Adapting to a Cookieless Future: Strategies for Marketers

Adapting to a Cookieless Future: Strategies for Marketers

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Adapting to a Cookieless Future: Strategies for Marketers

The cookie landscape is increasingly changing. Third-party cookies will be all but disabled by the end of the year, while Google is implementing new changes, such as the Privacy Sandbox and consent mode v2.

What do these changes mean for marketers and how can they adapt to a cookieless future?

In our blog, we will deep dive into the challenges and opportunities marketers face, what the Privacy Sandbox is and what strategies marketers can implement going forward.

Interested to learn more? Keep reading.

The challenges & opportunities facing marketers in a cookieless world?

Cookies are fundamental to the way the internet works, particularly if you’re undertaking any kind of advertising activity such as remarketing. Cookies can track where users click from one website to another, and another, and so on.

The aspects of a cookieless world that marketers have the most concerns around are a loss of tracking and reporting accuracy, having to adapt to new technologies, data protection and privacy concerns, and marketing strategy and planning.

That being said, the biggest challenge will be how marketers ensure they still get accurate reporting for cross site journeys and target users for relevant ads.

With challenges come opportunities, so marketers should remain hopeful about the changes coming their way.

On this, our Associate Director of Data and Insights, Chris Hirlemann, had this to say,

“One of the big opportunities is the internet has been using cookies since the 1990s, or before then. It’s a fundamental way to how everything works, but it’s also just been built on and built on and built on over the years. So it’s a chance to revisit how the whole system works.”

“Google’s Privacy Sandbox has a lot of things coming out around identifying topics in a much more privacy centric way. And so being able to revisit how we target people is quite a valuable thing. And, cookies have their issues as well. It’s never been perfect. The chance to go back and start building from scratch is sometimes a good thing.”

 

website cookies graphic

What is Google’s Privacy Sandbox?

According to Google, the Privacy Sandbox looks to protect people’s privacy online whilst giving companies tools to thrive online.

It’s two core aims are:

  • To phase out support for third-party cookies
  • Reduce cross-site and cross-app tracking

The Privacy Sandbox APIs act on behalf of users to protect their privacy and identifying information. For example, the Topics API categorises users into different topics which advertisers can target without using third-party cookies.

Chrome intends to disable third-party cookies completely by the close of 2024 so companies can use the Privacy Sandbox extension to understand cookie usage on their website.

What strategies can marketers implement to navigate a cookieless world?

If you’re not sure what strategies to implement to navigate a cookieless world, we’ve got you covered.

Let’s take a look below.

Alternatives to cookie tracking

In a cookieless world, marketers will need to consider a number of factors in order to continue to be effective. One of the most important to consider is the use of alternative tracking methods.

Without cookies, marketers will need to rely on other technologies, such as device fingerprinting or browser fingerprinting, to track consumers across the web.

These technologies use unique characteristics of a device or browser, such as its IP address or screen size, to identify users and track their online behaviour.

Luke Quilter and Chris Hirlemann

Using first-party data for tracking

Another key consideration for marketers in a cookieless world is the use of first-party data. In the past, many marketers have relied on third-party cookies to collect data on consumers, but in a cookieless world, this will no longer be possible.

Instead, marketers will need to focus on collecting and using first-party data, which is data that is collected directly from consumers, often through opt-in forms or surveys.

This type of data can be more difficult to collect and analyse, but it is also more accurate and more likely to be accepted by consumers.

Setting up server-side tagging

Companies can use Google Tag Manager to implement an application across devices and measure user activity wherever it happens. With server-side tagging, companies can also get Conversion API up and running on Facebook.

Setting up server-side tagging involves a few technical elements. Setting up the cloud project isn’t difficult to do, however, there are a few elements that may require outsourcing depending on your skill level and technical capabilities.

Harness Conversion APIs

Facebook’s Conversion API and Google’s Enhanced Conversion work in a similar way. When a particular action happens, if you have a telephone number or email address, the API will use a hashing algorithm to anonymise the data before it’s passed along with your event data to the relevant platform.

The only way a company can unhash the data is if they already hold the data themselves.

Once the data has been passed over to Facebook or Google, they will match it in their system and update your reporting to reflect this particular cache. For example, the platform knows that a user has clicked on an ad, we’ve confirmed this event happened, so the platform matches the two together.

Consent mode v2

Consent mode v2 lets companies communicate users’ cookie or app identifier consent status to Google. Essentially, it allows users to communicate their consent choices on a website or app, adapt Google tag behaviour and enable Google to model for gaps in conversions. Google Analytics can then track the activity and performance.

It’s key that companies take user privacy seriously. Consent mode v2 was implemented this month, and whilst there is no timeline on when Google will start enforcing this change, it’s expected to happen fairly soon. So, if you don’t have a consent banner on your website, now is the time to get one implemented. Companies that don’t comply won’t receive accurate reporting data.

online privacy graphic

What should marketers prioritise & consider in a cookieless world?

1. Embrace the opportunities that a cookieless world has to offer.

2. Use alternative tracking methods, such as device or browser fingerprinting, to track consumers across the web.

3. Focus on collecting and using first-party data and setting up server-side tagging.

4. Harness Conversion API and Enhanced Conversion to keep track of online events and actions on Facebook and Google.

5. Prioritise user privacy by ensuring you are compliant with GDPR and consent mode v2. This will build trust with consumers.

6. Stay up-to-date on the latest developments and trends in the cookieless world, and be prepared to adapt to changes in the market.

7. Collaborate with other organisations and industry groups to share best practices and develop new solutions for a cookieless world.

8. Invest in technology and expertise to support the use of alternative tracking and targeting methods.

9. Consider the potential impact of cookielessness on other areas of marketing, such as audience segmentation and personalisation.

10. Engage with consumers directly to understand their concerns and preferences, and use this information to inform marketing strategies in a cookieless world.

11. Monitor the effectiveness of marketing efforts in a cookieless world, and adjust strategies as needed to continue to drive results.

Overall, the move towards a cookieless world presents both challenges and opportunities for marketers. By adopting new tracking technologies, prioritising first-party data and server-side tagging, harnessing Conversion API and Enhanced Conversion, and focusing on user privacy, marketers can continue to reach and engage with consumers, even in the absence of cookies.

If you have any questions on how to set up server-side tagging or if you’re not sure on whether you’re compliant with user privacy, get in touch with our expert data team today.

Don’t forget to keep up-to-date with the latest updates on our blog too.

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How To Set Up Goals in Google Analytics

How To Set Up Goals in Google Analytics

How To Set Up Goals In Google Analytics

How To Set Up Goals In Google Analytics

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Digital Marketing, technology & business insights, how to’s and explainer videos, released on a Wednesday. Make sure to subscribe to be notified and sign up to our mailing list! 🎥

See below, the transcript from this episode of Giant Wednesday if videos aren’t your preferred method to consume digital skills. See also the Giant Cheat Sheet from this episode.

If you want to know more, get in touch today 😎

 

Why do we need to set up goals?

Creating goals is the easiest part of any process, achieving them is the hard part. 

But when it comes to your digital presence, you want to ensure you’re tracking goals that matter to you and your business.

Setting goals in Google Analytics helps you to measure how often users complete specific actions

This data can help inform future business decisions, as well as give you a nice easy-to-access insight into your online activities.

Having these goals properly configured is a priority in order to make these decisions, so let’s set one up, shall we? 

 

Creating a new goal in Google Analytics

First things first, we want to be in the right place so:

  1. Head on over and sign in to your Google Analytics account
  2. Click Admin, and navigate to the desired view
  3. In the view column, click Goals
  4. Click + New Goal or Import from Gallery to create a new goal, or click on an existing one to edit its configuration

A quick note, you are limited to 20 goals per view, so make sure you use this allowance wisely, only tracking the things you NEED to.

 

Choosing a goal type in Google Analytics

When you’re ready to get building, you have three options to choose from:

  • Using a goal template
  • Creating smart goals
  • Or, creating custom goals

Templated goals are tailored to meet the needs of businesses within the specific industry you are which you would have selected within your account settings. 

For example, looking at the likes of revenue, inquiries and acquisition. 

Smart Goals use machine learning to examine lots of signals about your website, determining which of them are most likely to result in a conversion – setting these as goals.

And finally, custom goals are all down to you to set up, customised to your own ambitions looking at things like destinations, durations, events and pages/screens per session as triggers.

 

Goal configuration options for custom goals in Google Analytics

If you’re moving forward with custom goals then let me just explain the configuration options.

Destination goal:

This option uses destinations of pageviews or screen views as a conversion.

A great way to use this, for example, is to input the URL for your sale confirmation page – tracking how many sales you’ve made as only those who’ve checked out will see that page. 

You can use funnel options here to specify a journey such as a user must have viewed one page, but not another in order to qualify for this goal. 

Duration goal:

This type of goal will measure user engagement, treating a specified session duration as a conversion.

This can range from hours, minutes and seconds, and is the minimum that you qualify as a goal conversion.

Event goal:

This function will treat certain interactions with your website or app as a conversion.

This means you need events set up first by the way!

But as an example, this could be someone who downloads a specific video or case study from your website or clicks a specific button. 

Assigning goal values in Google Analytics

If you’re able to attribute a value to your goal then you can assign this in the goal set up, giving you a great comparable to track.

You can assign values to Template and Custom goals, but not Smart goals.

 

Verifying Goals in Google Analytics

When you’re happy with your set up you can then ‘verify’ your goal – this is essentially a test where it will calculate a conversion rate based on your data from the past 7 days. 

It’s a great way to see if it’s actually working and gives you some great historic data from the get-go.

And there you have it, as soon as you’ve created your goal it will start recording data.

You can toggle this on and off whenever you want – but use it wisely. 

You now have your goals set up, ready to achieve – how marvellous. Now it’s time to achieve them young padawan.

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5 Things You Need To Know About Bounce Rate

5 Things You Need To Know About Bounce Rate

5 Things You Need To Know About Bounce Rate

5 Things You Need To Know About Bounce Rate

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Digital Marketing, technology & business insights, how to’s and explainer videos, released on a Wednesday. Make sure to subscribe to be notified and sign up to our mailing list! 🎥

See below, the transcript from this episode of Giant Wednesday if videos aren’t your preferred method to consume digital skills. See also the Giant Cheat Sheet from this episode.

If you want to know more, get in touch today 😎

What is bounce rate? 🤔

How can I lower my bounce rate? 🤔

What do I need to know about bounce rate? 🤔

Well… let’s start it off light;

Why did the marketer get off the trampoline? He was worried about his bounce rate! Ba dum tss…

Terrible jokes aside, hey, I’m Sam and I’m here today to explain bounce rate, why it’s important, how to lower it and how context is king.

So, let’s kick this off with the first question:

 

What is bounce rate?

Well, according to Google… 

“A bounce is a single-page session on your site”

This ‘bounce’ is calculated, specifically, as a session that triggers only a single request to the analytics server your site sits on – for example, someone opens up your latest blog on your site, gives it a read and then pops (or bounces) off.

The ‘bounce rate’ is calculated by the total number of single-page sessions divided by all sessions.

So with that explained, I want to share five things with you about your bounce rate!

 

Where Do I Find Bounce Rate?

In Google Analytics you can find your bounce rate by going to Audience Overview and then clicking the metric ‘Bounce Rate’. That’ll give you a view of your overall bounce rate for your whole site. 

If you want to look at the percentage for specific pages, you’d instead head to the All Pages report to filter by individual pages. 

You can also look at your bounce rate by location, by source, by landing page, and a whole other host of factors.

This brings me onto our next point – without considering the context, bounce rate is just a number and not an insight.

 

Context Is Vital With Bounce Rate

Bounce rates could vary by country and area, for example. If your company only serves the UK, views from Germany may bounce when they realise you don’t operate in their area. In this case, your bounce rate could look high, but the reason why is clear.

We can also expect that new visitors are likely to have a higher bounce rate as they might just be in the research phase, or visiting your site for a particular reason like a blog.

Returning visitors, on the other hand, are usually there because they’re interested in your content or offering and therefore are likely to have a lower bounce rate.

A high bounce rate does not always indicate a real problem either. In some cases, it simply shows that you’ve answered the user’s query – they got what they wanted and continued on with their day. 

They might now at least be aware of your brand and come to you for info again.

And, if you’ve got remarketing set up, then you can even encourage that kind of action.

To flip it and reverse it though, a shockingly low bounce rate is not necessarily a cause for celebration.

If your bounce rate is below 20%, it’s likely that your analytics are broken.

It would be unwise to assume that a bounce rate above 50%, for example, is a complete catastrophe. In fact, 41 to 55% is roughly average.

However, it does mean that the visitor hasn’t taken any further action, which is obviously not what you want. They haven’t gone to another page on your site or completed a transaction. So what could be the reason why people aren’t sticking around?

 

What Can Influence Bounce Rate?

Well, that’s a big question! And the honest answer is that there could be a whole host of reasons.

But some such reasons could be: 

  • Your webpage has a slow load time
  • There’s no call to action to keep them going through
  • Poor formatting
  • Misleading titles
  • Your website isn’t optimised for mobile
  • 404 pages
  • Your forms aren’t working

So essentially if your website is broken, or not considered, it’s unlikely to play in your favour.

 

Why Is Bounce Rate Important?

Well, in terms of rankings, you should know that your bounce rate is not actually a ranking factor for Google.

That means that when they crawl your site, they aren’t finding your high bounce rate and moving you straight to page 30.

But, and this is a big but (giggle)- we know that Google does use some engagement signals for SEO. We just don’t know what they are – they’re quite elusive there.

What we do know, as we’ve discovered, is what our bounce rate is.

And we can use this, with context in mind, as one of the signals that can indicate levels of engagement to us.

The goal shouldn’t really be to lower your bounce rate. It should instead be to make sure your visitors are satisfied with what you present to them – that you answer their query, that it’s relevant, and that the page is optimised for user experience.

So take a look at your higher bounce rate pages and make some observations. 

Optimising for these things will in turn lower your bounce rate.

 

How Can I Lower My Bounce Rate?

Other than the methods I’ve already mentioned, there are a few other ways to try to lower your bounce rate.

As we talked about, answering the visitor’s query is great – but bouncing is not so great… unless you’re Tigger, who we can’t show on the screen for copyright reasons.

If you want to get them to stick around, you might like to try offering a short snippet of info on the page that does give them a quick answer… but then, look! You also have a fantastic, in-depth guide on the exact thing they were looking for. 

If, for example, your site had regular blog, news, or content updates, you can integrate a ‘similar articles’ widget that makes them want to click over to some of your other, awesome content.

You can even just make a conscious effort to add valuable, relevant links throughout your content to take users off on an adventure of relevancy and delight relating to their query.

Finally, make sure your CTAs count. Remove the ‘buy now’, ‘add to cart’ generic-ness and add some of your brand’s personality into these buttons – let the user know what they’re getting, and make it their decision to click.

 

So, when you take context into account and prioritise user engagement and satisfaction over mere numbers, you’ll start to see your bounce rate lowering in turn.

 

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Disavowing Backlinks: What They Are & How To Do It

Disavowing Backlinks: What They Are & How To Do It

Disavowing Backlinks: What They Are & How To Do It

Disavowing Backlinks: What They Are & How To Do It

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Digital Marketing, technology & business insights, how to’s and explainer videos, released on a Wednesday. Make sure to subscribe to be notified and sign up to our mailing list! 🎥

See below, the transcript from this episode of Giant Wednesday if videos aren’t your preferred method to consume digital skills. See also the Giant Cheat Sheet from this episode.

If you want to know more, get in touch today 😎

Backlinks can REALLY straddle the line of bringing value to your site or ruining all your hard work. 

Proving to search engines that your site is trustworthy is a constant activity, but disavowing less relevant backlinks is a great start.

So hey, I’m Holly, if disavowing is a little out of your comfort zone, stick around for this week’s Giant Wednesday.

 

What is a backlink?

 

So a backlink is kind of what it says on the tin, it’s when one site links back to another.

If you’ve heard the terms “inbound” links or “incoming” links, then that’s just another way to describe a backlink.

If you were to include a link to, say, the gov.uk website to provide further information on one of your blogs, this would be a backlink to the gov.uk from your own.

Backlinks are crucial to link building which is an important part of search engine optimisation and something we’ve covered in a previous episode.

Search engines such as Google and Bing use links, among other elements and characteristics, to help determine how well your page should rank.

When they crawl your site, search engines will look at the content of your site’s pages to work out whether they qualify to rank for related keywords based on the quality of the content.

Part of this crawling process involves looking at the links from other sites that point to that page on your site, and then the quality of those sites. Something seemingly out of your control!

If multiple high-quality and high-authority sites are linking back to yours, then the search engines will deem the content on that page as high in value… alongside other seo best practice techniques too, of course.

But what happens when a site that isn’t particularly relevant or high-value links back to your site? 

Well, unfortunately, if a bunch of low-quality or spammy links pointing to your domain from a low authority site, then this can throw up red flags for Google. 

These could come from something like the purchasing of backlinks – a topic that we’ve covered before, and is bad practice that will see your site penalised. 

Essentially, if low-quality or irrelevant sites are linking back to yours, Google might be under the impression you’re up to no good.

But, before you start panicking! There are ways to get rid of these spammy or low-quality links that might not be doing you any favours.

That process is called ‘disavowing’ backlinks and I’m now going to share how you go about that for your site.

The importance of disavowing backlinks

 

In a really brief summary, it’s quite a simple process that is about assessing your current backlinks and then picking which ones you’d like to not be linking to you.

The disavowing process won’t unlink the site, but it does essentially tell Google that you don’t care about their link and not to consider it when they review linking sites.

Google can quite often assess which links to trust, after all… it’s pretty clever.

Therefore they do emphasise that this disavowing process is more for sites who’ve previously bought links or if a backlink has caused, or might cause, a manual action from Google on your site. 

But a bit of backlinking and general site housekeeping never hurt anyone! Who knows what you might find?

You can conduct your backlink disavowing through Google Search Console which you should have access to so long as you have a Google Analytics tracking tag on your site.

How to disavow backlinks

 

The first step though, you’ll need to create a list of ‘bad’ links.

To do this, you can perform a link audit which you can do with the link report feature in Google Search Console. 

Click the “Export External Link” button and choose the “More Sample Links” options before exporting it in whatever file format that works for you.

You’re now going to need to sift through the links and determine which ones you want to disavow.

This should be a bit a hefty task that will take some time, and the links you should probably disavow will probably be quite obvious to you when you go through them.

However, you should note that just because the link is coming from a low authority site, doesn’t necessarily make it a bad link.

You should only disavow a link that you know is definitely irrelevant or could harm your site’s ranking.

A good rule of thumb would be to ask the question: Does this help the site’s users?

If it has little to no value, or seems pretty shady, then the answer should be no and it shouldn’t be linking to your site. 

Reviewing the content of the sites that are linking back to you before you make your decision is always a good idea to help you get full context about its value.

Now that you’ve gotten through your huge collection of links and figured out which you do and don’t want linking to you, you’ll need to list them in a text file or .txt file.

The following rules will help ensure you’re doing this properly:

  • Each site should be on a new line
  • Each site needs to start with “domain:”

 

If, for example, you wanted to disavow three backlinks from: www.badlinks.com, www.disavowthislink.com and www.theworstbacklinkever.com 

Then your text file list would look like this:

domain:badlinks.com

domain:disavowthislink.com

domain:theworstbacklinkever.com

 

If you wanted to just blacklist a specific page instead of the entire site, then you can just add the corresponding URL. However, it’s rare that that would be the case!

Once you’ve created your text file, you can head over to the Google Disavow Tool and upload your file.

It might take a few weeks for Google to process your uploaded lists as it gets incorporated into their index as they recrawl the site and reprocess the pages they take into account.

And don’t be alarmed if you see the disavowed links still coming up in the Links Report on Search Console, as they will still appear once disavowed!

 

And there you have it, you’ve now tidied up your backlinks and understood the value of the task at hand.

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What Is Website Migration? 5 Best Practice Tips

What Is Website Migration? 5 Best Practice Tips

What Is Website Migration? 5 Best Practice Tips For SEO Migrations

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Digital Marketing, technology & business insights, how to’s and explainer videos, released on a Wednesday. Make sure to subscribe to be notified and sign up to our mailing list! 🎥

See below, the transcript from this episode of Giant Wednesday if videos aren’t your preferred method to consume digital skills. See also the Giant Cheat Sheet from this episode.

If you want to know more, get in touch today 😎

Read the transcript of this episode of Giant Wednesday... 👇

You wouldn’t forget to tell the gas people you were moving house, or leave your beloved piece of furniture behind with all your belongings in it… would you?

So why wouldn’t you take the same kind of care, consideration and planning when moving your website for whatever reason?

Migrating your website is super important, and I’m going to share with you why that is in this week’s episode of GIANT Wednesday.

 

Hi, I’m Sam from Sleeping Giant Media and today I’m going to share with you five pieces of advice when migrating your website.

If you like what I have to say in today’s video then make sure to subscribe to our channel where we release digital marketing skills-based videos every week!

 

So, website migration. First of all, what is it and why do you need to?

Well, maybe you’ve outgrown your CMS, want to change your web address or maybe even change up your hosting platform – whatever the reason, that’s up to you.

When you do these things, you’ll want to ensure that all the hard work you’ve put into your site with regards to SEO, usability and the likes retains its existing value – if not gaining more. 

To retain all this hard work, you’ll need to migrate over the efforts and make sure everyone who needs to know where things are, knows!

For example, say with your new site you’ve changed all the URL structures to be more consistent, but you’ve not told anyone (and by anyone, I mean setting up redirects).

Existing links to these pages will no longer work, 404’s will be everywhere, the user experience will be poor and search engines will penalise your website, decreasing its rankings and therefore your traffic.

Boooooo!

That’s why migrating is important, and that’s just one small example from a much larger migration checklist.

So now you can see what I meant – website migration is a LOT like moving house.

If you don’t take the time to tell people where you are moving to, you’ll end up with a lot of missed mail and probably some unhappy people that were trying to find you.

So to avoid poor experiences for your customers, potential users and other internet browsers, you’ll want to migrate properly. 

It’s that, or you risk sharp declines in website sessions, conversions and more – which no one wants.

There’s a whole checklist of activities to get on with, but here are my five top tips for making the process as seamless as possible:

 

Number 1: Collect As Much Information As Possible

When you’re planning on moving out, one of the first things you should do, really, is have a bit of a tidy up.

With this in mind, tidy up your website – work out what it is you want to bring with you to the new site and what there is you can afford to chuck away. 

Make a note of all these things, download what you need to and ensure nothing gets missed.

Spend a lot of time on this part and be as thorough as you can be, because once you’ve moved… whatever you forgot to bring over in the migration will be lost forever. 

So, whether that’s keywords, blogs, pdf’s, downloadables… if it’s valuable, save it. If it’s never been successful and is outdated, you can probably leave it behind.

 

Number 2: Do It During A Quiet Period

Back to the house moving analogy… it’s safe to say that most people wouldn’t want to move house over Christmas, because it’s one of the busiest times of the year and no one needs that extra stress in their life.

And yet, despite that probably being quite an agreeable statement, people don’t seem to feel the same when it comes to migrating their website.

So the advice, if you hadn’t already gathered, is to plan your migration for a quiet part of the year. 

This gives you more time to focus on getting it done right since there’s so much to potentially lose.

It also gives you more time to fix anything that breaks before peak periods for your business.

That leads me quite nicely on to…

 

Number 3: Do It In The Morning

Despite the song saying so… not everyone works 9 till 5… BUT it is still best to work around these as core working hours. 

Aim to migrate your site outside of your businesses hours – maybe look for quiet times in your Google Analytics and maybe even on a quieter day when you know you have time and it won’t impact potential customers.

This just covers your back in case anything goes wrong, and gives you plenty of opportunities to fix it.

The last thing you want if your website is sprouting leaks like the Titanic is for the people responsible for fixing it, clocking off for the night and leaving you with a mess.

 

Number 4: Make Sure You & Your Developers Redirect!

As I’ve already alluded to, one of the most important parts of website migration is redirecting links from your old one, to your new one. 

This ensures your SEO value isn’t lost, but also that people don’t end up on broken 404 pages wondering what went wrong.

Remember, links exist everywhere, and trying to track down and change every external link or social media post is a task and a half. Just set up the right redirects.

In order for value to be passed over, and to retain traffic, you need to redirect and the best way to do this is a 301 redirect – the permanent kind.

Map out your redirects ahead of time, and make sure that your developer is comfortable helping you redirect them.

 

Number 5: Make Sure To Test All Of Your Tracking

Once you’ve migrated your website… it’s important to make sure all of the tracking you might have had on your old site is set up correctly and working. 

This includes things like Facebook Pixel, Google Tag Manager and Google Analytics – all things that need to be set up to run on the new site, and checked to ensure they aren’t double counting. 

After all, if you don’t measure it, you can’t manage it.

And if you’re migrating your site, it’s important to track and see the success of your updates. 

 

So, they were my five bits of advice for website migrations. You may have guessed from my terminology that every element is important. 

Getting it wrong is easy to do if you don’t consider every part in advance, so make sure you’ve covered all options and triple-checked them.

Website migration is a big topic, some might say… GIANT. So we’ll cover off more in another episode of Giant Wednesday.

If you have any more advice, or if you think we’ve missed anything…  or maybe just want to hit us with a ‘yasss queen’ – make sure you leave a comment and let us know!

Here’s today’s Giant CheatSheet on this topic – click the link in the description to download it, or just take a screenshot if you’re on mobile!

As always, make sure you subscribe to our channel for more great content every week.

Thanks for watching, and we’ll see you next time for another GIANT Wednesday.

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Split Testing: What It Is & How To Be Effective To Increase Conversions

Split Testing: What It Is & How To Be Effective To Increase Conversions

Split Testing: What It Is & How To Be Effective To Increase Conversions

Home > Data

Transcript:

You’ve only got one chance to make a first impression… 

The powers of split testing mean you get to try both those chat up lines… or *ahem* call to action in your marketing.

Now make like a banana and split, because Wednesdays are about to get GIANT.

 

Hello, my name is Sai and welcome to Giant Wednesday, the only place to be to discover the wonderful world of digital marketing. Don’t forget to subscribe to our channel and post your comments below.

We’re here today to look into what split testing is, what it allows you to do and the things you can achieve with some clever tactics.

Split testing, by definition, is a method of conducting controlled, randomised experiments which in the wonderful world of the internet allows us to better understand our audience’s behaviours.

It’s all about comparing two different versions of something and determining which one works better – using that information to make sure you make the relevant tweaks and changes necessary to move closer towards your goals.

So, if you’ve ever wondered whether your call-to-action wording is quite right, or whether an image of a kitten or a baby in your ad is more likely to get clicks… then wonder no more.

If you find your audience is more likely to complete an action when you use a certain colour text, or a certain tone of voice, or maybe like I said… they prefer kittens to babies, then you can use the knowledge gained from the split testing to inform your future marketing.

Running these split tests helps take the guesswork out of marketing – allowing you to make decisions based on hard facts.

Most digital advertising platforms make setting up split testing easy as pie but if you need advice on a specific platform then leave us a comment below and we’ll lend a helping hand. 

But let me share with you some split testing top tips… try saying that five times faster.

 

Number 1: One is a magic number

To make your life easier and to really split test your content then you should only really change one thing between your original and amended variation.

This will help you to pinpoint exactly what resulted in increased performance.

If you just try different fonts, then you’ll get a feel for which one resonates with your audience best. But if you change the fonts, the call to action, the colour and the picture then you can never be truly sure which was the winner in the situation…

This won’t always be possible, I get that, but make sure you try to keep track of what you’ve changed and where so it isn’t a wasted effort!

 

Number 2: Focus on the call to action

So now you’re wondering… what one thing should I change to REALLY test my awesome marketing capabilities?

Well your call to action is the best place to start. And by George I hope you’re using them in your marketing…

The way these are worded can have a huge impact on whether or not your audience will resonate and take action. Some might like a more forceful approach, some might like it subtle but you won’t know until you try.

These are the things that have a big impact on conversions – hence a great place to start your split testing journey.

 

Number 3: Trust your own data

A big mistake we often see is those basing their activities on things they’ve seen working for others around them. This is a big no no. 

Just because someone else found that red buttons worked better than blue doesn’t mean the same will apply for you.

You could have different products, different audiences, different locations… no two businesses are the same despite how it might look at times.

Use your own data found through analytics software and past experiences to determine your activity.

 

Number 4: Go big or go home

Google one famously tested 41 different shades of blue to determine which performed the best… damn.

However, unlike those guys, most people don’t have the time and resources to commit to such intense testing on such… small matters.

Instead of whacking out those paint samples, try to focus on testing variations that are likely to make the most GIANT impact on your conversion rate.

 

And finally, number 5: test, test and test again

Something important to remember is that when it comes to split testing, not every variation you try is going to work.

In fact, the amends you make to test things out might make things worse! It’s a gamble – but it’s worth it.

If things go wrong then it’s back to the drawing board with you, time to try something else.

There is always something to test – just because you do see success with your first variation doesn’t it’s the best it could be.

So as long as you strive to be the best, just like me, then you should be in for split testing splendour.

 

And that’s my advice for smashing your split tests. Focus on one thing at a time, get creative with your call to actions, trust in yourselves, go big or go home and most importantly, keep up that testing.

You can’t go wrong with split testing, because there’s always an opportunity to get it right.

So, that’s it for today, go forth and comment your views – give us a like and subscribe to see more great digital and marketing content every week.

Thanks for watching, and we’ll see you next week for another GIANT Wednesday.

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Copyright © 2022 Sleeping Giant Media. All Rights Reserved.