Posts tagged ‘evaluation’
9 Useful [& free] Web Analytic Time Killers
From searching for web analytic tools and social media that encourage evaluation tools lately, I have been able to generate a fun list of sites that you could easily kill time with….while also having fun and learning technical insights into web analytics. Enjoy, =)
1. SEO Website Grader (Thank you Dr. Stephen Dann for this amazing tool!)
This site allows you to receive a monthly report providing helpful and useful SEO information on any site of your choice, AND to compare it against competing sites. A great resource for any search engine optimization or interactive marketing plans. Warning: Hours of time will go by before you realize it! š
2. Is your website Hott or Not….err, ok or ko?
Ok, we’re not in high school anymore, but don’t act like you’ve never checked out the infamous Hott or Not website or uploaded your friend’s picture to the site as a joke…
Well, now you can rate websites based on the design of their homepage with a 1-10 ranking and see the average rating other websites have received. To become a repeat visitor, register your website into the bank and see what other users rate it!
3. Blogpulse
Blogpulse is a Nielsen Buzzmetrics tool that allows one to create customized graphs based on keyword trends for chosen keywords. Other tools include featured keyword graphs based on popular keywords, conversation tracker which follows trackbacks and permalinks between blogs and blogger profiles that show the most recent posts, the sources used, numbers of times the bloggers is cited by fellow bloggers and a list of 10 related blogs. This is great for monitoring how the blogosphere views your brand, topic or organization and helps identify blog networks.
4. Ice Rocket
Ice Rocket is like a smaller version of Blogpulse and allows you to make keyword trend graphs, but only for the most recent three months, while Blogpulse lets you make a graph for the last 6 months.
5. Popular Viral Video Aggregate
Like PopURLS, only for videos, this site shows the most popular videos for YouTube, Metacafe, MySpace, Yahoo, ifilm, Break.com, Grounder and Google.
6. See Google’s top sites based on non-keyword metrics
This link takes out all the keyword data in Google and shows you what sites Google sees as the best ranked with the most traffic.
Alltop is a blog aggregate that provides the most recent 5 posts from the top 40 blogs, sorted by topic. Topics include social media, nonprofit, moms, life, dads, career, celebrities, games, SEO, Macintosh, Windows, Journalism, world news, photography and more!
8. PopURLs
PopURLS is an aggregate that provides the most popular links across the web including digg, del.icio.us,Ā flickr, reddit, Truemors, YouTube, Google and Yahoo news, AOL Video, Mahalo, Twitter and more!
9. Hits Log
Hits Log is an SEO tool that allows you to discover your site’s Google Pank Rank and search engine rank. Though not as useful as Website grader, it may be easier for some to use.
- Feel free to add to the list.
9 Useful [& free] Web Analytic Time Killers
From searching for web analytic tools and social media that encourage evaluation tools lately, I have been able to generate a fun list of sites that you could easily kill time with….while also having fun and learning technical insights into web analytics. Enjoy, =)
1. SEO Website Grader (Thank you Dr. Stephen Dann for this amazing tool!)
This site allows you to receive a monthly report providing helpful and useful SEO information on any site of your choice, AND to compare it against competing sites. A great resource for any search engine optimization or interactive marketing plans. Warning: Hours of time will go by before you realize it! š
2. Is your website Hott or Not….err, ok or ko?
Ok, we’re not in high school anymore, but don’t act like you’ve never checked out the infamous Hott or Not website or uploaded your friend’s picture to the site as a joke…
Well, now you can rate websites based on the design of their homepage with a 1-10 ranking and see the average rating other websites have received. To become a repeat visitor, register your website into the bank and see what other users rate it!
3. Blogpulse
Blogpulse is a Nielsen Buzzmetrics tool that allows one to create customized graphs based on keyword trends for chosen keywords. Other tools include featured keyword graphs based on popular keywords, conversation tracker which follows trackbacks and permalinks between blogs and blogger profiles that show the most recent posts, the sources used, numbers of times the bloggers is cited by fellow bloggers and a list of 10 related blogs. This is great for monitoring how the blogosphere views your brand, topic or organization and helps identify blog networks.
4. Ice Rocket
Ice Rocket is like a smaller version of Blogpulse and allows you to make keyword trend graphs, but only for the most recent three months, while Blogpulse lets you make a graph for the last 6 months.
5. Popular Viral Video Aggregate
Like PopURLS, only for videos, this site shows the most popular videos for YouTube, Metacafe, MySpace, Yahoo, ifilm, Break.com, Grounder and Google.
6. See Google’s top sites based on non-keyword metrics
This link takes out all the keyword data in Google and shows you what sites Google sees as the best ranked with the most traffic.
Alltop is a blog aggregate that provides the most recent 5 posts from the top 40 blogs, sorted by topic. Topics include social media, nonprofit, moms, life, dads, career, celebrities, games, SEO, Macintosh, Windows, Journalism, world news, photography and more!
8. PopURLs
PopURLS is an aggregate that provides the most popular links across the web including digg, del.icio.us,Ā flickr, reddit, Truemors, YouTube, Google and Yahoo news, AOL Video, Mahalo, Twitter and more!
9. Hits Log
Hits Log is an SEO tool that allows you to discover your site’s Google Pank Rank and search engine rank. Though not as useful as Website grader, it may be easier for some to use.
- Feel free to add to the list.
A Little Known Idea for Evaluation: User Interface Test
…does the concept User Interface ring a bell? What a User-Interface test?
As I hinted to in my last post, I think the evaluation step is maybe one of the most important steps a marketing plan can include, yet many lack. Doing evaluation, allows one to:
- Reflect on the strengths of the campaigns
- Document the process so there’s no reinventing the wheel for next time
- Identify areas for improvement
- Lets you gain and track client feedback
- Find ‘lessons to learn from’
- Calculate ROI and compare to previous years/cases
For best evaluation results, one should meet with a team, get outside feedback, talk to the client(s), key associates or other employees who had a hand in the project. Now, it the fun part. I want to introduce to you a great, but commonly unknown tool to add to your evaluation methods: the User Interface Test.
User Interface is a concept that describes how users interact with a website. If you’ve ever had any of the following questions, then conducting a User Interface test might be right up your alley:
- What should be on the homepage?
- Should the main graphic be video, a slideshow, a moving graphic, etc.?
- Where should the ‘search’ button go?
- Is our website easy to use?
- How functional is our website?
- What’s the message our users are getting?
- What would make our website easier to use?
- When someone first comes to our site, what’s the first thing they see?
- What would get users to spend more time on our pages?
- Does everything on our site communicate our message?
- Does our content engage the reader?
- What is someone expecting when they come to our site?
- Is the site easy to use?
- Is our site customize-able?
- Does our site have a professional tone? or an appropriate tone?
- Does our site speak relevance to those trafficking the site?
- Does the design capture attention?
- How do our users interact with our site?
If you find yourselves asking these questions and similar others, then a User Interface test could be right up your alley! To test your User Interface, you can use either quantitative or qualitative approaches. Four qualitative approaches are outlined below.
- Time to Task: Tests ability for tester to complete an action to user’s satisfaction in a decent time.
- Accuracy: Tests the accuracy of the website and the information found.
- Emotional Response: Tests how the testee responds to their overall experience on the site or in conducting their tasks.
- Recall/Repetition: Tests ability to recall the process it takes to find desired information. Also looks as how the testee’s ability to recall where he or she is on the website and how he or she arrived there.
To create quantitative results, one can have testee fill out forms measuring various categories on a scale of 1-5 (customization, professionalism or tone, design, organization, usefulness, relevance, and interactivity.)
Hope this little research tidbit, and way of evaluating your website comes in hand. =)
Greenwashing: What is it, how do we evaluate it, and what does it mean?
This post provides some answers to these questions and some points to ponder.
First, the term greenwashing is taken from the term whitewashing. Whitewashing means to hide, cover or conceal unpleasant facts or details, especially in a political context or to manipulate. According to the Greenwashing Index, Greenwashing is:
“Itās greenwashing when a company or organization spends more time and money claiming to be āgreenā through advertising and marketing than actually implementing business practices that minimize environmental impact. Itās whitewashing, but with a green brush.”
Knowing this information, enter in the Greenwashing Index, promoted by EnviroMedia Social Marketing and University of Oregon School of Journalism and Communication. The purpose of the Greenwashing Index is “to educate consumers about how to āreadā an ad and encourage them to decide for themselves if what theyāre seeing is greenwashing.” The index hopes to curb the growth of greenwashing and encourage real environmental responsibility and change.
The index measures and scores advertising claims based on the following five criteria:
- The ad misleads with words.
- The ad misleads with visuals and/or graphics.
- The ad makes a green claim that is vague or seemingly unprovable.
- The ad overstates or exaggerates how green the product/company/service actually is.
- The ad leaves out or masks important information, making the green claim sound better than it is.
To detect greenwashing, Sourcewatch offers the following tips:
- Follow the money trail.
- Follow the membership trail.
- Follow the paper trail.
- Look for skeletons in the company’s closet.
- Test for access to information.
- Test for international consistency.
- Check how they handle their critics.
- Test for consistency over time.
As my previous post mentioned, the FTC began a workshop of hearings yesterday a year early about the growing buzz and concerns regarding green marketing. To listen to the FTC hearings about the, click here. The workshops could results in updating the FTC’s green guides, which outlines the FCC’s laws regarding environmental claims for advertiser, marketers and consumers. These guidelines were originally created in 1992. Though the green guides were updated in 1998, they havenāt been changed since.
Now the final piece: What does this mean to us….as social marketers?
Personally, I think evaluation tools are great, despite the lack of them and the lack of priority in evaluation processes. The evaluation step is one too many organization and marketing directors overlook or skip. I see the Greenwashing Index as another great evaluations tool for us, and I offer up the suggestion that perhaps we should have more such evaluation tools to help keep the private sector accountable and responsible. Doing such, I think, would increase our success in our social marketing endeavors.
More on evaluation procedures and steps in the next post. =)