beautiful bytes – What’s your visitor flow like?
Google Analytics visitors flow
Google Analytics have added a visitors flow view that shows you a graphical representation of the most common user journeys through your site and the most frequent drop off points.
According to the Google Analytics blog, “Nodes are automatically clustered according to an intelligence algorithm that groups together the most likely visitor flow through a site.”
This will be hugely helpful to see if the user experiences and journeys that you planned for the site are being followed, or if potential donors are going through your pages in a different way. You will be able to use this information to investigate the most common journeys and hone the site to let people flow through your goal funnel in exactly the way you hoped. It also shows you where people are dropping off in a clearer way than it does currently, allowing you to look at certain pages and question why they are leaving; is it that they’ve completed the transaction and have all the information that they needed, or is there something else that’s taking people away from your site?
Clicktivism
At the start of our beautiful bytes, back in January, we mentioned how valuable ‘slacktivists’ – people who take easy social actions to support a cause like retweeting, Liking a Facebook Page or adding a twibbon – could be to your organisation. We think that people who seek out your content and act on it in some way, shouldn’t be tarred lazy or unlikely to take further action and prefer the terms ‘clicktivists’ or ‘social champions’.
This week, Mashable released details of a Dynamics of Cause Engagement study by Georgetown University’s Center for Social Impact Communication and Ogilvy Worldwide that shows evidence that clicktivists are even more likely to take meaningful actions. According to it’s research clicktivists are:
- As likely as non-social media promoters to donate
- Twice as likely to volunteer their time
- Twice as likely to take part in events like charity walks
- More than twice as likely to buy products or services from companies that supported the cause
- Three times as likely to solicit donations on behalf of their cause
- More than four times as likely to encourage others to sign a petition or contact political representatives
People are likely to engage with more than one charity on social media. They could Like an animal charity on Facebook, then also go on to Like a medical research charity, do a run for them and ultimately become a longterm donor whilst enjoying amusing updates by a fun children’s charity on Twitter. It’s up to us to carry on creating engaging content to cultivate online communities and convert them to taking action.
Tw-heat mapping
We spend a lot of time wondering what will implore people to click on a link in a Twitter update. How do you cram the how amazing the destination of your link is in the 120 characters you have left? It’s easy to spend a lot of time on the content, and none on the structure.
This week we read about a post from Dan Zarrella who has been analysing where in a tweet is the best place to put the all important link and was surprised to learn that it’s not at the end as people often imagine.
He looked at the data for 200,000 random bit.ly-link-containing tweets and then using the bit.ly API he calculated a click through rate.
He then looked at where the link was in the tweet to its CTR and created this heat map below where the entire map symbolises a tweet.
Of course content is still king, but aside from creating some tasty link bait, it’s worth thinking about other ways to optimise your updates.
Twitter sign ups triple
Since Twitter tightly integrated itself with Apple’s long awaited iOS 5, it has seen a huge pick up in account sign-ups. According to CEO, Dick Costolo, last Wednesday, when iOS 5 was officially released, Twitter had three times its average new user sign-ups in a typical day. ReadWriteWeb’s Jon Mitchell reported,
As owners of iPads, iPhones and iPods rushed to download the new operating system last week, many of them who hadn’t yet signed up for Twitter were faced with a new incentive to do so: The service is now tied directly into the OS of the devices they use everyday. Why not check it out?
I’d also expect to see some statistics from yesterday’s F8 conference supporting a considerable growth in activity for Facebook for mobile too.
This not only means that even more of your audience will be joining the social networking site, but that they’ll be even more likely to be consuming their content on mobile. This suggests that they might read it slightly differently, people are contending with considerably smaller screens, meaning less scrolling and, I imagine, less ingestion of media that requires high bandwidth usage.
Android apps overtake iOS apps
This was a big week for Android as more of its apps were downloaded in Q2 2011 than iOS apps. While Apple still gets more downloads per user than Android, it’s a significant milestone for the little green robot. Apple is still attracting the biggest developers but, as Android continues to grow, this could all change. Perhaps it’s time that we recognise that apps and smartphones aren’t only for Applephiles and that, in general, more and more people are becoming app savvy.
Shorter posts mean more engagement
Though this can by no means be considered as a rule across the board, it’s an interesting trend. As social media becomes more saturated, the need for punchy and powerful copy is more important than ever. Is your content working as hard as it could?
This will become more significant as Facebook is surfacing content that people have taken action on and hiding less engaging content in the ticker.
As a great Creative Director once told me – brevity is the sign of a good writer.
And finally …
We’re all puffed up with pride this week to announce that this same writer, beautiful world’s own Simon Frank, has written a powerful new brit grit film that will be released to UK cinemas audiences next week. The film centres around the practice of cuckooing: drug dealers befriending a vulnerable home owner and taking over their property, ultimately forcing that person out.
In Simon’s own words, “Junkhearts is no happy-go-lucky romcom, although it is ultimately a redemptive story. In my opinion Eddie Marsan [the lead] gives the performance of his life, and Candese Reid (first time actress) is breathtakingly good.”
The tour of the film kicks off at the Renoir in Brunswick Square on 31st October with a special Q&A after with director Tinge Krishnan and Eddie Marsan. We’re packing our popcorn and sweets for a beautiful field trip and I implore you to join us.
Lucy J
