BeantinDid the mobile web reach tipping point?
A year ago I said that 2010 would be the year that the mobile web reached tipping point. The question is, did it?
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Posts by James Royal-Lawson tagged with analytics
Posts by James Royal-Lawson tagged with analytics
Beantin Webbkommunikation is James Royal-Lawson+46735931654, Stockholm-based digital strategist and web managerwebbkonsult, webbrådgivare
On this blog you can find articles that cover web strategy webbstrategi, intranets intranät, trends (often with a Swedish twist), analytics, and running an effective web presence. Check out my most popular posts.
Wordpress plugin: Measuring browser viewport size
Previously I’ve written about the importance of browser viewport size, and also explained how you can measure the browser viewport of your visitors and store the result in Google Analytics as events.
Given the 25 million sites out there running Wordpress, I decided to invest a bit of time into creating a Wordpress plugin to track viewport size. It uses exactly the same technique as described in my earlier post but conveniently wrapped up as an easy to install Wordpress plugin.
Download the plugin
You can download the Measure Viewport Size plugin from the Wordpress plugin directory. Or you can install it directly from your Wordpress site by searching for “Measure Viewport Size” from the “add plugin” page.
There are a few prerequisites; you will need to have Google Analytics installed on your site (the asynchronous “_gaq” version). I’ve tested the plugin with Google Analytics for WordPress and it works fine. You will also need to make sure that your theme supports the body_class trigger. The body tag in header.php wthin your active theme should look something like the following:
<body <?php body_class(); ?>>
How does it work?
The plugin uses a javascript function to obtain the width and height of the viewport of the browser window your website visitor is using to view your site. It then sends three “events” to your Google Analytics account. One for the width, one for the height, and one with a text label containing the full dimensions.You can then view the events that have been recorded as people visit your site in Google Analytics under Content -> Event Tracking. It can take a day or so for the events to be processed and to appear in your GA reports, so be patient!
Why bother?
Monitoring and analysing the browser viewport size is a crucial part of designing and maintaining a successful website.50 pixels fewer in available height for content could be the difference between your call to action being visible or disappearing below the fold. That could have a noticeable impact on your conversions and goals.
The browser viewport is the window in to your world. Your visitor sees everything through it. So why drive blind when you can quite easily gather and analyse a bit of data?
5 new social memetrackers
Twingly Channels is a social news reader what gives you the possibility to aggregate feeds and real-time search results into a single channel where many people sharing the same interest can view, comment and vote on the content.
5 Articles worth reading… (Spotted: Week 26, 2010)
Why I Still Blog
Hans Kullin asked and answered Why do I still blog? last week on his blog, this week, John Cass gives his answer. Both provide some interesting insights into the ever-evolving blogosphere.
Yahoo Style Guide
July 6th Yahoo will launch their book, which will cover grammar, punctuation, web accessibility and writing copy that helps SEO. The companion web site has some useful articles too.
10 Reasons Why Your Analytics Are Failing & 13 Tools To Help
The reasons listed here are quite a nice analytics “basics” overview. Covers a lot of things that are all too often overlooked.
Serving Static Content from a Cookieless Domain
You are all (as you’re clever, web-savvy people who read this blog), already serving your static content from a seperate domain. This is a good explaination of why (and how) you should make sure that your media domain doesn’t serve up cookies with all the media requests.
Sitemaps: One file, many content types
Now all specialized sitemap formats can be rolled into one file. Sitemaps, and how Google are enhancing them, is a “you scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours” situation. Google want to serve accurate, useful, search results - and we all want our pages, images, videos, etc to be included. Get scratching.
7 articles worth reading… (Spotted: Week 23 2010)
A twelve step process for a storming Social Media strategy
Straight-forward, practical stuff. A process that isn’t complicated to follow and will give results. The first comment to the post (by Jon Buscall) is also worth reading.
A Cross-cultural eye tracking study
A cross-cultural eye tracking study covering 6 countries (and 30 survey participants in each) shows that international websites can’t be successful ‘one size fits all’ sites due to statistically significant cultural differences in information needs. Would love to see more research into this.
Analytics Basics: Averages and Ratios
Highlighting the advantages of using median values for due to the non-normal distribution of visit lengths. Another article where it’s worth taking the time to read the comments. Brian Clifton and Neil bring up some good points regarding goals.
Designing with Behavioral Economics
Some family examples, nicely packaged in one article. It covers opt-in versus opt-out forms, problems of excessive choice, and Value judgements featuring the wonderful Economist subscription example.
No plans to redesign your site? Now is the time to hire a web design agency
Paul Boag talks a whole load of sense in this post of his. We really have got to break the “rebuild” cycle we’ve have ended up with for websites. My only criticism is that he keeps referring to “website” when he should be using “web presence” (or something similarly broad)
Varning: lyssna inte på ‘good enough’-profeterna
When good enough becomes the goal, when you choose to aim to do something competently, you will never do anything anything fantastic.
SEO site review session from Google I/O 2010
A man after my own heart, Matt Cutts (from Google) does a series of quick site reviews (from an SEO viewpoint). It’s an hour long video, but it gives some real-life examples of why certain things are important.
