Why get the Apple TV?

The Apple TV internet TV connection device will change the way we watch TV.
Apple TV streams Video to your TV from your computer and uses digital HDMI cable to connect to your TV.  I see a Apple revolution going on with the constant stream of cool high technology products that revolutionizes the way we do things.

Take me for example.  I worked for Hewlett Packard Company for over 20 years.  I managed Intel Processors, Chipsets, Boards, components, packaging and DRAMS (memory chips for computers) and R&D to bring out the latest and greatest new HP Product.  I would never buy an Apple product when I worked there.  I use HP laptops, HP Officejet printer, HP high definition monitor and use the HP 12C calculator.

So what happened?
iPhones came out with the latest and greatest possible device capabilities of any other mobile phone.  I decided to get one right when they came out for $400 for my business.  I loved it.  I use it for Twitter, Facebook, Google Maps, TV guide, remote control, camera and flashlight.  It is totally awesome.  I used it for many years and just got the iPhone 4 and it is so much better.

Buy the Apple Macbook laptop computer
Then I had virus protection that was slowing down my computer and I wanted to start making videos.  The Mac has iMovie with every computer and it is a great video editor.  I bought my first Macbook in 2008.

Buy the iPad tablet computer device
Then the iPad came out and it looked like a great way to read books and watch movies and get email and run social networks.  I bought a iPad for my birthday because I wanted something I did not need.  I love it now and use it all the time.

Buy a Macbook Pro 13″ laptop computer
I got fed up with my windows computer crashing all the time so I decided to switch my primary computer to a Mac in December 25, 2009.  I love it.  The build quality is great.  It does not crash as much and after getting used to it can pretty much do everything I did on my Windows machine.  I prefer Windows file management system.  It is a lot easier for me to find what I am looking for.   The Macbook Pro is a delight to use and is sturdy and is a wonderful laptop that I like better than Windows laptops.

Buy a Airport extreme wireless router
My old Linksys WRT-54G router was dropping the internet connection on wired and wireless connections and it was very frustrating.  I searched for a new router and decided on the Apple Airport Extreme dual band N router.  There was a close second with the D-Link router, yet I went with Apple because I like their products.  They feel substantial and well built and the technology does not seem to go obsolete very fast.  I brought it home plugged it in and that was about it.  No muss no fuss, it just started to work without any fancy set up or reading the instructions or anything like that. Apple tends to be a very customer service friendly company while carefully watching the bottom line.

Apple is the best run company in the world.
The best just got better.
Apple is leading the charge of implementing new useful technology for the masses.
Apple is setting the standard and raising the bar for other slower less innovative companies to integrate into this new standard set by Apple.  The are becoming a huge force in advertising with the iPad.  So much so that the publishers are not very happy with the way Apple is managing the information the advertisers get since it is less that they are used to.  The publishers are used to getting all the demographic information for the people that took action because of an advertisement they ran in a magazine.  Apple is renting the TV shows for a day or two for 99 cents.  At Amazon, you can buy the TV show forever for the same 99 cents.

Buy the Apple TV

For me, I am getting tired of paying high prices to the Cable company every month.  I get HD digital signals from a TV antenna on my roof so I get the regular 1, 4, 5, 7, 11 as well as local channels.  I can watch most TV shows online either with the iPad and the ABC application player and tv.com application.  Hulu.com has most major TV shows available to watch for free the next day.  Training for just about anything is available on YouTube for free.  It will be very useful and cool to be able to stream video from my computer wirelessly instead of unhooking the DVD player HDMI cable and connecting it to my laptop.  I think for $99 that the Apple TV is a perfect thing to buy to keep up with technology.

My Apple TV review based on the technology results in a Buy rating.

What do you think about Apple and the Apple TV?
Type up a quick comment.

Why Buy the Apple TV – The Internet TV Player is a post from: Clay Franklin Strategic Thoughts

Things to do to move your internet business forward using web site analytics

1)    Look at your web site for usability for your customers.  Is it too busy?  Is there a clear call to action?  Are there too many ads? Will anyone come back or sign up to the RSS feed because they enjoyed the time there and they found a solution to their problem or question.  Action: Remove some ads from your site if you have more than a couple, be sure that your site looks pleasant to the eye and has a clear call to action on each page or blog post.

2)    Look at your Blog theme or website design.   Is it clean and pleasant to look at?  Action: consider getting a nice clean theme for your blog.  Often a premium theme is better than a free theme and has better coding.  Action: Look at changing your blog theme if it is not easy to look at and pleasing to the eye.  For my site I plan to start using the Thesis blog theme or a Studio Press Theme with clean code and pleasant colors and a nice look.

3)    Check the code of your site.  Google and disabled people like clean code and it is to the benefit of your web site purpose to have clean code.  Action: go to W3C.org and validate the code on your site for HTML and CSS.  Be sure to correct all errors and do not worry about the warnings as much.  If you are able to clean the code all the way be sure to add the W3C Validated HTML and CSS logos on your site.

4)    You are using Google analytics right?  If not be sure to get a Google analytics account and add the code to each of your sites and then add the tracking code to your conversion pages. For web sites you can add it just before the last body tag or in your footer so it is on each page or if you have a blog, you can use a blog plug in like Google analytics plug in. Google Analytics is the best free analytics tool available.  There is a great resource to learn about Google analytics at http://analytics.blogspot.com/.  Action: Verify that you have Google analytics on all your web pages and conversion pages and use analytics to track your conversions.

5)    Do you understand “Why” customers come to your website?  Write down the target person that you expect to arrive there and what they may expect to get while there.
Action: Write down the “why customers come to my site”.  Write down the target audience with as many demographics as possible.  Now look at your site through the eyes of your target audience.  Are they getting what they want when they arrive at your website or blog?  Is it easy to navigate and find the solution to the question or problem they are trying to solve when they get there?  If it is great, if not make the necessary changes to have a fun exciting site for your customers that is easy to navigate and without too many distractions as mentioned in number one above.

6)    Have you requested feedback on your site from your visitors or from people you know in your target market?  Often time’s candid feedback can be very useful in determining if your site meets the needs of you target market.  Action: Set up an exit survey on your site so that visitors can provide feedback on the results of their visit or go to a forum in your niche and post a request for site feedback.  You may be surprised at the results.  Take action based on the survey or site feedback and then continue to request site feedback about each three months or if doing a exit survey continue to use the exit survey, yet use a script that only asks each participant each three months or so.  This way you do not bug your visitors with a survey with each visit.

7)    Are you selling something or looking for your visitors to take action on your site?  If you are, try Google web site optimizer to test two different pages to see which one performs better.  Only have one thing be different on each page that you are testing so you will know what the change is that is performing better.  Action: Set up Google Web site optimizer on your web site and test two different web pages to see which one performs better and then make the better performing site the main site and make another change to test.  Keep testing and making changes and you will see improved performance or conversion with each change.

8)    Be sure you know what the success metrics are for your web site.  Are you looking to capture email subscribers?  RSS readers?  Sell a product?  Increase the trend of repeat visitors?  Be sure to start to measure the success of your web site using analytics.  Use the “So What” measurement.  For your metrics, it they increase in a way you desire, is it making you more money? Are your readers happier?  Be sure that you work to improve things that have a good “So what” factor.  Google analytics can measure conversions for you by adding a code to the thank you page for a new email subscriber or a sale.  Feedburner can measure the new RSS subscribers.  Action: Write down your success metrics for your web site and start to track it.  Then take actions and test to see if it improves the results.  Remember that when you have the data, you need to analyze it to turn the data into information.  Use the information to make changes and then rinse and repeat.

9)     If you are not familiar with all that Google analytics offers, I suggest you go there and spend some time reading and watching the tutorials.  Google analytics is very powerful and there is no reason to go buy Click tracks, Click Tale or other expensive web analytics tools until you have exhausted the resources and information Google analytics provides for free.  Google has a blog at analytics.blogspot.com that has good information and inside the Google analytics page; there is an abundance of information and tutorials.
Action: go to Google analytics and watch the tutorials and read the articles.  Go to the Google analytics blog and read up on how to better utilize Google Analytics to improve your web site performance.  Sign up for the free version of Clicktale and get a video of each of your visitors actions while on your site and a heat map of where they move the mouse.

10) Check out additional resources to learn more about web analytics and how it can improve your understanding of why customers are coming to your web site, what they do when they get there and how to improve the site and increase traffic.  Action: spend time reading up on additional web analytics tools and resources including heat maps, split testing, conversion tracking and start to measure the statistics of the analytics you are getting and turn it into information to improve conversions and traffic.  Leave a comment below and let me know what you think about Google analytics and how it has helped your business.
Here are a few good resources:
http://www.lakeshorebranding.com/company/blog/ultimate-list-of-top-29-tools-for-competitive-intelligence/comment-page-1/#comment-174
http://www.compete.com
http://www.alexa.com

http://snipurl.com/yahoowagroup

http://analytics.blogspot.com
http://www.kaushik.net/avinash
http://www.liesdamnedlies.com
http://epikone.com/blog
http://blogs.commerce360.com
http://lunametrics.blogspot.com
http://blog.instantcongition.com
http://snipurl.com/neilmason
http://webanalytics.wordpress.com
http://clayfranklin.com/10-easy-ways-to-improve-web-analytics

10 Tips to Improve Your Web Site and Measure the Results with Analytics is a post from: Clay Franklin Strategic Thoughts

10 Things You Can Do With Little Effort to Improve Web Analytics

1) Be sure to understand the reason for your web site. Is to sell something, capture email addresses or just to provide valuable information to your target audience. If there is no money involved then it is just a hobby. Action: Write down the reason for your web site.

2) Be sure that I am contributing content that is deserving of the world to read. Then measure your successes by looking at how many readers subscribe to your RSS feed or email feed for your site to see how valuable the readers see your site. Action: have a call to action to encourage readers to subscribe to your blog at the end of each article or post. Start to track the numbers of RSS readers each month.

3) Start to get your readers to comment on your blog by asking questions or having a controversial story that gets your reader engaged. Measure the numbers of comments as an indication that your readers are enjoying your site. Action: Have a call to action in your blog post or article that encourages readers to comment. One good way is to ask a question to elicit a response.

4) If you have something to sell on your site, it is important to measure the conversion rate for your visitors. Google’s webmasters tools has the ability to capture the conversion rate for your site for free. Action: Set up Google webmasters tools and start to measure your conversion rate. Extra credit Action: set up a split test to drive improvement in your conversion rate.

5) Start to use a keyword report to see what keywords people are using to find my blog. Compare your articles to the keywords people used to come to your site and determine if you are using an optimized keyword strategy for your site and how you can improve your articles to better meet the needs of your visitors. Action: Review your site analytics from Google analytics or other source each month to track and improve your keyword strategy for your site based on what keywords people searched for to arrive at your site and the bounce rate for those keywords.

6) Be sure to measure your bounce rate by keywords. If you have a high bounce rate for a particular keyword, possibly you want to drop that keyword or enhance the value your reader gets when they arrive at your site looking for the answer to their problem or need when they searched for that keyword. Look at your top 20 entry pages, top exit page and top pages with high bounce rate and then take action to improve the value provided to your reader on these pages or evaluate changing the keyword for the page to better match what visitors are looking for. Action: Track your bounce rate by keywords each month with the goal to reduced the bounce rate on your targeted keywords by providing better value based on the desired results your reader is looking for.

7) Be sure to set a goal for your website for the next 30 days. The goal should not just be “get more visitors” because morevisitors are not a good business goal. Set a goal like get more comments because it shows reader engagement or set a goal of more RSS readers because it shows that your readers want more of what you have to offer. If you have a site that makes money, measure the income generated and set a goal to increase the income. Be sure to measure increased income against the conversion rate so you can work on conversion rather than just getting more visitors. Track things that will tell you why you had a spike in sales. When measuring conversion, you have a better idea of how well your sales funnel is working. Action: Write down the goal for your web site for the next 30 days and have tracking in place to measure the results so you will know what worked and what did not.

8) Be sure to turn your analytics data into information. The web is full of data, yet it is the wise person that can interpret the data and use it to modify the web site and predict future behavior. There are many tools to help know what your readers are doing on your site. What are the hot spots by using a heat map program or use split testing to determine what page converts better. Action: Analyze the data you get from your web site and pick a few key comparisons that you can track over time so you are dealing with information instead of just data.

9) Measure you web site ROI by tracking your goals. Did you get more work, sell more products, or get more speaking requests? Measure your ROI against your costs like time to build the site, cost of advertising, opportunity cost and numbers of visitors. Then make small changes and track the improvements. Action: Set up metrics to know how much time you spend on your site, how much money or time you spend on advertising so at the end of the month you can compare the investment to the desired results.

10) Set up feedburner for your RSS feed so you can track the subscribers, stories they read and other relevant data that you canturn into information that will improve your sites success. Action: Set up Feedburner for your site and look at all the data available to you and find out what articles are being read more often so you will have a better idea of what your visitors are looking for and interested in. Provide more of the information that you find they open and read and less of the information about what never gets opened and read.

Sign up to the RSS feed for this blog.
What is your favorite way to measure your site performance?

10 Easy Ways to Improve Web Analytics is a post from: Clay Franklin Strategic Thoughts