Entries from January 2007 ↓

I have been looking for a plugin that would allow me to view my Google Analytics stats directly in Wordpress without logging into my Adwords account.  Well after some searching I found this really cool Wordpress plugin that Joe Tan created.  Not only does it allow you to see your Google Analytics stats in Wordpress it also allows you to see your Feedburner traffic as well.

Installation is simple, just download the plugin and activate it in Wordpress.  Once you have the plugin activated just fill in your user account information for Google Analytics and Feedburner and then just wait for your traffic data to start coming in.

 If you are looking for a quick way to check your traffic stats in Wordpress then I highly recommend this great plugin. 

Ok, I need to talk about something that has been bothering me for awhile.  Basically I am tired of salesmen who constantly bug me to buy their product or service and then when I do I never hear from them again after the sale is complete.  I just don’t understand why after they make the sale some choose to alienate their customers by not following up with them to see how the product or services are working out.   In my opinion their customers are even more important now than they were before the sale, because ultimately their experience with the product or service directly influences whether they will buy again or recommend them. 

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I’m always looking for new ways to improve the visitor experience on my websites I deal with and manage on a daily basis.  Recently I started using a tool called Crazyegg that gives great statistics of how your visitors are clicking and interacting with your site.   I had heard of the service previously, but was not sure what it was all about until I was listening to Jeremy Shoemaker’s radio show NetIncome and Neil Patel the founder was a guest talking about the service.

After the show I decided to sign up for the service and give it a try since they have a free option available for up to 5,000 visits a month.  Once you sign up it is extremely easy to get a page loaded to begin tracking.  Really the only thing that needs to be done on your part is to insert a small bit of tracking code on your site and that is it.

Once your page has received some traffic you can check your dashboard in Crazyegg to see how your visitors have clicked on that particular page on the site.  When you view the statistics there are a few options available to choose from.

• Overlay - Shows and overlay of your page with markers detailing just what links were clicked by visitors.
• List - Displays a popup showing a list of all links that were clicked on that page.
• Heatmap (My favorite option) - The heatmap shows an overlay of the page with different hotspots that show the exact area of the link that was clicked by the visitor.

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Early on in my career I used to deal with a lot of helpdesk type support from end users in my company.  Luckily I can say that I am no longer in that position and I don’t know how anyone could deal with a helpdesk job for more than 2-3 years.  Anyway since my current job functions deal substantially with the web I still find myself directing common users to go to certain sites on the web and that is what prompted my to write this entry.

I cannot begin to count the times that I have told Bob (real name to remain anonymous) to go to the address bar and type in a site and then hit enter.  Unfortunately, instead to typing the address into the web browser Bob types it into the search box of whatever page comes up as his default homepage.  Then Bob then tells me well it says that it found 0 results, so something must be wrong with the website.  After I ask him assure me that he did indeed type the address where I told him to, he explains that yes he did and the site just must not be working.  Well that conversation usually goes on for about another 5-10 minutes and then all of the sudden a surprised Bob finds that “magical address bar” that must of just appeared all of the sudden.  His next comment for me usually is something like “Oh so that is where you wanted me to type the web address in at”.

Maybe some people might think I am being too harsh on Bob as he may not be a very web savvy user.  Well I don’t think so because the whole situation could have been avoided if he had just listened to the clear explicit directions that I gave him.  Does anyone else get to have fun experiences like this?

It is a new year and with it I am going to set some goals for myself.  I guess I could say that they are new year’s resolutions, but I have never really been much into those.  Anyways it seems like every year I have several things that I want to or say I am going to accomplish but something ends up stopping me from accomplishing them or I just don’t make an effort to completely see them through.

Well things are going to be different this year, I am going to finish the goals that I set for myself and I am going to make sure that I get off my ass and make a commitment to them.  I think another aspect that has also stopped me in the past was me being afraid to fail.  This is probably the biggest reason as to why alot of my ideas and goals never fully develop.  I was so busy thinking of why I would fail at some of these that I got myself in the mindset that the goal or idea was waste of time that would never succeed in the end anyway.

I decided I am going to take action this year and if some of my ideas fail, that is fine, as I could not think of a better way to find out for myself what I did wrong.  I have several areas that interest me and I am going to make it a point to try and learn something new everyday this year.   I am not going to worry so much about failing at what I do, but I am going to make it a point to see my goals through this year in every aspect of my life.  I am looking forward to having a good year and I wish the same for all of you.

By they way if you have been reading my recent blog posts, you may question my grammar skills.  Well that is fine because I was never really a pro at grammar anyway; I was always more interested in producing good content.

Well today as everyone expected, Apple officially release the iPhone at Macworld 2007.  I spend some time on the Apple site earlier taking a look at all of the features that it will offer and I must say that I am extremely impressed at this time.  So far from what I have seen it offers all the appeal of the hugely successful iPod combined with phone, web browsing, several other easy to use features.  In addition to that the iPhone will also feature a 3.5 inch screen to watch movies or view photos that you have stored on the device.

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Well this is officially my first post here on ClarkeW.com so here we go. I guess I should have thought of a more original title for this post, but oh well the hell with it.  If you would like to know more about me go ahead and check out the About page to learn more. I decided to start this blog so that I have a creative avenue to express my thoughts and share certain aspects about my life. 

If you have read my about page you know that I currently work in IT so you will probably see a lot of posts on my thoughts on technology.  Over the past 2 years I have really started to get into web development in addition to SEO and web marketing and I have to say that these are my favorite things to learn about right now.  These areas are constantly changing and I love trying to learn as much as I can about them because of the abundance of information that can be found on the web about these topics right now. 

In addition to that some of my other interests including listening to good music, watching NASCAR, watching movies, and hanging out with my wife and our dog Ernie.  I think that I should have a variety of topics to post about on here offering alot of quality content to readers.  I have a lot of thoughts on politics as well but I have not decided if I will use this blog as forum for those thoughts.  At this point I think that is one subject that is better left off here for the time being, due to the high emotions that can arise when discussing politics.

Hopefully if you do come across this site you can find some quality content on it that you may find to be a valuable topic to read about.