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Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) from Google Speeds Load Times, Improves Engagement
According to Kissmetrics, nearly 40% of people abandon a website that takes more than three seconds to load. Many websites today, when viewed on a mobile device such as a smartphone or tablet, take significantly more time than that, due to content loading from one or more distribution networks, ads from another, and possibly fonts, beacons, and trackers from yet other sources.

By the time all the data loads up and gets rendered on screen, it’s quite possible that the user has already lost interest, or has moved on to other content elsewhere.

That’s why, in an effort to improve the mobile web experience, Google has introduced an open-source initiative called Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) to speed things up considerably, and hopes to roll it out in February 2016 to all mobile users. Working with content publishers, web developers, creators and consumers, the project aims to improve the mobile content ecosystem in general.

According to Paul Bakaus, Team Lead at Chrome DevTools and the AMP project at Google, “To users, Content is King, and the User Experience is Queen.” With that in mind, his team developed AMP with the following goals:
- It needs to make websites faster
- It needs to be easily validated
- It must be easy to implement
- It needs strong incentives
- It needs to embrace the open Web, not replace it
Without getting into the technical underpinnings here, we know that AMP implements RAIL, and is designed to control the page load chain for optimized loading times. One of the ways this is accomplished is by reducing the relaying and resizing of images due to different mobile screen aspect ratios and resolutions. Also, content above the fold gets priority, and the system follows a “Lazy loaded, accelerated approach” to ad loading.

According to its creators, AMP is guaranteed to perform well, and is well supported by existing browsers and operating systems. Google has put in place an easy to use code library that developers can use to make their mobile sites load faster.

These are interesting times in the mobile content space, and we look forward to great things from AMP and other initiatives that decrease load times and provide a more engaging experience on mobile devices.
December 15, 2015
Tips to Improve Your Website Bounce Rate
“What is your site’s Bounce Rate?” is probably a question that many webmasters have been asked. Simply defined, it’s the percentage of visitors who land on your site and then leave without visiting any other page. It is one of the most important site metrics, and webmasters and digital marketers try to keep that number as low as possible.

Bounce rates are significant because they tell search engines that visitors are not finding what they were looking for on your site, or did not find the content compelling enough to check out any other pages. A high rate makes search engines more likely to conclude that your website doesn’t have content for specific topics or keywords, which then results in falling search rankings for your site.

A website’s overall bounce rate is the average of bounce rates for all its pages. Free tools such as Google Analytics, Pingdom, as well as paid tools like Clicky can analyze and compute your website’s bounce rate. Once you have figured out your site’s bounce rate, it can be used as a benchmark to gauge improvements over time.

A bounce rate over 50% is considered to be excessive, while 40–50% is considered average, and a rate under 40% means that your site is doing well.

Tips to improve your website’s bounce rate
1. Use a tag line for your business, which helps visitors get an idea about its products and/ or services, and sets expectations. Ideally, your tag line should be below your logo.
2. The Title and Description of the page should clearly define the content on it. This makes more users click on your link in search results.
3. Provide links from the home page to other sections of the site, e.g., products, services, blog, resources, and so on, and use page descriptions of two to three lines for each of them.
4. Don’t clutter the page with too much information or very long paragraphs. It is also a good practice to use images that are descriptive and can help summarize content.
5. It is highly advisable not to use auto-play for audio and video content on your site, which may force some visitors to leave the page immediately.
6. Don’t make it mandatory for visitors to provide an email ID, phone number, or other information to enter your site. Most people are not comfortable with sharing contact information and will often exit sites that ask for it.
7. Optimize the page load time. Ideally, it should take under 2 seconds to load a page. Surveys show that pages with high load times have high bounce rates.
8. It is recommended not to display pop up ads, which are annoying to visitors.
9. External or third-party links should open in new browser tabs. This helps keep visitors on your site for further engagement.
10. Provide simple and easy site navigation. Complicated navigation schemes may force users to abandon the site.
11. Your website must be mobile friendly. According to Google, the bulk of searches today take place through smartphones. This will help reduce the bounce rate for users on mobile devices.
12. The search option within your site should be easy to find and use.
13. Having unique and engaging content will greatly enhance time spent by visitors on your site, encouraging visitors to explore other sections and perhaps share your content with their friends on social media.
These recommendations will not only improve a site’s bounce rate and user engagement, but also help improve its keyword rankings. Try these and improve your website bounce rate!
December 3, 2015
Best of the Week | How Marketo Ad Bridge Enables To Target The Right Audience, and much more…
This week’s hot news, events and videos from the online marketing and social media world.

From the Position² Blog This Week:

How Marketo Ad Bridge Enables To Target The Right Audience

Get better performance from your remarketing ads by tailoring them to your target audience’s interests and needs. Read how Marketo’s Ad Bridge has enabled marketers to get more out of their ad budgets.
Best of the Week Video

If you’re not yet thinking about the ramifications of using hosted blog platforms for your content versus your own site, now’s your chance to start. In this video, Rand Fishkin explores the boons and pitfalls of using outside websites to distribute and share your content.
Persona Based Lead Scoring: The Mystery and the Method

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November 30, 2015
Snapchat Story Explorer Offers New Perspectives on Events

Snapchat continues to gain ground in the social space, taking on its more established rivals and becoming more than just a photo sharing app. Its newest feature, Story Explorer, is a small but significant new feature that the company hopes will become popular with its relatively young user base.

Story Explorer builds on Stories, Snapchat’s collective news story tool. When a user uploads a snap of a live Story, all other snaps related to that Story taken by other users are linked with it. Story Explorer allows a user to swipe up to see different perspectives on the same event, so they can get all the information they need with just a few taps.

Making the switch

Snapchat has one considerable advantage over Twitter: it relies on big, beautiful pictures and videos, rather than reams of text, hashtags and links. That makes Story Explorer a compelling prospect, particularly when you consider the demographics of its target market and they way they tend to consume news.

The Story Explorer tool is obviously targeted at people who like to use Snapchat to share photos of public events such as sports fixtures and concerts. This lets everyone build a hive of information around a theme in real time. It could also be used to find out more about a breaking news story by linking uploads from multiple Snapchat users, the kind of thing that made Twitter popular with news junkies.

It looks like the Story Explorer feature can’t be entirely automated yet; human curators need to select stories that genuinely overlap, while weeding out the inevitable sub-par content. Over time, Snapchat may find a way to use location and image scanning techniques to automatically link Stories together without as much reliance on curators. This will help Snapchat compete with Instagram and Twitter to become a social source of breaking news.

The changing audience

It’s strange to think that Snapchat had something of a seedy reputation only a few years ago. Content sent between users disappeared 10 seconds after being opened, which made Snapchat the ideal platform for sharing content you probably wouldn’t want your mom to see.

At the height of the controversy, the FBI warned that Snapchat was being used by pedophiles, which only served to reinforce its unsavory reputation.

Now, with Story Explorer, the app is trying to shed its reputation for ‘sexting’ and become a source for serious news.

Story Explorer is live now in New York and Los Angeles, and will be rolled out to other cities in due course. It’s a small step in the right direction for the fast growing platform, and signals the beginning of a new era of improved and easier to find public content.

November 25, 2015
How Marketo Ad Bridge Enables To Target The Right Audience

Marketo Ad Bridge enables you to target the right audience with personalized marketing content across advertising platforms including Google, Facebook, LinkedIn, and other widely visited sites. By specifically targeting the right demographic with personalized content that’s based on their interests, businesses can more effectively reach prospects and get better results out of their marketing expenditure.

How does it work?

Ad Bridge leverages Marketo’s behavioral database to show relevant content by analyzing how existing and potential customers interact with your business via email, your website, and social media channels. Personalized ads based on those interactions are then displayed on Google, Facebook, LinkedIn, and other channels.

Existing as well as new prospects who click on your ad will be taken directly to your business’s website or Facebook page. Ad Bridge allows you to stay in touch with your target market with promotions, useful content, and other information. Focusing on targeted users (rather than on indiscriminately widespread ad placements) helps place ads and useful content in front of those who are more likely to respond to them.

Let’s delve a bit deeper

LinkedIn’s partnership with Marketo Ad Bridge helps businesses take lead nurturing to the next level by leveraging the vast amount of information that LinkedIn has on its users via their interactions with connections. For B2B campaigns, Ad Bridge makes it easy to find new users looking for exactly what your business offers, while respecting the privacy of LinkedIn users.

Marketo’s Ad Bridge partnership with Facebook now offers Lead Ads that make it easy for prospects to interact with a business page in Facebook. For example, clicking such an ad in the mobile version of a company’s Facebook page can bring up a form that is automatically populated with data from the user’s phone (which the user can edit for privacy). This allows the user to easily get in touch with the business for more information or offers. This data is then viewable on the business’s Marketo instance, and can be extremely useful for its lead nurturing program and bring new prospects into the sales funnel.

It’s easy to see how Ad Bridge offers businesses unprecedented ease and targeting across major social media and professional networking sites. Smarter, more focused ad spending provides greater ROI to businesses using the system. Instead of scattershot ad placements that usually do not produce great results, Ad Bridge provides marketers with the tools to focus on prospects that are more likely to become customers.

Stay tuned to the Position²blog for more updates.

November 24, 2015
Best of the Week | Making The Most Of Marketing Databases, and much more…
This week’s hot news, events and videos from the online marketing and social media world.

From the Position² Blog This Week:

Making The Most Of Marketing Databases

Does your database empower your marketing decision-making, or hold you back? You may be lost in the wastelands of “data excess”. Learn how to use analysis tools to narrow your view to what you need for the immediate campaign, and then expand later as needed.
Best of the Week Video

In this webinar the senior product marketing manager at Marketo, Renata Bell talks about how a wrong Marketing Automation can stunt your organizations growth. Watch this video to discover what to look for when evaluating marketing automation solutions that will keep up with the continuously changing direction of marketing.
White Paper: The Rapidly Changing World of SEO

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SEO best practices and a road map to getting there

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November 22, 2015
Google+ Offers A New Design In A Relaunch

It’s no secret that Google+ has been struggling as it tries to connect with users. It has been a difficult few years as Google tried to compete with other social media platforms like Facebook and Reddit. With its recent redesign and the addition of a few new features, Google hopes to boost the platform’s user base in several different ways. Here are some changes you might see the next time you log into your Google+ account.

Communities

Many users had asked Google to add a “Communities” feature, to allows users to connect with others based on their interests and hobbies. Whatever your interests may be, the new design makes it much easier to meet people who share those interests. Over 1.2 million users have started using the new Communities feature every day since its introduction—a major change from the somewhat isolating feel of Google+’s “Circles.” The overall Google+ community has always been its strongest point, and this new feature allows a greater sense of connection.

Collections

Also geared toward users’ interests and ways to connect with others, the Collections feature of Google+’s new design allows users to find content based on topics that they might be interested in. This is a great feature that social platforms like Facebook and Twitter do not offer—users are solely reliant on what their friends and connections post rather than what they might be inclined to read. The Collections feature is supposed to resemble Pinterest in the way that groups of users can post on a specific topic and share it with the public or with just friends. It’s an easy way to group content and to make it easier to find while providing a social experience.

Google hopes to create a different kind of social platform unlike what users might currently be using. While over 2.2 billion people have a Google+ account, fewer than ten percent of users have ever posted anything on the site. Many Android phone users (or those with YouTube accounts) were required to sign up to continue using the services, though the platform was rarely used for what it was actually built for. A new homepage design now allows you to not only see what your friends have posted, but also some posts that you might be interested in.

With a new design, Google executives hope to start over with a clean slate. Wrobleski writes, “While this is an exciting new beginning for us, we’re definitely not done yet.”

By not trying to do the same things as Facebook and Twitter, but rather by adding community-oriented features similar to Pinterest and Reddit, users are more likely to appreciate the benefits of Google+’s design and what it has to offer. This makes the Google+ relaunch one that may offer more of what users are looking for, in a different kind of social platform.

November 20, 2015
Making The Most Of Marketing Databases

Among B2B marketers some will call Big Data the “next hype” while others will simply revere it for being a demigod of the digital world. One thing is for sure: before too long terms like ‘predictive analysis’ will litter casual conversation around the office water cooler.

Organizations have caught on and are bolstering their Big Data spending in a bid to gain better insights into trends and to make informed decisions within the passing moment.

We’ve already noticed some growing pains, the downside of “data excess”. With so much consumer intelligence at our disposal why is it that companies fail to tap the potential of data collected in real time, and act on it?

Put simply, their databases are hold them back. Companies far too often focus across all information and fail to make the most of relevant information. Effective data analysis promises priceless insight into customer behavior, patterns and product sets. Understanding the patterns helps you eliminate potential failures while creating unparalleled consumer experience. Combine that with real-time marketing data and the doors to targeted consumer engagement swing wide open.

Imagine running like a well-oiled machine the data-driven digital marketing for a leading fitness equipment company. You have collected data on consumers’ exercise patterns and timings. By analyzing the data, it becomes clear that the targeted consumer begins his day at 5 am, checking his mail first thing. So you now have the opportunity to send personalized offers at the most personalized time dialed in to his fitness levels and delivered via his preferred device. Bingo!

While this strategy may seem like the holy grail of digital marketing, rest assured that none of it is possible without an effective database. Choose an area where data can help you make a difference rather than get lost in the sea of data. There is always time to re-evaluate and decide on collecting more or less data. Hoping Big Data fades away like a fad of the day is a business strategy you want to avoid.

November 20, 2015
Building A Cohesive Brand

From the get go, the biggest challenge facing digital marketers has been defining the target market. Who is the customer? That’s the big question. Figure that out and you can build Brand recognition that permeates their every touch point.

Brands need to have a strategic digital content engine in place that seamlessly penetrates the customer’s lifestyle. Without that, all the talk of methodologies and best practices for gaining more business and ROI from your Digital Marketing efforts is of little use.

It’s not about new methods of digital intervention into people’s lives.It’s about Cohesive Branding.This means appropriately aligning your digital marketing efforts to meet your customer on common ground.

Here are some of the rules of the road we follow at Position² to create an engaging Brand presence for our partners and clients:

Create brands that connect with your audience

These are real people with real lives. Listen, talk to, share with and help out your customers wherever and whenever they need you.

Collaborate with your customers

Solving a customer’s problem polishes the Brand. Leverage that to open the way with new possibilities for potential customers. You are, in effect, creating a bond with the Brand that may last a lifetime.

Define a Brand’s Culture and Values

Then make that the center of your marketing efforts. This is how you define a Brand identity likely to connect with targeted customers. There’s a backstory to tell your customers. It’s the underlying effort behind the products you sell them.

November 13, 2015

Best of the Week | Building A Cohesive Brand, and much more…

This week’s hot news, events and videos from the online marketing and social media world.

From the Position² Blog This Week:

Building A Cohesive Brand
Defining the target market, identifying who the customer is, has been the biggest challenge digital marketers’ face. Read here to find how digital marketers can find success by defining their customers, then meeting them on common ground with targeted solutions.

Best of the Week Video
Some smaller companies find it difficult to connect with consumers and market their products, especially in rural communities. In this video, Daniel Burstein, Director of Editorial Content, MarketingSherpa and Dr. Lauri Baker, Assistant Professor in Agricultural Communications talks about how authentic conversation can help to market to customers via social media platforms.

White Paper: Increase Visibility for Your Content by 4x

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SEO, why the way we know it is not enough
Introducing and implementing Enterprise Visibility Accelerator (EVA)
Using multi-channel tracking tools for effective monitoring
How EVA benefits businesses.

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Know more about Enterprise Visibilty Accelerator(EVA)

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November 13, 2015

Blog

Tips to improve your website’s bounce rate

Making the switch

The changing audience

How does it work?

Let’s delve a bit deeper

Communities

Collections

Create brands that connect with your audience

Collaborate with your customers

Define a Brand’s Culture and Values