, keeping them happy and safe, as companions. Team Rocket is known for abusing Pokemon by enslaving them or poaching them for parts. Niantic, developer of the app, does not include Team Rocket in Pokemon GO, but you donât need to add a criminal element to the âreal worldâ. There have been accounts of criminals using the app to track people and mug them. This involves muggers going to places where a lot of Pokemon are and attacking users distracted by playing the game. In addition, the app has had major issues with security. As Tech Crunch reports:
âWhen you use Google to sign into PokĂŠmon Go, as so many of you have already, the popular game for some reason grants itself (for some iOS users, anyway) the highest possible level of access to your Google account, meaning it can read your email, location history⌠pretty much everything.â
That means the application could see and modify nearly all the information in your Google Account. While players do have the option not to sign up with Google and create a âTrainerâ account, the servers have been so overwhelmed that many players just used Google.
While Niantic has stated they are addressing the security risk and Google is already working to reduce the permissions, thereâs a lesson here about the importance of keeping your customers safe. Make sure your online shopping experience is secure and easy to use. Not sure whatâs rustling in the tall grass of your code? Make sure to get a programmer on the inside to make sure your platform isnât leaving the door open to hackers. To learn more on what dangers could be lurking, check out this blog post on eCommerce security or request a code audit to find weaknesses in the platform youâre using. In addition, if you have any questions about security and app permissions for your own products, feel free to contact us for help.
4. Let the âReal Worldâ Inform Your Virtual One
Pokemon GO is one of the most innovative things Nintendo has done with the franchise in at least 7 years, if not longer. More or less, new releases of Pokemon have felt the same since 1996. The places the characters traveled to become Pokemon Masters changed names and more Pokemon were added, but it often seemed like the same plot every single game. It was clear that they wanted to bring Pokemon out into the physical world in 2009 when they bundled experience-gaining Pokewalker pedometers with every copy of HeartGold and SoulSilver, but you still couldnât see Pokemon in your world. Now, you can see Pokemon in your everyday life, find them in real locations, and see them in your smartphone camera. It brings a âreal worldâ experience to something wholly virtual.
Whatever youâre trying to market, whether a standard website for your business or one that hosts an eCommerce platform, itâs important to merge that âreal worldâ feel. Itâs hard to imagine, but many people actually discover products and services outside of a smartphone or computer screen: from posters and billboards, seeing the products in their friend’s homes, and hearing people recommend things in spoken conversation. To bring that real-world feel back into the sphere of technology, try using social media. Maintain an active presence on Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, and even Pinterest to help customers find you within the virtual worlds they inhabit every day. That way people can tag you and post reviews on your business to help you reach their friends. This helps people see you the way they would in the âreal worldââand hopefully theyâll get just as excited about you as when they realize thereâs a Jigglypuff near them.
5. Donât Do It Alone
Pokemon GO is a lot more fun when youâre running around with a group of friends because you can support and challenge each other. Just as you shouldnât wander around at night by yourself because you think there might be Gyrarados at that creek behind your house, you shouldnât take marketing risks alone. For example, if youâre running an eCommerce store, you should have a programmer on the inside to make sure your code is secure and clean. The best case scenario is having a full team helping with marketing, content, design, and everything your site needs to pull leads. Donât you wanna be the very best? In the Pokemon universe, Ash had Misty, Professor Oak, Brock, and countless friends along the way. That in mind, you should have dedicated designers, marketers and programmers on your team.
Whether youâre trying to be a Pokemon Master or Marketing Master, itâs important to be aware of your environment, integrate virtual and tangible experiences, and to work on a great team. If you want more help, consider adding Atlantic BT Marketing to your team. From analytics to user engagement to brand discovery to successful online advertising, we can help you catch âem all.
At Atlantic BT, we use Google Analytics as our primary analytics platform and StatusCake to monitor our page speeds, load times, and site performance. One day, I noticed something was a little off.
StatusCake claims not to load the Google Analytics scripts, but what did we see after turning on the service? A steady stream of direct/none, 1 page per session, 100% bouncing, 0 second time on site visits to the homepageâclear evidence of their bot messing up the traffic! At the same time, StatusCake was still tracking in Google Analytics.
I speculate that this could be because our analytics script is executed through Google Tag Manager, and may be skipped by their âexcluding analytics scriptâ logic.
To be safe, I tried doing a Google search. Surely this was happening with other websites. When I looked through the results, I found nothing other than articles from StatusCake itself saying I didn’t need to do anything at all to exclude them from Google Analytics. I knew that was wrong. AnywayâŚ
…Hereâs How I Fixed It:
I found that, by creating a User Agent variable in Tag Manager and pulling it into analytics as a custom dimension, you can single out StatusCakeâs User Agent and exclude it from your view. Here are 4 easy steps to exclude StatusCake bots from your analytics:
Step 1:
Create the Custom Dimension in Analytics
Once youâre in Google Analytics, you need to create custom dimensions. Custom dimensions can be configured in the admin area, under property settings.
Once youâre there, add a custom dimension called âUser Agentâ and set the scope to Session level.
Make sure to take note of the Index Number. Youâll need this in Step 3.
Step 2:
Create a User Agent Variable in Tag Manager
Next, go over to Tag Manager and create a new Javascript variable with the Global Variable Name of navigator.userAgent.
Step 3:
Update Analytics Tag to Pull in User Agent
Remember that Index Number you noted in Step 1? Now you get to use it. Go into your general Analytics tag. Under More Settings â Custom Dimensions, add the dimension number from analytics to the index field, then add your new {{User Agent}} variable in the Dimension Value.
Once youâve done that, be sure to save and publish!
Step 4:
Exclude Bots!
Now, User Agent data will be pulled in as a dimension in Analytics. To exclude StatusCake, make a filter that looks like this:
Now you can revel in your accurate, uninflated metrics once again.
BONUS:Â
Make a Custom Report!
This simple report is a good way to quickly identify other bot user agents. Look for repeat visits, 100% bounce rate, no time on site and one page per visit. These are likely bots you can exclude. To make one yourself, apply this report to your analytics profile:
And youâre done! Once you go through these steps, you can prevent those annoying bot hits from messing with your data. If you want further help with your marketing campaigns and the monitoring of it, Atlantic BT is here to help. Our marketing experts can help you with automation, personalization, marketing analysis, and provide performance reports to help you grow even further. Be sure to contact us to get started.
