Video Insights

I’ve noticed a positive development this last week – thanks to youtube insights. What did I noticed? The video, embedded on my website, is slowing going down in the percentage of total views.

Your video viewership from your website is going down? And that’s a good thing? Let me explain…

Out of the 100% of my videos viewers only 68% were from people viewing it directly on my site. That means a WHOPPING 32% of views came from people who did not even know my website existed! And never visited (yet).

If you looked at the graph above the 32% breaks down as follows;

• Google Search 8.0% (youtube insights even reports on the keywords that were used to find your video).
• External Links 8.0% (this includes sites such as twitter, yahoo, bing, blogs, icq search etc.)
• youtube and related 12 % total
• Viral 3.6 % (this is when your video link is shared by email and instant messaging).

From the 32% above more than 20% is from some form of social networking. So yes I think it is a very positive development when my web sites percentage of total views is falling. NOT to be confused with the videos traffic declining.

Make sure your full message gets across

Awhile back I decided to add a “how to video” to my Ring Guard site to help customers with our product. It was a short video and I decided to use youtube and embed it on my site. There were many reasons why I went with youtube at the time.

• Youtube offered an easy way to upload my edited video
• It generated the code to embed the video on my site automatically
• It tracked the number of viewers so I could easily see if my customers were watching it
• It also submitted my video to a popular social media tool
• It was FREE

Youtube also generates insight reports (I’ve mentioned them before). Wonderful reports full of information that anyone marketing their product wants to know. My favorite insight is “Hot Spots”.

This report (to quote youtube) shows you

• The ups-and-downs of viewership at each moment in your video, compared to videos of similar length.
• The higher the graph, the hotter your video: fewer viewers are leaving your video and they may also be rewinding to watch that point in the video again.
• Audience attention score is an overall measure of your video’s ability to retain its audience’s attention, compared to videos of a similar length.

Your video plays side by side as the graph shows you at which point you’re losing viewership. It offers you a chance to edit your video to keep the graph in the “Hot Spot”.

Make sure your full message gets across and help people make the decision to purchase.

P.S There is even insights into how much of a “viral” effect your video produces. Don’t you love it?

Looking for Your Feedback

Hello! Hello!

Thanks for answering my call for feedback

I have just completed the design for our new site at ring-size-adjuster.com. If you’re not familiar with our previous Ring Guard site please take a look here.

This new site will not replace our old one, rather compliment it

• Our first site has been live for over 10 years now – and any SEO specialist worth a grain will tell you the longer a domain has been around – the better the engines like it.

• We have been very fortunate to have high rankings in all our best converting keywords organically (natural search results). We have had over 20,000 customers, many who are repeat business, who are familiar with our “Old Face” so we wont be giving it any “face lift” soon.

Our new sites purpose

• Test different revenue streams.
• Measure what markets convert best.
• Capitalize on our paid advertisement campaigns.
• Provide new customers with an up-to-date experience when shopping at our site.
• Give us a better format to update and add new pages.
• Learn more about the conversion rates between natural search results and PPC campaigns.

What feedback am I looking for?

1. Is the site easy to navigate?
2. Is there plenty of information provided to help you make a purchase decision?
3. Are the images helpful?
4. What is the site missing?
5. What Improvements would you recommend?
6. Do you think a new design will increase sales?

Thanks for any help!

and yes I decided to use OpenSource

Looking for all Bloggers who lost weight!

I was reading my previous post about the power of networking and how It can be used for a product like my ring size adjusters. I realized I had not tapped into one of my own recommendations of paying bloggers (or providing a free item) to review your product. hmmmmm silly of me.

What do I know about one of my target groups?

• Have recently lost weight and find their rings are now too loose
• They are afraid to size the ring at a jewelry store…just in case (I can say that because I know what it’s like)
• Water retention during the month can cause fingers to swell making rings loose at other times of the month.
• Some clients have arthritis making rings just “fitting” over knuckles but spin on the finger.

I know this because I have read each customer email and some customers open their lives to you. Especially when they have achieved a goal that they are proud of! I’m glad they email me and let me know how the product has helped them.

Now I’m interested in having people review our Ring Guard product on their blogs. If you’re interested pop me an email at info@viewithere.com or tweet me @ http://twitter.com/viewithere

Excellent tool to promote yourself, business or blog

I learned another lesson today in a round-about way. I was doing my regular copy right infringement search (found another one!) and re-stumbled over eHow.com

I say “re-stumbled” as I have been on the site years before and signed up but had never really followed through (yet). You bet I did NOW!

It’s an excellent way to promote yourself, business or blog. I stumbled on it in the first place when I noticed eHow.com was gaining high ranking in some keywords on google search.

Today I followed through at last and wrote my first “How to” article for the site (by the way did I mention you can get paid as well).

So…what did I learn?

Sometimes crap (copy right infringement) is needed to grow flowers (free promotion utilized)

Interest-based advertising…interesting

I recently received an email from google about interest-based advertising. Interest-based advertising will allow advertisers to show ads based on a user’s previous interactions online.

The email states:

“To develop interest categories, we will recognize the types of web pages users visit throughout the Google content network. As an example, if they visit a number of sports pages, we will add them to the “sports enthusiast” interest category.“

Question “well how?“. Answer “Cookies“

Google adsense publishers will drop crumbs into the computer of every person who clicks on an ad on their page . Publishers will have to inform their visitors of this new “interest-based advertising”. How many clicks do publishers feel they will get with the following statements:

• Google, as a third party vendor, uses cookies to serve ads on www.com
• Google’s use of the DART cookie enables it to serve ads to your users based on their visit to your sites and other sites on the Internet.

Google does however allow users to opt out but the damage is done if you ask me. I don’t see the benefit to the user. For me it’s too much that even my “interests” will be free for google to exploit.

However it is interesting in a Orwell “1984″ sort of way.

How to keep and grow your customer list

People ask me all the time how I get so many customers for my website. It’s not a fancy dangle site like others. It’s not a recognizable “Brand” name and I don’t do email marketing to previous customers, or offer a newletter! How How How can my site be doing as well as I say??!

I’ll let you in on my secret.

• It’s one that has lasted the test of time.

• A secret that ALWAYS works!

• One that everyone knows, and everyone can do.

TOP QUALITY CUSTOMER SERVICE!!

Yes that’s right. The old “The customer is always right”. One thing I offer my customers is a money back guarantee. No questions asked, if they wish to return the items they will be refunded their money (all except the original mail cost but I only charge what the post office charges!) I don’t tack on any so called “handling charges” or “restocking fees”. I stand by my guarantee even if the product was used for 30 days.

I always respond to customers emails as soon as I get them. Sometimes emails get lost in cyber space and I can’t help that but that’s why I use paypal. If the customer can’t reach me by email, you can bet they will let paypal know. Paypal emails always seem to reach me but it also shows right on my interface page if there are any opened disputes.

Each customer is a potential marketing tool! I always ask for customers to remember our site and to recommend us to any friends or family. Guess what…when they are happy…they will even tell strangers! Especially in the “social networking” era.

It really is an easy thing to do. Treat customers like you would want to be treated.

2009 Mobile Phone Browsing

I have been spending some time reading up on what people forecast for internet use in 2009 and found some interesting things.

One thing I kept seeing was that everyone predicts a large increase of mobile phone browsing and using phones to make online purchases.

I guess I just always assumed my site was fine for mobile phone use until I started reading more about it. I did a search on google and found a excellent blog CLICKNEWZ which gave me the great free resource for creating your own mobile ready site.

Within 30 Minutes I had created a fully Mobile friendly site. It even re-directs any PC, laptop or mac users to my .com instead of my new free Mobi address www.viewithere.param.mobi but makes sure all phone inquiries go to the mobi pages (pretty darned neat for a free service).

It allows me to add paypal buttons relatively easy (although don’t try to add any options -1). It includes a tracker so I can see how many phone users are really surfing my site. I’ll be interested in seeing if 2009 is really the age of the Mobile phone, if it is I may even cave and buy myself a blackberry!

OH DID I MENTION THIS WAS TOTALLY FREE and there are NO ads!!!

Using Youtube for your website

Youtube can be a great resource for your website. I’m not talking about google’s “YouTube for adsense”, although that may be an option if you do not have your own video.

Youtube gives me the chance to embed my video on my website to show my customers how to use the product they purchased. It also allows me to show customers how easy the product is to use and helps convince them to make the purchase.

When making my video I decided to put myself in my customers shoes and asked the questions I thought they may have.

1. What does the product look like when it is on.
2. How easy is it to use
3. How long will it take to put on
4. Can I do it myself
5. Will it be noticeable

Youtube also offers some great insights

• how many times your video was watched,
• which countries are viewing your video most,
• where people are viewing the video (i.e search engines, external links, embedded on websites or virual shared links),
• Who is viewing your video (age, sex),
• HOT SPOTS of your video (the area people leave, or if they rewind to re-watch a certain part ect).

All great information when you’re looking to make improvements or test different videos.

Ring Guard / Ring Wrap

Length: 0:53
Total views: 26136