Loving the new Facebook insights that have just rolled out for my group.

Here’s what I’ll be doing with each report pictured:

1. Track new membership performance trends over a 60 day period.

2. Determine peak interaction days/times to know when to post.

3. Assess user-generated content popularity based on visibility and engagement. This will guide topical discussion points and promotional material.

4. Identify top contributors and provide incentives each month based on contribution. E.g. Congratulations to Joe Bloggs for being our top contributor, we’re going to send you some free stuff…

5. Keep track of member locations.

Let me first give you a bit of background. The story starts 198 weeks ago, according to Instagram. This was the first photo I’d ever uploaded, and I thought it was pretty great at the time. 5 likes, not a bad result for a first post huh?

All was well in the land of Instagram.

Why I don’t use Instagram as a Social Network

A considerable amount of time has passed (almost 4 years) between now and the Instagram user I once was. This blog post is completely opinion-based. I am fully aware of the benefits of Instagram from a business standpoint and know it can be extremely effective if done correctly.

My top 3 reasons for disliking Instagram…

Follow me and I will follow you back 🙂

Ever had this said to you before? Or even worse, you’ve had this said to you, you’ve gone ahead and followed the person, and they haven’t followed you back? This sort of behaviour is what really grinds my gears. Along with the whole ‘followers to following’ ratio, who gets to decide what a ‘good’ ratio is and why should I care? I’ll leave this one here because I’m starting to get worked up…

Why does my photo need to look perfect?

This is something that’s often criticised throughout Instagram. Everything needs to look perfect and show your best side. As far as I’m concerned, this leads to being fake. If you’re reading this, I want you to stop and think of how long, on average, it takes you to upload a photo to Instagram. This includes taking the ‘perfect’ photo (2 minutes), applying the most suitable filter (30 seconds), creating the ‘perfect’ caption (2 minutes) and determining the most relevant hashtags (30 seconds). This is 5 minutes down the drain, and I bet it sometimes takes even longer.

How do kids get so many Instagram followers?

This point comes to mind from something I experienced at the 2016 Australian Open of Tennis. Here I was, watching 2 of Australia’s top tennis players, fighting it out for a position in the semi-finals. I look below me to the row in front where a family of 4 sits in awe of the game. Although not everyone was watching, the youngest daughter was glued to her iPhone. What was she doing you ask? She was browsing through the Instagram discovery tool. She was selecting a photo of someone she most likely has no connection with, liking their photo, pressing the back button and repeating. This process went on for at least 10 minutes. Within this time, there were multiple incredible rallies.

Well if not Instagram, then what?

If you’re in agreement with any points mentioned, and want to make the transition to a more genuine form of social media, I highly recommend Snapchat. Why? Because of the following:

1. No one gives a damn about how many followers/friends you have. This information isn’t publicly available, so there is no popularity contest.
2. Photos and Videos look like shit, so everyones on the same level. If you don’t understand this point, then maybe stick to Instagram.
3. In my mind, when someone selects my Snapchat story to watch, this is considered a ‘like’. After all, everyone I have on Snapchat are my friends anyway, so why not?

The best thing about Social Media is staying in contact with friends and having fun… let’s not let this get out of hand.

Lesson 1: Listen to your customers

This week I checked the #portionperfection on Instagram to see what the latest tags for products had been. A lady by the name of Danielle had posted a before and after picture displaying the amount of weight she’d lost. I also noticed that she regularly used Portion Perfection products and has been posting on the same account meals she had been eating. I then asked her if she would mind the brand sharing the photo on our Facebook page, she agreed :).

Lesson 2: When giving a CTA, tell your followers exactly what you want them to do

Lesson 3: Always make your story 100% accurate and relevant to your audience

People aren’t stupid. They know when you’ve posted something clearly to receive high engagement. This is why I incorporated some pictures of Portion Perfection products being used, and directed people to the Instagram account where all images could be discovered.

*Danielle received 25 new Instagram followers from this post and we are planning to send her several gifts in the mail as congratulations for her amazing weight loss effort and for responding to all the lovely comments on our post.

Current Design

Proposed Design

This has been something that I’ve been interested in for some time now. No one seems to have a definitive answer. Even the Moz community is up in the air about which is the correct move.

The Problem

The brand ‘Portion Perfection’ has two websites: https://www.greatideas.net.au and http://www.portionperfection.com.au. The latter is a branding website and Great Ideas is the current version. It has been suggested that keeping portionperfection.com.au is a smart move in terms of receiving a different stream of traffic through referrals instead of all through other channels such as organic, direct, email or paid. This strategy is ideal for those who are afraid of being penalised by Google and being cut off from receiving their main source of traffic (organic).

Method

Each websites strength has been analysed using the Moz Open Site Explorer tool.

www.greatideas.net.au (eCommerce website – Magento)
DA: 25/100
PA: 36/100
Spam score: 1/17
Linking Root Domains: 53
Total Links: 280
FB shares: 23
FB likes: 8
Twitter: 21
+1’s: 134

www.portionperfection.com.au (blogging template website – WordPress)
DA: 17/100
PA: 30/100
Spam score: 2/17
Linking Root Domains: 13
Total Links: 80
FB shares: 55
FB likes: 4
Twitter: 3
+1’s: 1

Google Analytics Comparison

www.greatideas.net.au

All Traffic
Bounce Rate: 47.76% (industry avg. = <45%) – above the average, still acceptable however.
Avg. Session Duration: 3’34

Organic Traffic
Bounce Rate: 45.26% (industry avg. = <45%) – good percentage.
Avg. Session Duration: 3’50

www.portionperfection.com.au

All Traffic
Bounce Rate: 79.43% (industry avg. = <45%) – holy shit, very high.
Avg. Session Duration: 0’48 (get me the f outta here)

Organic Traffic
Bounce Rate: 70.92% (industry avg. = <45%) – better than all traffic, still shite though.
Avg. Session Duration: 1’21

Referral traffic from portionperfection.com.au to greatideas.net.au

Conclusion

greatideas.net.au is getting good referral traffic and sales from portionperfection.com.au. The bounce rate on portionperfection.com.au is ridiculously high (79.43% overall). This is a terrible reflection on the brand and I believe greatideas.net.au is losing customers who aren’t patient enough to click through. Redirect.

A handy guide.

So I’ve been travelling for the past month around Europe with my lovely girlfriend Phoebe. The adventure started with a week in Italy relaxing eating olives and drinking fine vino to hiring a car on the eastern side and travelling many miles to see some incredible places. Here’s an image that encapsulates the amount of stress I experienced while away (zero).

All holidays must come to an end unfortunately. This isn’t a bad thing though, as I no longer have Uni assignments and dreadful lectures ahead. All those days spent wishing I could learn only the stuff I’m actually going to use in my life are also over. I now have all the time in the world to focus on what I enjoy most… and hopefully get paid for it sooner rather than later.

What am I doing now (apart from writing a blog post for a non-existent reader)? I’m getting myself prepared to apply for grad positions at some of Brisbane’s top Digital Marketing agencies. First step is to get the ‘experience’ section filled out on the Resume – check. Next is to start writing my objectives and fill out every other section, an arduous process where you’re trying to find the balance between not exaggerating your abilities and selling yourself short. I’ve decided I don’t want my CV to be like any old run-of-the-mill application, so I’ve employed my graphic designer friend to get to work on a unique design that I’m proud to put my name on.

I’ll try not to bore you with any more CV talk from now on. I’d like to finish this post with an image of my framed grad certificate above the toilet.

I’ve always wanted to perform a split test on changes I’ve made to website’s but didn’t have the faintest idea of where to start. Upon surfing the interwebz one evening I stumbled across Visual Website Optimiser, claiming to be the world’s easiest A/B testing tool. I decided to give it a shot. Here are the results:

Background information

Client: greatideas.net.au – an ecommerce site for a Dietitian store, Great Ideas in Nutrition, located in Coolangatta on the Gold Coast. Website primarily used for appointment setting, selling products and general information about the products and business owner.

Page: Home Page greatideas.net.au

Optimisation Goal: Increase number of signups/new members.

Page Diagnosis

On first glance, the sign-up form is well-positioned on the page and the business offers a free resource received upon submission. There are also some terrible components of the form that stick out like a sore thumb for me. The dark headline and lack of description of what you’re actually getting from giving your all-so-precious email address. I wasn’t being sarcastic either, personally I’m scarred from being bombarded by spammy emails minutes after sign up, where’s my assurance? It doesn’t exactly inspire confidence. To be successful the form needs to communicate both value and relevance.

A/B Test Hypothesis and Treatment A

Before creating the treatment, I did a great deal of research on what does and doesn’t convert. I found there to be countless case studies out there, claiming they had the magic bullet (I imagine that it’s truly dependent upon the industry you’re in and who your target audience is). However, all seemed to agree that I needed to get rid of the words ‘subscribe’ and ‘submit’ ASAP, among other things. Here’s what I came up with:

Highlight include:

1. A descriptive headline that tells the customer exactly what I want them to do, emphasising ‘free’ and using ‘today’.
2. This section took a lot of consulting with the owner. This is essentially the USP section of the product. I added the amount of people who have viewed the product as an extra assurance that it is something that has been widely used.
3. Form boxes have increased in size, with addition of ‘Best’ in front of ‘E-mail*’ to communicate that this is an important step and that we value their details.
4. Light orange seems be what is generally agreed as the best converting colour for buttons. I think ‘FREE ACCESS’ as the CTA is most effective also.
5. What’s the biggest issue people have with submitting their email address online? – having their details sold to unsolicited companies. The padlock icon along with the statement ‘We respect your privacy’ attempts to counteract the fear.
6. Originally I was going to go with a simple white background, after realising it looked unbearably bland, I went with a subtle patterned grey.

Test Results and Validations

I ran the test for 14 days and reached a sample size of 2098 visitors, and 34 conversions. The standard error was 0% and the statistical confidence was 99%. Throughout the duration of the test, the Treatment outperformed the control. The Treatment increased sign-ups by 30.21%.

I know there are more than likely other minor tweaks that could quite easily turn my 30% to 60%. I will continue to test and optimise different elements to maximise results. Now that the test is over, I will start testing alternate headlines against each other to see which performs best.