Intelligence Events

Google Analytics monitors your website’s traffic flow to help identify significant statistical variations. It then automatically generates alerts called Intelligence Events, when those variations occur. Examining these anomalies can provide vital insight into your site’s traffic flow that you might have otherwise missed. For example, you might get a spike in traffic from a particular city or from a referring site. Perhaps you sent out a newsletter, or coupon and traffic to your site drastically got a jump from that. These variations in traffic flow can be viewed from the Intelligence Events menu under the Home tab.

There are two kinds of Intelligence alerts:

• Automatic alerts are generated whenever Google Analytics detects a significant change in the traffic patterns on your site. Automatic alerts are created for all data in your account, so you can use this report to review past anomalies, as well.
• Custom alerts are triggered and generated when your site’s traffic reaches a level you specify in your account. For example, you can set a custom alert to appear when traffic from Paris decreased by more than 20%. You can opt in to receive email or text message notifications when you create a custom alert, so you’ll know when the event happens even if you’re not checking your reports.

Whats so great about this utility is that at any time, you can look in your Intelligence Reports and create a Custom Alert to become aware of any sudden or unexpected changes in your site metrics. This technology is smart enough to highlight what you should know, while being very simple to use.

Youtube vs. Vimeo: the visual showdown

Have you ever considered how video might help you sell your products or services better? Do you think a video testimonial might reach more people with your non-profit or company message? It may be easy capturing a short product demonstration or chatting with some volunteers who aren’t camera-shy – but then what? We’d like to share some helpful tips on what you can do with your videos.

The two major video hubs are Youtube and Vimeo. Since both of the platforms recently updated their interface each is relatively easy to use following the posted directions.  So why choose one over the other?

Here is a brief walk through on the highlights of each platform. Each platform has it’s pluses so it’s up to the user to do a little exploring to see what might suite their needs best or you can meet with us to help set up your strategy. Here’s a quick start.
Read the rest of “Youtube vs. Vimeo: the visual showdown”

RPS on the Streets: Wantful, Hatch, Gimmebar

RPS on the Streets is your quick guide for the latest and greatest tools and tricks that will keep you running at optimum speed. Now, we aren’t talking about fancy motor oil, we’re talking about websites that help you find that perfect gift for that “difficult to buy for” person on your list, an easy way to get everyone’s plans for the holidays together, and a way to never forget any of the cool things you stumble across on the web.

Wantful

The older a person gets, the harder they seem to be to gift. Children are easy: spend an hour with them in the toy aisle, and they will gesture to every item they’d like to see under the Christmas tree. (left there by Santa, of course) Older children and adults, however, can take the “happy” out of “Happy Holidays” faster than an open parking spot at the mall fills up this time of year, when it comes to making sure their spaces under the tree are filled, too. Well, we’ve discovered a service that just might make your festive foray into gifting a little more bearable.

Wantful is a service that takes cues from a person’s likes and dislikes, quirks and qualities, and creates a list of items that it thinks that person will enjoy. The process is simple. To begin, you fill out a questionnaire about the person you’re trying to find a gift for. Using the results of the questionnaire, Wantful will generate a list of items that you then choose up to 16 of. Your selections are then put into a book that will be mailed to the gift recipient. That person can then choose which gift they would really like, and it will be mailed to them. Almost like a personalized Sears catalog that you KNOW you’re going to get something out of. Happy holidays, indeed.

Hatch

Trying to get everyone together for the holidays? More often than not, that can feel a lot like trying to herd kittens, especially when you have family members that aren’t local. Well, instead of creating the world’s longest email daisy-chain, racking up the overtime on your cell phone minutes, or relying on other family members to relay “get together news”, why not try something a little more fool-proof?

Hatch allows you to “hatch a plan” about any event you could think of. All you need to do is include details (location, time, date, etc.), then send out the plan to those you wish to invite, using their email address or cell phone number. Hatch is available as an app, but the beauty of it is, you can interact with invitees, even if they don’t have the app. So maybe NOW everyone will make it to Grandma’s house.

Gimmebar

Have you ever been watching a video on YouTube, laughed your pants off at it, closed out of it, then struggled to recall it a few days later when trying desperately to reenact it for friends? Well, if you had been using Gimmebar, that video could have been playing for your friends again in seconds, instead of subjecting your friends to a full five minutes of you impersonating a piano-playing cat.

Gimmebar is a lot like Pinterest on steroids. For those not familiar with Pinterest, it’s a place for storing images from all over the web in specialized boards for other users to view, and to help you organize great ideas, fantastic recipes, or funny sayings from all over the web, just by “pinning” a picture that corresponds with it. Gimmebar takes this “Internet organization” a few steps further. Instead of only saving a picture, you can now snag videos, lines of text, even screenshots of an entire webpage, and sort them into a public or private gallery, all from the Gimmebar taskbar. In these galleries, you can further organize your content into lists like “What I want for Christmas” or “Ideas for our new marketing strategy for 2012”.

So, give Gimmebar a spin. We dare you not to get addicted.

 

Have any cool online services or apps that you just can’t live without? Share it with us in a comment below. Have a Merry Christmas!

Extra, Extra! Read all about it.

When you have some ground breaking news about your company or your industry how do you share it? eMail of course. Everyone on your list get’s a copy. When you want to catalog that information for future reference, where do you store it – eMail, maybe? But then how do you continue to share that information? We have a great solution and one of the best ways to keep fresh new content to your web site, add a blog page.
Read the rest of “Extra, Extra! Read all about it.”