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Pedro Gonçalves

How Website Speed Actually Impacts Search Ranking - Moz - 0 views

moz.com/...ctually-impacts-search-ranking

Web Development PageRank Page Speed

shared by Pedro Gonçalves on 14 Mar 14 - No Cached
  • in 2010, Google did something very different. Google announced website speed would begin having an impact on search ranking. Now, the speed at which someone could view the content from a search result would be a factor.
  • Google's Matt Cutts announced that slow-performing mobile sites would soon be penalized in search rankings as well.
  • While Google has been intentionally unclear in which particular aspect of page speed impacts search ranking, they have been quite clear in stating that content relevancy remains king.
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  • When people say"page load time" for a website, they usually mean one of two measurements: "document complete" time or "fully rendered" time. Think of document complete time as the time it takes a page to load before you can start clicking or entering data. All the content might not be there yet, but you can interact with the page. Think of fully rendered time as the time it takes to download and display all images, advertisements, and analytic trackers. This is all the "background stuff" you see fill in as you're scrolling through a page.
  • Since Google was not clear on what page load time means, we examined both the effects of both document complete and fully rendered on search rankings. However our biggest surprise came from the lack of correlation of two key metrics! We expected, if anything, these 2 metrics would clearly have an impact on search ranking. However, our data shows no clear correlation between document complete or fully rendered times with search engine rank, as you can see in the graph below:
  • With no correlation between search ranking and what is traditionally thought of a "page load time" we expanded our search to the Time to First Byte (TTFB). This metric captures how long it takes your browser to receive the first byte of a response from a web server when you request a particular URL. In other words, this metric encompasses the network latency of sending your request to the web server, the amount of time the web server spent processing and generating a response, and amount of time it took to send the first byte of that response back from the server to your browser.
  • The TTFB result was surprising in a clear correlation was identified between decreasing search rank and increasing time to first byte. Sites that have a lower TTFB respond faster and have higher search result rankings than slower sites with a higher TTFB. Of all the data we captured, the TTFB metric had the strongest correlation effect, implying a high likelihood of some level of influence on search ranking.
  • The surprising result here was with the the median size of each web page, in bytes, relative to the search ranking position. By "page size," we mean all of the bytes that were downloaded to fully render the page, including all the images, ads, third party widgets, and fonts. When we graphed the median page size for each search rank position, we found a counterintuitive correlation of decreasing page size to decreasing page rank, with an anomalous dip in the top 3 ranks.
  • We suspect over time, though, that page rendering time will also factor into rankings due to the high indication of the importance of user experience.
  • our data shows there is a correlation between lower time-to-first-byte (TTFB) metrics and higher search engine rankings. Websites with servers and back-end infrastructure that could quickly deliver web content had a higher search ranking than those that were slower. This means that, despite conventional wisdom, it is back-end website performance and not front-end website performance that directly impacts a website's search engine ranking.
  • Our data shows there is no correlation between "page load time" (either document complete or fully rendered) and ranking on Google's search results page. This is true not only for generic searches (one or two keywords) but also for "long tail" searches (4 or 5 keywords) as well. We did not see websites with faster page load times ranking higher than websites with slower page load times in any consistent fashion. If Page Load Time is a factor in search engine rankings, it is being lost in the noise of other factors. We had hoped to see some correlation especially for generic one- or two-word queries. Our belief was that the high competition for generic searches would make smaller factors like page speed stand out more.
  • TTFB is affected by 3 factors: The network latency between a visitor and the server. How heavily loaded the web server is. How quickly the website's back end can generate the content.
  • Websites can lower network latency by utilizing Content Distribution Networks (CDNs). CDNs can quickly deliver content to all visitors, often regardless of geographic location, in a greatly accelerated manner.
  • Do these websites rank highly because they have better back-end infrastructure than other sites? Or do they need better back-end infrastructure to handle the load of ALREADY being ranked higher? While both are possible, our conclusion is that sites with faster back ends receive a higher rank, and not the other way around.
  • The back-end performance of a website directly impacts search engine ranking. The back end includes the web servers, their network connections, the use of CDNs, and the back-end application and database servers. Website owners should explore ways to improve their TTFB. This includes using CDNs, optimizing your application code, optimizing database queries, and ensuring you have fast and responsive web servers.
  • Fast websites have more visitors, who visit more pages, for longer period of times, who come back more often, and are more likely to purchase products or click ads. In short, faster websites make users happy, and happy users promote your website through linking and sharing. All of these things contribute to improving search engine rankings.
Pedro Gonçalves

Standards and benchmarks - 0 views

www.webperformancetoday.com/...standards-and-benchmarks

Web Development Page Speed Page Size

shared by Pedro Gonçalves on 14 Mar 14 - No Cached
  • The average top 1,000 web page is 1575 KB.
  • Page growth is a major reason why we keep finding, quarter after quarter, that pages are getting slower. And faster networks are not a cure-all for the challenges of page bloat.
  • According to Akamai’s most recent quarterly State of the Internet report, the global average connection speed among the top 50 internet-using countries is 3.3 Mbps — a 5.2% increase over the previous quarter. But when we’re seeing year-over-year page growth ranging from 45-50%, it’s easy to see that the gap is widening.
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  • A whopping 804 KB per page is comprised of images. Three years ago, images comprised just 372 KB of a page’s total payload.
  • images are one of the single greatest impediments to front-end performance. All too often, they’re either in the wrong format or they’re uncompressed or they’re not optimized to load progressively — or all of the above.
  • Today, 38% of pages use Flash, compared to 52% in 2010. This is a good thing. Nothing against Flash, per se, but if Apple has no plans ever to support it, its obsolescence is inevitable in our increasingly mobile-first world.
  • use of custom fonts has exploded — from 1% in 2010 to 33% today.
  • But custom fonts have a dark side: they can incur a significant performance penalty.
  • These days, images on the web have to work hard. They need to be high-res enough to satisfy users with retina displays, and they also need to be small enough in size that they don’t blow your mobile data cap in one fell swoop. Responsive web design attempts to navigate this tricky terrain, with varying degrees of success.
  • Google published findings, based on Google Analytics data, which suggest that load times have gotten marginally faster for desktop users, and up to 30% faster for mobile users.
  • Here at Strangeloop/Radware, we’ve found the opposite. Using WebPagetest, we’ve been testing the same 2,000 top Alexa-ranked ecommerce sites since 2010, and our data tells us that top ecommerce pages have gotten 22% slower in the past year.
  • This quick-and-dirty case study illustrates how network speed doesn’t directly correlate to load time. For example, download bandwidth increases 333% from DSL (1.5Mbps) to cable (5Mbps), yet the performance gain is only 12%.
  • Move scripts to the bottom of the page
  • It’s better to move scripts from the top to as low in the page as possible. One reason is to enable progressive rendering, but another is to achieve greater download parallelization.
  • Make JavaScript and CSS external
  • If users on your site have multiple page views per session and many of your pages re-use the same scripts and stylesheets, you could potentially benefit from cached external files. Pages that have few (perhaps only one) page view per session may find that inlining JavaScript and CSS results in faster end-user response times.
  • Reduce DNS lookups
  • Minify JavaScript
  • In addition to minifying external scripts, you can also minify inlined script blocks. Even if you’re already gzipping your scripts, minifying them will still reduce the size by at least 5%.
Pedro Gonçalves

Why Facebook Pages Are Seeing Lower Organic Reach, And What They Can Do About It - AllF... - 0 views

allfacebook.com/ann-sim-partners-reach_b128335

Facebook Social Marketing Social Media Management

shared by Pedro Gonçalves on 14 Jan 14 - No Cached
  • Facebook’s algorithm uses a number of factors to establish which posts should be shown to users. Previously called EdgeRank, the algorithm now has more than 1,000 contributing factors, but it still focuses on three main influences: affinity, weight, and Time.
  • Affinity is defined by a user’s relationship with the person or page that created the specific Facebook object — essentially how much the user interacts with that person or page.
  • Time, the last major factor, takes into account how recent the action occurred, which, in Facebook vernacular, is called time decay.
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  • Weight is determined by the object type — for instance whether it is a photo, video, or link.
  • There are a multitude of other factors that Facebook uses, such as how many of the user’s friends have interacted with the post or object, how popular the post is overall on Facebook, etc.
  • Despite the drop in organic reach, Sandmann stressed that the news is not all bad for page admins, as the users who do see their posts are the ones who are most likely to engage with them:
  • Despite the drop in organic reach many pages are seeing an increase in engagement on their pages and page posts. How can that be? Facebook’s algorithm is getting smarter. The small percentage of fans who do see a page’s posts are the fans who are most likely to engage with the post.
  • The update is essentially a double-edged sword: Although pages are reaching a smaller audience, they are reaching a more engaged audience and building a core group of engaged users.
  • First, create amazing content. Think about your audience and what they will find value in. Create content that entertains, informs, or otherwise engages your audience. This is a critical piece in boosting engagement and visibility on Facebook. Second, advertising on Facebook will be necessary to boost visibility on posts, attract more fans, and increase engagement. Clearly, Facebook is using these updates to also push page admins into buying Facebook advertising to increase page visibility. This will be a pain point for many marketers, but we can no longer think of Facebook as a free advertising platform.
  • Third, focus on building a core group of supporters. You shouldn’t focus on building up your page fans to have a high number of fans; be strategic in building a fan base. Fans who are not engaging with your page do not benefit your marketing goals or your page’s performance, and they may hurt page visibility.
  • Stay away from running like contests or giveaways that are not directly related to your business. You may gain a lot of fans, but they are there for the wrong reasons. Think of your page as a community, and target users who will find value in what your page has to offer and contribute to the community. The more engaged your audience is, the more visibility you will gain.
Pedro Gonçalves

Facebook Explains The Four Ways It Sorts The News Feed And Insists Average Page Reach D... - 0 views

techcrunch.com/...facebook-page-reach

Social Media Facebook EdgeRank

shared by Pedro Gonçalves on 20 Nov 12 - No Cached
  • to determine if any given Page post shows up in the news feed, Facebook looks at four main factors: If you interacted with an author’s posts before: If you Like every post by a Page that Facebook shows you, it will show you more from that Page. Other people’s reactions to a specific post: If everyone else on Facebook shown a post ignores it or complains, it’s less likely to show you that post. Your interaction with posts of the same type in the past: If you always Like photos, there’s a better chance you’ll see a photo posted by a Page. If that specific post has received complaints by other users who have seen it, or the Page who posted it has received lots complaints in the past, you’ll be less likely to see that post. This factor became a lot more prevalent starting in September 2012.
  • Let’s say Darth Vader posts that he and Luke Skywalker have confirmed that they are father and son. To determine if Yoda saw this post in his news feed, Facebook would look at: whether Yoda had Liked or interacted with posts by Vader in the past, if Leia and Han Solo Liked the relationship post by Vader when Facebook showed it to them, whether Yoda tended to interact with relationship change posts in the past, and whether anyone else had complained about Vader or this particular post by the Sith Lord.
  • There are conflicting reports about the actual impact on average reach, though. Some like PageLever say it stayed stable, but others like We Are Social and SocialBakers say that average Page reach decreased by as much as 50 percent.
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  • Facebook says it adjusts the way in which it weights these factors to try to increase engagement and general satisfaction. Maybe reach decreases on some Pages, but people interact more with the news feed overall, according to Cathcart.
  • Those analytics providers are only looking at a relatively small number of Pages, typically fewer than 1,000. Facebook’s product marketing director for ads Matt Idema tells me that what those studies show “all depends on what set of pages you’re looking at and how many pages you’re looking at. We’re looking at all the Pages. The median reach did not decrease.” But what about average reach? Idema shut that down saying that, as for the difference between median and average reach, “I’m pretty sure they’re indistinguishable.”
  • Even though it’s seeking to create a better user experience and confirmed it does not make changes to sell more ads, some businesses got hurt. This is the unfortunate reality of relying on a centralized marketing channel like Facebook opposed to an open channel like email. Facebook giveth, and Facebook taketh away.
Pedro Gonçalves

Eyetrack III - What You Most Need to Know - 0 views

www.poynterextra.org/...main.htm

Communication Efficacy Online Reading

shared by Pedro Gonçalves on 12 Aug 10 - Cached
  • visual breaks -- like a line or rule -- discouraged people from looking at items beyond the break, like a blurb. (This also affects ads
  • We found that when people look at blurbs under headlines on news homepages, they often only look at the left one-third of the blurb. In other words, most people just look at the first couple of words -- and only read on if they are engaged by those words.
  • People typically scan down a list of headlines, and often don't view entire headlines. If the first words engage them, they seem likely to read on. On average, a headline has less than a second of a site visitor's attention.
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  • For headlines -- especially longer ones -- it would appear that the first couple of words need to be real attention-grabbers if you want to capture eyes.
  • The same goes for blurbs -- perhaps even more so. Our findings about blurbs suggest that not only should they be kept short, but the first couple of words need to grab the viewer's attention.
  • Average blurb length varies from a low of about 10 words to a high of 25, with most sites coming in around 17.
  • Eyetrack III found that people do typically look beyond the first screen. What happens, however, is that their eyes typically scan lower portions of the page seeking something to grab their attention. Their eyes may fixate on an interesting headline or a stand-out word, but not on other content. Again, this points to the necessity of sharp headline writing.
  • Navigation placed at the top of a homepage performed best -- that is, it was seen by the highest percentage of test subjects and looked at for the longest duration.
  • It might surprise you to learn that in our testing we observed better usage (more eye fixations and longer viewing duration) with right-column navigation than left. While this might have been the novelty factor at play -- people aren't used to seeing right-side navigation -- it may indicate that there's no reason not to put navigation on the right side of the page and use the left column for editorial content or ads.
  • Most news sites run articles with medium-length paragraphs -- somewhere (loosely) around 45-50 words, or two or three sentences.
  • Shorter paragraphs performed better in Eyetrack III research than longer ones. Our data revealed that stories with short paragraphs received twice as many overall eye fixations as those with longer paragraphs. The longer paragraph format seems to discourage viewing.
  • the standard one-column format performed better in terms of number of eye fixations
  • What about photos on article pages? It might surprise you that our test subjects typically looked at text elements before their eyes landed on an accompanying photo, just like on homepages. As noted earlier, the reverse behavior (photos first) occurred in previous print eyetracking studies.
  • Finally, there's the use of summary descriptions (extended deck headlines, paragraph length) leading into articles. These were popular with our participants. When our testers encountered a story with a boldface introductory paragraph, 95 percent of them viewed all or part of it.
  • When people viewed an introductory paragraph for between 5 and 10 seconds -- as was often the case -- their average reading behavior of the rest of the article was about the same as when they viewed articles without a summary paragraph. The summary paragraph made no difference in terms of how much of the story was consumed.
  • The first thing we noticed is that people often ignore ads, but that depends a lot on placement. When they do gaze at an ad, it's usually for only 0.5 to 1.5 seconds. Good placement and the right format can improve those figures.
  • We found that ads in the top and left portions of a homepage received the most eye fixations. Right side ads didn't do as well, and ads at the bottom of the page were seen, typically, by only a small percentage of people.
  • Close proximity to popular editorial content really helped ads get seen. We noticed that when an ad was separated from editorial matter by either white space or a rule, the ad received fewer fixations than when there was no such barrier. Ads close to top-of-the-page headlines did well. A banner ad above the homepage flag didn't draw as many fixations as an ad that was below the flag and above editorial content.
  • Text ads were viewed most intently, of all the types we tested. On our test pages, text ads got an average eye duration time of nearly 7 seconds; the best display-type ad got only 1.6 seconds, on average.
  • Size matters. Bigger ads had a better chance of being seen. Small ads on the right side of homepages typically were seen by only one-third of our testers; the rest never once cast an eye on them. On article pages, "half-page" ads were the most intensely viewed by our test subjects. Yet, they were only seen 38 percent of the time; most people never looked at them. Article ads that got seen the most were ones inset into article text. "Skyscraper" ads (thin verticals running in the left or right column) came in third place.
Pedro Gonçalves

STUDY: News Feed Page Post Ads Deliver 26X More ROI, 20X Greater CTR Than Facebook Righ... - 0 views

allfacebook.com/ews-feed-page-post-ads_b120085

Facebook Ads Social Marketing

shared by Pedro Gonçalves on 18 Jun 13 - No Cached
  • Page post link ads delivered a 53 percent ROI. Page post photo ads delivered a 24 percent ROI. Page post ad units delivered an ROI 26 times higher than right-hand-side ad units. Page post photo ads delivered a 37 percent higher click-through rate than page post link ads and 20 times the CTR of right-hand-side ads. The cost per click for page post photo ads was 17 percent lower than the CPC for page post link ads and right-hand-side ads. Page post link ads delivered a 30 percent higher action rate than page post photo ads, as well as a 55 percent higher rate of purchasing users (the rate of purchasing users were 61 percent higher than for right-hand-side ads).
  • Page post link ads typically perform well for lead-generation campaigns and are effective in converting users off site. Page post photo ads are designed to capture attention with larger, more engaging photos, creating a seamless experience between paid, owned and earned media. Our study shows that this ad format demonstrated a higher CTR at a lower CPC resulting in a higher ROI than ads on the right-hand side.
Pedro Gonçalves

Cutting Through the Crowds on Facebook News Feeds | Social Media Statistics & Metrics |... - 0 views

www.socialbakers.com/...-crowds-on-facebook-news-feeds

Facebook Social Marketing

shared by Pedro Gonçalves on 03 Jun 13 - No Cached
  • In 2009, a Facebook account holder Liked, on average, 4.5 Pages. In just four years, this number increased to an average of 40 Pages! Not only that, but brands have been expanding their use of social media in their marketing campaigns, raising the number of Facebook posts that they make from an average of five times per month to 36. This means that in 2009, Facebook users only had to keep up with a manageable 23 updates per month, whereas they are currently bombarded with around 1 440 updates per month!
  • Some countries Like even more Pages than the 40 Page average, making them even harder to penetrate. The US takes the lead, Liking a whopping 70 Pages! The UK and France are tied, with their Facebook users Liking 48 Pages, on average. Mexican Facebook users follow closely, Liking an average of 41 Pages.
  • Our figures show that FMCG brands in the US may find it especially difficult to reach their fans, as this industry has the most Liked Pages.
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  • You must also determine which content is most engaging for your business, and create posts geared toward this. Photos are generally the most engaging type of Facebook post and will be all the more important once the new Facebook News Feed is launched, as as your photos will be more conspicuous. Creating content that your fans can engage with (Share, Comment, and Like) and that will, in turn, increase the reach of the post. The more engaging posts will appear more prominently in the News Feeds of the friends of your fans, allowing you to grow your fan base, and spread your message to more Facebook users.
  • more posts don’t always mean higher engagement. Fans may get overwhelmed if your posts are cluttering their News Feeds and it may ultimately result in them Unliking your Page.
  • The huge increase in brands’ posts over the years makes it all the more difficult to engage your fans. With the congestion users receive in their New Feeds, brands must pay attention to the content they are posting, the frequency, and the times of day.
Pedro Gonçalves

Facebook: Pages may see organic reach decline - Inside Facebook - 0 views

www.insidefacebook.com/...-may-see-organic-reach-decline

Facebook Content Marketing Social Marketing

shared by Pedro Gonçalves on 08 Dec 13 - No Cached
  • The site posted on its Facebook for Business blog that pages will likely soon see a decrease in organic reach as a result of recent changes to the News Feed algorithm.
  • People are connecting and sharing more than ever. On a given day, when someone visits News Feed, there are an average of 1,5001 possible stories we can show. As a result, competition for each News Feed story is increasing. Because the content in News Feed is always changing, and we’re seeing more people sharing more content, Pages will likely see changes in distribution. For many Pages, this includes a decline in organic reach. We expect this trend to continue as the competition for each story remains strong and we focus on quality. Facebook notes that page admins can try advertising and boosting posts to make up for the loss in reach: As the dynamic nature of News Feed continues to follow people’s patterns of sharing, Page owners should continue using the most effective strategy to reach the right people: a combination of engaging Page posts and advertising to promote your message more broadly. Advertising lets Pages reach the fans they already have and find new customers as well.
Pedro Gonçalves

Studies show more than 40 percent decreased organic reach on Facebook - Inside Facebook - 0 views

www.insidefacebook.com/...ased-organic-reach-on-facebook

Facebook Social Marketing Content Marketing

shared by Pedro Gonçalves on 27 Dec 13 - No Cached
  • Earlier this month, Facebook noted that pages could see a decrease in organic reach as a result of News Feed algorithm tweaks that favor newsworthy posts. However, many marketers and Facebook page admins are reporting that they’re seeing an extreme drop in organic reach — as much as 44 percent in some cases — and it has been going on for months.
  • Komfo, a social marketing firm, studied fan penetration among 5,000 Facebook pages of various sizes from August through November with the following findings: 42% decrease in fan penetration 31% increase in viral amplification 28% increase in clickthrough rate (CTR)
  • In Komfo we do not doubt that the survey shows that there is no “free lunch” on Facebook anymore, and companies have to start investing in Facebook advertising if they want to reach the right audience with their content. However, it also shows that the Facebook’s algorithms, that control what we see in our newsfeed, have been improved. Facebook has become better at showing a page’s content to the most engaged users. Jim Tobin, President of Ignite Social Media, also saw significant drops in organic reach. In a study of 689 posts of 21 large brand pages found that in the week of Facebook’s announcement, organic reach dipped an average of 44 percent. Tobin pointed out that the previously accepted reach percentage of 16 percent can now be as low as 3 percent.
Pedro Gonçalves

12 Best Practices For Media Companies' Facebook Pages - AllFacebook - 0 views

allfacebook.com/ctices-media-companies_b116510

Facebook Content Strategy Social Media Management Engagement

shared by Pedro Gonçalves on 03 May 13 - No Cached
  • Share breaking news updates: Lavrusik and Hershkowitz said posts that included the terms “breaking” or “breaking news” saw engagement 57 percent higher than non-breaking news posts
  • Use a conversational tone and include analysis: Posts with a personal tone or clever language saw engagement of 120 percent above the average, and posts with analysis received 20 percent more referral clicks.
  • Start conversations by asking questions and responding: Posts with prompts for conversation of questions saw engagement 70 percent above the average
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  • Share stories visually with photos and videos to grab users’ attention: Posts with photos receive 50 percent more likes.
  • Page targeting enables page admins to publish stories into the News Feeds of audiences who are going to be most interested in the content, without inundating those who may not.
  • Use engaging thumbnails for link stories: Links with thumbnails received 65 percent more likes and 50 percent more comments.
  • Vary your post type — users don’t engage the same way with every post: Mix it up between status updates, links, polls, and photos.
  • Optimize your page for Graph Search and mobile: Ensure that your page description is complete and up-to-date, which will help its performance in Graph Search results, and pin posts to ensure that users see the most important stories on both desktop and mobile.
Pedro Gonçalves

New Defaults In Web Design - How Much Has The Web Really Changed? | Smashing Magazine - 0 views

www.smashingmagazine.com/...new-defaults-web-design

Web Design Responsive Design

shared by Pedro Gonçalves on 05 Jun 13 - No Cached
  • Many mouseover interactions are completely dysfunctional on a touch device
  • Instead of buying a state of the art monitor, buying a cheap monitor and several low-end devices to test your work on might be a better investment.
  • Hiding content and showing it on mouseover was considered to be a decent design pattern
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  • When you hover over a menu item, a submenu appears. But apart from hovering over an item, you can also simply click on it to follow the link. Now, what should happen when you tap on the item with a touch device? Should the submenus appear, or should the link activate? Or both? Or should something else happen? On iOS, something else happens. The first time you tap a link like that, the submenu appears; in other words, the hover event fires. You have to tap a second time to actually follow the link. This is confusing, and not many people will tap a second time. On Android, the submenu appears and the link is followed simultaneously. I don’t have to explain to you that this is confusing.
  • It’s very well possible to think of complex solutions11 whereby you define different interactions for different input devices. But the better solution, I think, is to make sure that the default interaction, the activate event, just works for everybody. If you really need to, you could choose to enhance this default experience for certain users.
  • The same principle that we follow for interactions — whereby we design the activate event first and enhance it later — applies to graphic design. We should start designing the things that we know everyone will see. That’s the content. No matter how big or small a screen is and no matter how minimal the feature set of a browser, it will be able to show letters.
  • rather than pollute the page with all kinds of links to get people out of there, we should really focus on that thing in the middle. Make sure it works. Make sure it looks good. Make sure it’s readable.
  • you start by designing the relationship between the different font sizes.
  • When the typography is done, you would start designing the layout for bigger screens; you can think of this as an enhancement for people with bigger screens. And after that, when the different layouts are done, you could add the paint. And by paint, I mean color, gradients, borders, etc.
  • When I say to start with typography, I don’t mean that you aren’t allowed to think about paint at the same time. Rather, I’m trying to find the things that all of these different devices, with all of their different screen sizes and all of their different features, have in common. It just seems logical to first design this shared core thoroughly. The strange thing is that this core is often overlooked: Web professionals tend to view their own creations with top-of-the-line devices with up-to-date browsers. They see only the enhancements. The shared core with the basic experience is often invisible.
  • All of the things we created first — the navigation, the widgets, the footer — they all helped the visitor to leave the page. But the visitor probably wanted to be there! That was weird.
  • To build a responsive website that works on all kinds of screens, designing for a small screen first is easiest. It forces you to focus on what’s really important: if it doesn’t fit in this small square, it is probably not terribly important. It forces you to think better about hierarchy, about the right order of components on the page.
  • Once you’re done with the content, you can start to ask yourself whether this content needs a header. Or a logo. Or subnavigation. Does it need navigation at all? And does it really need all of those widgets? The answer to that last question is “No.” I’ve never understood what those widgets are for. I have never seen a useful widget. I have never seen a widget that’s better than white space.
  • does the logo really need to be at the top16 of every page? It could very well go in the footer on many websites
  • the option to add extra luggage to a flight booking might be most effective right there in the overview of the flight, instead of in the middle of a list of links somewhere on the left of the page.
  • does the main navigation look more important than the main content? Most of the time it shouldn’t be, and I usually consider the navigation to be footer content.
Pedro Gonçalves

The Ideal Length for All Online Content - 0 views

blog.bufferapp.com/ng-online-according-to-science

Email Marketing Social Media Social Marketing Content Strategy

shared by Pedro Gonçalves on 02 Apr 14 - No Cached
  • 100 characters is the engagement sweet spot for a tweet. 
  • a spike in retweets among those in the 71-100 character range—so-called “medium” length tweets. These medium tweets have enough characters for the original poster to say something of value and for the person retweeting to add commentary as well.
  • the ultra-short 40-character posts received 86 percent higher engagement than others.
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  • In the last update, Google changed the layout of posts so that you only see three lines of the original post before you see “Read more” link. In other words, your first sentence has to be a gripping teaser to get people to click “Read More.”
  • The ideal length of a Google+ headline is less than 60 characters To maximize the readability and appearance of your posts on Google+, you may want to keep your text on one line.
  • Many different studies over the years have confirmed that shorter posts are better on Facebook.
  • Writing for KISSmetrics, headline expert Bnonn cites usability research revealing we don’t only scan body copy, we also scan headlines. As such, we tend to absorb only the first three words and the last three words of a headline. If you want to maximize the chance that your entire headline gets read, keep your headline to six words.
  • some of the highest-converting headlines on the web are as long as 30 words. As a rule, if it won’t fit in a tweet it’s too long. But let me suggest that rather than worrying about length you should worry about making every word count. Especially the first and last 3.
  • The ideal length of a blog post is 7 minutes, 1,600 words
  • to ensure maximum comprehension and the appearance of simplicity, the perfect line length ranges between 40 and 55 characters per line, or in other words, a content column that varies between 250-350 pixels wide (it depends on font size and choice).
  • Consider that shorter lines appear as less work for the reader; they make it easier to focus and to jump quickly from one line to the next. Opening paragraphs with larger fonts—and therefore fewer characters per line—are like a a running start to reading a piece of content. This style gets readers  hooked with an easy-to-read opening paragraph, then you can adjust the line width from there.
  • In September 2012, MailChimp published the following headline on its blog: Subject Line Length Means Absolutely Nothing. This was quite the authoritative statement, but MailChimp had the data to back it up.
  • Beyond the perfect length, you can also adhere to best practices. In general, a 50-character maximum is recommended, although MailChimp does point out that there can be exceptions: The general rule of thumb in email marketing is to keep your subject line to 50 characters or less. Our analysis found this to generally be the rule. The exception was for highly targeted audiences, where the reader apparently appreciated the additional information in the subject line.
  • The ideal length of a title tag is 55 characters Title tags are the bits of text that define your page on a search results page. Brick-and-mortar stores have business names; your web page has a title tag. Recent changes to the design of Google’s results pages mean that the maximum length for titles is around 60 characters. If your title exceeds 60 characters, it will get truncated with an ellipse.
  • Finding a hard-and-fast rule for the maximum recommendation of a title tag isn’t as easy as you’d think. Quick typography lesson: Google uses Arial for the titles on its results pages, Arial is a proportionally-spaced font, meaning that different letters take up different width. A lowercase “i” is going to be narrower than a lowercase “w.” Therefore, the actual letters in your title will change the maximum allowable characters that can fit on one line.
Pedro Gonçalves

Facebook - 0 views

www.facebook.com/page_guidelines.php

Facebook Facebook Promotions

shared by Pedro Gonçalves on 14 Sep 12 - No Cached
    • Pedro Gonçalves
      Pedro Gonçalves on 14 Sep 12
       
      Doesn't the point iv conflict with the point iii?
  • If you use Facebook to communicate about or administer a promotion (such as a contest or sweepstakes)
  • Promotions on Facebook must be administered within Apps on Facebook.com, either on a Canvas Page or a Page App. ii.    Promotions on Facebook must include the following: a.    A complete release of Facebook by each entrant or participant. b.    Acknowledgment that the promotion is in no way sponsored, endorsed or administered by, or associated with, Facebook. c.    Disclosure that the participant is providing information to [disclose recipient(s) of information] and not to Facebook. iii.    You must not condition registration or entry upon the user taking any action using any Facebook features or functionality other than liking a Page, checking in to a Place, or connecting to your app. For example, you must not condition registration or entry upon the user liking a Wall post, or commenting or uploading a photo on a Wall.
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  • You must not use Facebook features or functionality as a promotion’s registration or entry mechanism. For example, the act of liking a Page or checking in to a Place cannot automatically register or enter a promotion participant. v.    You must not use Facebook features or functionality, such as the Like button, as a voting mechanism for a promotion. vi.    You must not notify winners through Facebook, such as through Facebook messages, chat, or posts on profiles (timelines) or Pages. vii.    Definitions: a.    By “administration” we mean the operation of any element of the promotion, such as collecting entries, conducting a drawing, judging entries, or notifying winners. b.    By “communication” we mean promoting, advertising or referencing a promotion in any way on Facebook, e.g., in ads, on a Page, or in a Wall post.
Pedro Gonçalves

STUDY: YouTube Pummels Facebook In Post-Click Engagement - AllFacebook - 0 views

allfacebook.com/-post-click-engagement_b130539

Social Media Social Marketing

shared by Pedro Gonçalves on 02 Apr 14 - No Cached
  • a recent study by Shareaholic found that post-click engagement with Facebook posts trailed far behind the results delivered by YouTube, and also lagged behind Google Plus, LinkedIn, and Twitter. Shareaholic examined six months’ worth of data from more than 200,000 websites reaching more than 250 million unique monthly visitors
  • YouTube drives the most engaged traffic. These referrals have the lowest average bounce rate (43.19 percent), the highest pages per visit (2.99), and the longest visit duration (227.82 seconds).
  • video watchers are especially receptive to links within video descriptions that complement the audio and visual content they just consumed.
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  • Although Google Plus and LinkedIn drive the fewest social referrals, they bring in some of the best visitors: Google Plus users, on average, find themselves spending north of three minutes diving into things shared by connections in their circles. They also visit 2.45 pages during each visit, and bounce only 50.63 percent of the time. LinkedIn users generally spend 2 minutes and 13 seconds on each link they click, viewing 2.23 pages with each visit and bouncing 51.28 percent of the time. Although many sites see minimal traffic from both Google Plus and LinkedIn, now may be the time to invest in building communities within those networks if engagement really matters to your business.
  • A referral from Twitter is as good as a referral from Facebook — at least, in terms of bounce rate, pages per visit, and time on site
  • Pinterest isn’t exactly the social media golden child we all play it up to be: Coming in sixth, pinners bounce as often as Facebook users and tweeps do, but view fewer pages per visit (1.71), and they spend considerably less time on site (64.67 seconds) than almost all of its counterparts, with the exception of StumbleUpon.
  • StumbleUpon drives the least engaged referrals: Post-click, users view a meager 1.5 pages per visit and spend 54.09 seconds on site. It would appear that StumbleUpon’s click-heavy — to “stumble,” “like,” or “dislike” — focus makes users trigger-happy to a fault. Users stumble onto the next thing rather than immersing themselves in the webpage StumbleUpon recommends.
Pedro Gonçalves

The Average Web Page Loads in 2.45 Seconds Google Reveals - 0 views

news.softpedia.com/...ds-Google-Reveals-265446.shtml

Web Page Speed Web Development

shared by Pedro Gonçalves on 13 Mar 14 - No Cached
  • The median page load time  for desktop websites, as measured by Google Analytics, is about 2.45 seconds. That means that half the pages measured were faster than this, while the other half were slower. The mean page load is about 6.4 seconds.
  • On mobile, things are significantly slower, the median page load is about 4.4 seconds, while the mean is above 10 seconds.
Pedro Gonçalves

Cost Per Like: A Subjective Valuation of Your Facebook Fans - 0 views

mashable.com/...facebook-cost-per-like

Social Marketing

shared by Pedro Gonçalves on 29 Apr 13 - No Cached
  • Earlier this month, Facebook unveiled a new metric for evaluating advertising campaigns on Facebook, called "cost per action" (CPA). Now, advertisers can pay not just for impressions or click-throughs, but for specific actions they want consumers to perform once they've seen an ad — including becoming a fan of a Page. For example, an advertiser could specify it is willing to pay $2.00 for a "Like" — that is, for a new fan on its company or product Page — and only pay when the Page gets a new fan. Other actions include Offer claims and clicks on links to third-party sites.
  • a fan is worth an average of $174 to a company. But as the chart below shows, the value of a fan can differ widely across companies:
  • "Marketers should define the value of a fan based on how it impacts the key criteria that determines the success or failure of their business," says Kalehoff. Specifically, marketers should measure the spending habits of fans versus non-fans, to see if fans are more likely to make a purchase, make purchases at great amounts and/or purchase repeatedly. Advocacy — the probability of a customer recommending a product to others, and the probability of that recommendation to affect sales — is another key metric. Another area that is more difficult to measure is brand affinity — that is, the emotional draw that a customer feels towards a brand because of the relationship that develops between brands and fans over Facebook. If positive brand affinity tends to be a powerful sales indicator on other channels, it may be worth cultivating on Facebook, too.
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  • Once a company has determined how much a certain target prospect worth, it needs to decide the amount of money it wants to spend to acquire and continue to communicate with that fan. "[Marketers] really need to bring it down to a cost equation," says Kalehoff. "No one else can say what a fan is worth except the brand itself, and then it has to decide what to spend to acquire fans, and what it costs to communicate with them once a day or week to remind them to buy throughout the year."
  • A luxury fashion brand's fanbase, for instance, might be made up a small percentage of actual buyers and a greater number of aspirational consumers who will never purchase any goods from the company. Likewise, a T-shirt company may have some fans that will only ever purchase one T-shirt, while other fans may purchase repeatedly over months and years. Thus, it's important to target the consumers most likely to purchase, and to measure the behavior of fan groups over a long time period of time to get a better picture of their lifetime value.
  • acquiring a fan is just one part of the cost equation. Once a fan has been acquired, companies need to calculate the costs of developing compelling content to keep that fan coming back. Once these costs have been measured, it's then important for a company to see if fan acquisition is the most efficient way to achieve its goal, versus, say, paying for click-throughs to third-party sites. "You might see 1% of your homepage click-throughs end up converting, while 20% of people who watch a tutorial on your Facebook page end up converting,"
  • Don't acquire for the sake of acquiring — use metrics to support your Facebook strategy.
Pedro Gonçalves

Google Launches Content Recommendation Engine For Mobile Sites, Powered By Google+ | Te... - 0 views

techcrunch.com/...mobile-sites-powered-by-google

Google+ Mobile Web Online Publishing Web Development

shared by Pedro Gonçalves on 14 May 13 - No Cached
  • Google’s launch partner for this service is Forbes, but others can implement these recommendations by just adding a single line of code to their mobile sites.
  • These recommendations, Sternberg told me, are based on social recommendations on the site from your friends on Google+ (only if you are signed in, of course), what the story you just read was about, the story’s author and some of Google’s “secret sauce.”
  • The new Google+-based recommendations, interestingly, only appear once a reader slides back up on a page. This, Google’s analytics show, is a pretty good indicator that a user has finished reading a post (even if there is still more text left on the page). The recommendation widget then slides up from the bottom and one extra click brings up more relevant items for the page. The other option is to show the widget after a user scrolls past a configurable CSS entity.
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  • Publishers will be able to manage the recommendations widget from their Google+ publisher accounts. From there, they can decide when exactly the widget should appear and manage a list of pages where the widget shouldn’t appear, as well as a list of pages that should never appear in recommendations.
Pedro Gonçalves

Twitter Is About To Officially Launch Retargeted Ads [Update: Confirmed] | TechCrunch - 0 views

techcrunch.com/...twitter-retargeted-ads

Twitter Online Advertising Mobile Advertising Ad Retargeting

shared by Pedro Gonçalves on 06 Dec 13 - No Cached
  • Twitter has confirmed our scoop with the announcement of Tailored Audiences - its name for retargeted ads. Available globally to all advertisers via a slew of adtech startup partners, advertisers will be able to target recent visitors to their websites with retargeted Promoted Tweets and Promoted Accounts.
  • Twitter’s users are on mobile. Seventy percent of its ad revenue already comes from the small screens, and it likely follows that a majority of engagement is on mobile, too.
  • retargeting happens like this. You visit a website, say a travel booking site, and look at a page for buying a flight to Hawaii. You chicken out at the last minute, don’t buy, and navigate away, but the site has dropped a cookie for that Hawaii flight page on your browser. Then, when you visit other sites or social networks that run retargeted ads, they detect that cookie, and the travel site can show you an ad saying “It’s cold in SF. Wouldn’t a vacation to Hawaii be nice?” to try to get you to pull the trigger and buy the flight it knows you were already interested in. But without cookies on mobile, you can’t retarget there… …unless you can tie the identity of a mobile user to what they do on the computer. And Twitter can. It’s one of the few hugely popular services that individuals access from multiple types of devices.
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  • Essentially, when you log into your account on your full-size computer, Twitter will analyze the cookies in your browser to see where you’ve been on the non-mobile web. Then, when you log in to that same account on mobile, it can still use your web cookies to hit you with retargeted ads.
  • mobile phones don’t have the ability to set cookies so you can’t do retargeting.
  • Facebook only recently began allowing retargeted ads on mobile, and only through a “custom audiences” targeting program separate from FBX.
  • Lucky for Twitter, most of what people do on it is public, so it doesn’t spark the same privacy concerns as Facebook. Twitter also offers an opt-out of retargeting under Promoted Content on its Security And Privacy settings page. Plus it honors Do Not Track for users that enable it in their browsers.
  • It’s also recently opened up keyword targeting so advertisers can reach people who’ve tweeted certain words. Between keyword targeting and cookie retargeting, Twitter is breaking out of the demand generation and into the lucrative demand fulfillment part of the advertising funnel where Google’s search ad business lives. Advertisers are willing to pay top dollar if you can deliver them someone ready to buy their product. And there’s no better sign of someone’s intent to buy than having recently visited a site and almost made the purchase already. Cookies could be very tasty for Twitter.
Pedro Gonçalves

A scientific guide to posting tweets, Facebook posts, emails and blog posts at the best... - 0 views

thenextweb.com/...nd-blog-posts-at-the-best-time

Social Media Management Email Marketing Online Publishing Content Strategy Social Media

shared by Pedro Gonçalves on 09 Sep 13 - No Cached
  • In terms of specific days and times to post on Facebook, here are some of the stats I found: Engagement rates are 18% higher on Thursdays and Fridays. I love the way this was explained in Buddy Media’s study: as they put it, “the less people want to be at work, the more they are on Facebook!”
  • Another study found that engagement was 32% higher on weekends, so the end of the week is definitely a good rough guide to start experimenting with.
  • The best time of day to post on Facebook is debatable, with stats ranging from 1pm to get the most shares, to 3pm to get more clicks, to the broader suggestion of anytime between 9am and 7pm. It seems that this generally points to early afternoon being a solid time to post, and anytime after dinner and before work being a long shot.
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  • Twitter engagement for brands is 17% higher on weekends.
  • weekdays provide 14% more engagement than weekends, so this is definitely one you’ll want to test on your audience.
  • retweets have been shown to be highest around 5pm.
  • For click-throughs, the best times seem to be around noon and 6pm.
  • Twitter did an interesting study of these users and found that they are 181% more likely to be on Twitter during their commute.
  • They’re also 119% more likely to use Twitter during school or work hours.
  • 10pm–6am: This is the dead zone, when hardly any emails get opened. 6am–10am: Consumer-based marketing emails are best sent early in the morning. 10am-noon: Most people are working, and probably won’t open your email. Noon–2pm: News and magazine updates are popular during lunch breaks. 2–3pm: After lunch lots of people buckle down and ignore their inbox. 3–5pm: Property and financial-related offers are best sent in the early afternoon. 5–7pm: Holiday promotions & B2B promotions get opened mostly in the early evening. 7–10pm: Consumer promotions are popular again after dinner.
  •  23.63% of emails are opened within an hour of being received, this is something we definitely want to get right.
  • For more general emails, open rates, click-through rates and abuse reports were all found to be highest during early mornings and on weekends.
  • In a different study by MailChimp open rates were shown to be noticeably lower on weekends.
  • open rates increased after 12pm, and were highest between 2pm and 5pm.
  • A GetResponse study backed this up by showing that open rates drop off slightly, and click-through rates drop significantly on weekends. GetResponse found that Thursday is the best day for both open rates and click-throughs.
  • 70% of users say they read blogs in the morning More men read blogs at night than women Mondays are the highest traffic days for an average blog 11am is usually the highest traffic hour for an average blog Comments are usually highest on Saturdays and around 9am on most days Blogs that post more than once per day have a higher chance of inbound links and more unique views
Pedro Gonçalves

Study: Facebook Pages Shouldn't Post More Than 1x Every 3 hours | TechCrunch - 0 views

techcrunch.com/...ten-should-facebook-pages-post

Facebook Social Media

shared by Pedro Gonçalves on 18 Jan 12 - No Cached
  • The average news feed post by a Facebook Page receives Likes and comments for 3 hours after being published. To maximize the engagement, impressions, and traffic driven by the news feed, Facebook Page owners should wait at least 3 hours between posts.
  • The study found that the average post lifetime was 3 hours and 7 minutes, while the median post lifetime is 2 hours and 56 minutes. After a post’s death, it only receive a trickle of engagement and there’s little lost by posting again.
  • To be clear, the 3 hour average post lifetime does not mean Page owners should post every 3 hours. 8 posts a day would likely force them to churn out low quality content and annoy their fans. Optimal post frequency is a separate question depending on a Page’s audience, content production skills, its post lifetime but also other factors.
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  • Most Page owners stick to roughly 2 to 3 posts a day. Update: News outlets and those producing urgent content like TechCrunch should post more often, but they will end up cannibalizing some of the engagement from their past posts.
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