| LED Digest 2499: Real Time Web Stats |
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================================================== The LED Digest Moderated Discussion List "Effective Online Advertising, Since 1997" Data > Information > Knowledge > Wisdom www.GetWebContent.com/LED : the LED's Key Sponsor The Web's Most Experienced SEO Content Providers. www.SEOToolSet.com/training/ : the LED's Premier Sponsor Bruce Clay's Search Engine Optimization Training & Certification ================================================== List Moderator: Published by: Adam Audette LED Digest adam, led-digest.com http://www.led-digest.com .............................................. September 25, 2007 Issue no. 2499 .............................................. .....IN THIS DIGEST..... ====== NEW ====================== --== Real Time Web Stats ==-- ~ Sandy Galvin "We haven't been able to find alternative services that provide this viewpoint." ==== CONTINUING ================= --== Customer Responsibility ==-- ~ Jack Quinn "...the customer has to submit to the final cart stage to see the shipping charge." ~ Grant Crowell "...make some design changes to your checkout process that use best usability practices." --== XML Sitemaps ==-- ~ Mark Rogers "...they spend a significant amount of bandwidth looking at an XML sitemap..." ~ Nathan Holley "This is a ridiculous assertion." --== Password Logistics ==-- ~ Al Toman "Any system you devise can be over ridden." =========== NEW ================================== From: Sandy Galvin Subject: Web Stats with Real Time Log We use the expensive version of a subscription based web analytic called "Freestats." Their code appears on every page of our web site. This has been very useful to us, but recently has had lots of outages that reduce our web site to a crawl. At Christmas time this would be a disaster as customers are impatient, and the only fix we have for now is to disable the javascript links on all of our pages while we are waiting for the service to be restored. Sometimes it is a few hours before we realize that we are effectively off-line. And even when the service is restored, there is no way of knowing for how long. Their support service is unresponsive, so it becomes a crap shoot whether to re-enable or not. On the up side, the service includes a dandy log file listing in real time that allows us to monitor visitors as they explore our web site and to follow their movement from page to page. We haven't been able to find alternative services that provide this viewpoint. Does anyone have a suggestion about services that provide a view of the page-log files as the tracks occur? Sandy Galvin Barclay Blocks http://www.barclaywoods.com ======== CONTINUING =============================== From: Jack Quinn Subject: Customer Responsibility > While we are on the topic of customer service.... at > what point does the customer take responsibility for > a positive transaction? ... How do you get customers > to read a short paragraph to inform them of their options? - Liz Ross, LED Digest 2498 - http://www.led-digest.com/content/view/1910/190/ I took a look at your site and was intruiged at your product selections. Note - it took me ten tries in order to bring up the shopping cart page because everything I clicked on in the first nine tries was out of stock or discontinued. Anyways, I found something finally to order and got to the page with the instructions that you say no one ever looks at. Here are my thoughts: a) When I got to this page, my thought process was that I wanted to submit in order to see what the final cost would be for shipping. Nowhere do I see a shipping cost chart; the customer has to submit to the final cart stage in order to see the shipping charge. By that time, no doubt, they have not read your paragraph on the two tier system. I think one of the reasons that happens is that the shipping choice selection submission button is above the instructions. If this paragraph is vital for them to read, make them read it visually before they get to the section to choose shipping options and submit. b) general comment regarding the shipping options. What value is my putting in my zip code at this stage if no dynamic shipping options appear? I put in my zip code, it says "United States", but yet you still give me two "Worldwide-Non US" shipping choices and then give me an error when I pick one to see what the rate would be. Don't display the choice if it isn't valid based on the zip code. Interestingly, you do have a canadian shipping option that appeared for a US zip code entered as well, but the zip code field doesn't look like you can enter a canadian postal code. c) since there are so many "out of stock" and "discontinued" items in your catalog, I'm guess the problem people are having is if they order a few items and they pick the "ship it all at once" option, then you keep the order all together, as the items trickle in to your warehouse (which I'm guessing could be over weeks or months, you actually charge their credit card for an item that has moved into stock (but not shipped to the customer) and conceivably a customer who is waiting for that elusive item to finally appear in your warehouse in order for you to ship the entire order may just receive a credit card statement with several items charged for which they did not receive. Then when they call to complain about the charges for items they never received and you tell them it might be months for some item to appear in stock so you can ship the whole thing to them, they say, cancel the order and then you hit them with the 15% restocking fee for cancelling an order that never shipped and never left your warehouse? Hard to say what the answer is for that one. Since your shipping policies and restocking fees are not shall we say consumer friendly, I would put that disclosure on a separate form and make them accept or deny in order to put the order through. The way it is now, I can see even though the typeface is huge that they don't read it because they click thru that page in order to see the shipping cost. d) in the economy processing section you have a sentence: "These is only one shipping per order. " I think you want to say: "There is only one shipping per order. " e) in my sample order with a us zip code - I was presented with five shipping choices. Three of them resulted in errors because they were for non-us destinations. Of the two resulting, UPS Ground was $9.52 and US Priority Mail was $9.22. Both of them don't sound that fast. Yet 2 of the 3 non-us shipping charges that appear have words that sound faster "Expedited" and "Express". How come when you live in the US your shipping is regular and not express? Regards, Jack Quinn -------- new post - same topic -------- From: Grant Crowell Subject: Customer Responsibility Liz, I don't think you're asking quite the right question, since a checkout process for your customers is about your web interface, its about their ease of use and understanding, not what you think they're doing "wrong." It's evident that they want to make the purchase, but your site isn't clear enough for them to understand which option they really want. What you should do is make some design changes to your checkout process that use best usability practices. Here are several suggestions I would offer: -- Make your a/b choices (i.e., your delivery options) stand out better. Right now they simply appear as mostly plain text that appears below the checkout box, which makes them easy to ignore. What would be preferable is some graphic text and image for that can better distinguish each of the choices for your audience, and have it alongside the drop down menu you have for each choice. -- On your drop-down menu, list the range of days for each delivery method. Simply putting "Economy" and "Expedited" doesn't tell enough about when a customer should expect their order. -- Follow up the website transaction with an email transaction confirmation of their purchase, prominently state what shipping selection they made, and include a link back to their order should they wish to change the shipping selection or any other info, before it is scheduled to ships out. (Do give them an expected ship date / time as well) It's good that you have repeat customers who like the process you already have in place, and you can still appease them with keeping a simple interface, while at the same time, making it more helpful for your new customers. Grant Crowell Grantastic Designs, Inc. http://www.grantasticdesigns.com ========= Begin Sponsor Message ========= Autumn Leaves Must Fall, But Not Your PR Seasons change. How about your site's copy? When was the last time you added or updated your content to make it more end-user useful and search-engine succulent? Customers and search bots want fresh meat. www.GetWebContent.com/LED, we deliver the beef. ========== End Sponsor Message ========== -------- new post - new topic -------- From: Mark Rogers Subject: Sitemap submissions > Regardless of what they say (or don't!), > Google does not like site maps. - Ivan Jimenez, LED Digest 2494 - http://www.led-digest.com/content/view/1906/190/ Well for something Google doesn't like, they spend a significant amount of bandwidth looking at an XML sitemap I recently created. The first day they were hitting it every minute alternating between it and some other page on my site. Now they hit every few hours. When I submit it, Google uploads it within a few minutes. If I don't submit it, Google appears to be uploading about once a day. I currently have 148 pages indexed and the new sitemap I created has 297 pages. I will be curious to see what happens over the long run. I suspect that like keywords in the meta keyword tag, if you don't give Google some other reason to index a page besides just listing it in the sitemap, they won't since even Google can't index every website let alone every page on every website. Cheers, Mark Rogers http://www.framedestination.com/ -------- new post - same topic --------- From: Nathan Holley Subject: Sitemaps - yeah Google hates 'em! > Google does not like site maps. - Ivan Jimenez We've got a contender for moronic comment of the year here! (Only kidding - Ivan you're not a moron by any stretch. But this comment is so false...) This is a ridiculous assertion. Google "doesn't like sitemaps," folks. And are we clear that we're speaking of XML sitemaps here (like it makes any difference)? Let's examine that: - Google pours resources into their Webmaster Central program. In fact, they have escalated it steadily since it started (as Google Sitemaps) awhile ago. They're about to unroll a brand new version of the console. - Google, along with MSN, Yahoo, and Ask, have announced their partnership in the Sitemaps.org project. Together they've achieved a standard that allows webmasters to place the Sitemap: directive in their robots.txt file to achieve automagical discovery. - What started as a simple console to submit an XML feed and have shortcuts to server errors, search queries, indexing stats, etc, has evolved into a sophisticated backend that every webmaster should be leveraging. The backlink profile information is impressive - still not on par with Yahoo Search Explorer but getting better. I think Google's being purposively careful about including too much info about backlinks (they're famously opaque on this issue, since it makes them so vulnerable to SEO - wanna rank a site quick? Start with the links. Wanna find out why a site ranks? Start with the links.) These points make your statement obviously false, Ivan. I don't mean to pick on you, but come on - let's clear the FUD shall we? (Fear Uncertainty and Doubt) Now, to be clear with LEDers -- I don't always recommend submitting a XML file. Verify your site in Webmaster Central and use the tools. Unless you have a dynamic site or lots of different content that's not getting indexed well, pass on the sitemap. Nathan Holley -------- new post - new topic -------- From: Al Toman Subject: Member areas > Have a "Product Users Area" on my website. > Only people who have bought the product can use it. - Richard Graham, LED Digest 2498 Richard, Any system you devise can be over ridden. One way I would suggest is to have the users enter the UPC code of the product. I'm assessing that the product is a book, of sorts. The UPC is typically found on the back cover (sleeve). I do not know what you are asking regarding the use of user names in forums, not. Can't help you there. Al Toman studio9 web design ------------------------------------------------------- The LED Digest is sponsored by: GetWebContent.com The Web's Most Experienced SEO Content Providers. Free no-obligation proposal: http://GetWebContent.com/LED SEOToolSet.com Bruce Clay's Search Engine Optimization Training & Certification Join the certified SEO directory: www.SEOToolSet.com/training/ The Archives: http://www.led-digest.com/content/view/126/189/ Subscribe: http://www.led-digest.com/content/view/52/187/ Unsubscribe, Change Email, or Hold / Resume Delivery: http://www.led-digest.com/content/category/4/17/201/ (c) Copyright 1995-2007 Orange Wheel, LLC. All Rights Reserved. ----------------------------------------------------------------- "Do not judge by appearances; a rich heart may be under a poor coat." - Scottish Proverb |
