Jump Out of Your Skin

Snoringly boring blog post but as my New Year always starts on the 14th January (it just does OK).  Here are my running goals for this year.

• Run 4-5 times per week even if there is a hurricane, tired, travelling, stuck in a bog in Cavan.
• Raise a substantial (10 Grand) money in Cork marathon for Cancer – have domain – need idea to make it happen.
• Cork Marathon – Sub 4.30 is the goal.  Goal 1 will make it happen.
• Dublin Marathon – Finish is the goal.
• Break 30 minutes for 4 miles.
• Break 29 minutes for 4 miles
• Run Cork to Cobh for the first time

That’s it. What are your fitness goals – drop me a comment..

Your website is useless if.

1. You don’t know how many visitors you are getting.  If you don’t care then you are shouting in the middle of a forest.
2. You don’t know what your most competitive keyword search terms are for your business.
3. You are in the Banana Picking business and the words Banana Picking are nowhere to be seen on the site (yes this is so often the case).  There is a long piece onapples though!!
4. Your contact details aren’t quickly visible. I rant on this all the time.
5. You have a long elaborate flash intro.  Unless you are a world famous brand I am not going to wait.
6. Your initial information requires a scroll down (e.g. below the fold).  People are more and more in a hurry.  Most people haven’t even read this far in this post (if you have contact me for your free gift!!)
7. If your “Latest News” is not up to date.  It is like eating stale bread.
8. Your images are so big that it takes and age for he site to load.  Screeching tyres as people leave.

Half a reason:  You have never asked for feedback from people who will give you free advice who are in the business.  The only feedback you ever got was from your friends.  They probably lied.  Yes they probably did!

I get tons of queries every week by e-mail for websites.  Most of them are looking for a website for tuppence and when I quote  them thruppence  they never reply.  However for each of them I do reply.  But I often wonder if I am responding in the right manner.  I tend to reply with a e-mail (detailed and pretty boilerplate to be honest) and more often than not NEVER hear again.  Now I know it isn’t always the price but perhaps an e-mail is too casual.  Should I go the PDF/Word doc/Google Docs route and have a fancy Dan template to respond?

Google Analytics is an excellent tool for tracking your website statistics and for understanding the natures and behaviour of your traffic.  If you have a WordPress blog then it is straightforward to enable GA on your site as there are a number of plugins that allow you to do this really easily.  In this post I will speak specifically about the WP Google Analytics plugin that I use the most.

Finding the Google Analytics Plugin

Login to your WordPress Dashboard and on the left hand side you will see the Plugins Link. Click on this now.

Then click on the Add New link.

You are then presented with the Install Plugins window.  The Plugin that we are going to install is WP Google Analytics.  Type this into the search window.  You will be presented with a list of plugins.  The one you want is WP Google Analytics.

Click on the Install button to the right of the plugin description.  Go on don’t be scared it wont hurt. v When prompted by the pop window Clic Install Now. this just installs the plugin on your WordPress installation.  When the install completes (only takes a few seconds) then you need to Active the Plugin.  Select Activate Plugin from the options presented below.

Adding Your Google Analytics Code
Nearly there.  The plugin is now activated and you need to set it up with your Google Analytics code.  Click on Settings on the right hand panel and you should see the Google Analytics plugin at the botton.
Click on Google Analytics and you will be presented with a window to post your Google Analytics code into its own window.  If you do not have not set up a Google Analytics account and do not have a code do not worry, in my next post I will show how to do this and get the code.  PAste in your GA code and the click Update Options.  All your pages and posts will now have this code automatically at the end of them.