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Tracking Authors in Wordpress with Google Analytics Event Tracking

Here is a script for tracking authors in Wordpress using Google Analytics Event Tracking. I through this together in response to a blog post by Douglas Karr on tracking authors in Wordpress. Doug presents a way to do this using spoofed pageviews and a separate profile. I could see a use case for that method also.

If you aren’t familiar with Doug’s blog, I highly recommend it. A great resource for digital marketers, with frequent posts on SEO, analytics, social media and a variety of other subjects.

Web Analytics Wednesday at eROI

Just a quick post to promote the first Web Analtyics Wednesday of 2010 in Portland. It’s this upcoming Wednesday, January 27th, at eROI.  I’ll be giving a short presentation on real-time web analytics reporting; an overview tools available for tracking and reporting, some simple use examples, and considerations for those looking to implement real-time tracking and analyze the data. Please come by if you’re in Portland. Oh, did I mention the free beer and food (pizza probably)? Hope to see you there.

Tags: real-time web analtyics, Web Analytics Wednesday

Happy Holidays: from Google, but for Facebook

Happy Holidays everyone. I just wanted to extend a quick holiday greeting.  I’m going to borrow the holiday greeting image from Google Analytics, because I like it so much. It is from Google Analytics’ Happy Holidays post to everyone.

Biggest takeaway from the 2009 holiday season? For me it is the fact that according to Hitwise, Facebook was the number one most visited site on the web on Christmas day. Phenomenal when you take into account the incident in Detroit, which presumably drove loads of traffic to Google and the major news sites.

What does Facebook’s dominance mean? Well, nothing that we didn’t know already, but perhaps a slap in the face for some media providers, that rather than focusing on your own sites, maybe looking for creative ways to integrate into your audience member’s Facebook visits is where the focus should be.

Just some food for thought; I’d gladly write a longer post but we’re scrambling to finish up year-end activities at SwellPath before the first monthly reporting session of the new year hits. Enjoy the rest of 2009 everyone and best wishes for a wonderfully successful 2010.

Tags: Christmas web traffic, Facebook, Google Analytics

DevGroup NW Meeting: Beyond the Pageview

I’ll be presenting on integrating web analytics into interactive design and development next week at the DevGroup NW monthly meeting.  It’s Thursday, March 19th, and the actual title is Beyond the Pageview: What’s Going On with Your Dynamic Content?

Among the principles I’ll be covering are how to “think” analytics from the early stages of site design and development, how to actually place analytics code into AJAX and Flash applications, and how to really benefit from the ensuing reporting and analysis.  The complete description and all other important information can be found here: http://www.devgroupnw.org/wp/?cat=3

Hope to see you there.

Tags: AJAX, DevGroup NW, Flash, web analytics presentations

Skittles New Site All About Social Media

If you haven’t seen the new Skittles.com I highly suggest you check it out.  It’s a fascinating concept that is pretty much entirely focused on Skittles presence in social media sites, rather than the Skittles domain itself. The “Products” links all direct to Wikipedia, the “Friends” link takes you their Facebook page, and the main underlying “home” page is Twitter search.  “Media” links to “Photos” on Flickr and “Videos” on YouTube.

What is remarkable about this is as much the concept as the faith in the Twitter search application not drastically changing in the near future.  Many of the rumors about Twitter’s monetization needs are centered on creating revenue from the search application in some way.

Another concern Skittles may have is the ability for anyone to spam their “home page” by simply including the “skittles” keyword.  There is a splendid example in the screenshot I captured.

Regardless, hat’s off to Skittles and whatever agency developed this concept.  I submitted a contact form on the “site” to see who it was, but no reply yet.

Tags: branding, social media, social media marketing, Twitter search