I have recently gotten a new computer and my husband strongly recommended that I move to Office 2010 when he loaded my applications. I was really hesitant after problems upgrading applications before and so I told him he had to upgrade first. Better he be the guinea pig than me. (He had hoped that I would upgrade first so he could decide if he wanted to.)
He upgraded first, and liked the new interface and features and so I have upgraded about one week ago. I have to say my experience so far with Outlook and Office 2010 is wonderful. I love the new options, control, and features. In fact my experience so far has been so good that I wanted to write this post to recommend it to you. (No, I am not being paid by Microsoft, just being an advocate for a terrific product.)
If you live in Outlook like I do, you will find the new features and options a bit daunting at first. To help, I got this book from my library called “Microsoft Office Outlook 2010 QuickSteps”. I have really come up to speed quickly using the book. Many of the options I knew how to use already, but it was all about where to find them in the new interface and how to use new features that I never knew existed or are brand new with Outlook 2010. The application is rock solid, fairly intuitive (although using a book really speeds up the learning process), has so many really great configurable options, and has many of the same features that each Office product share such as how to print, where to find the save button, and how to add quick steps.
As for the other applications in the Office Suite, the other one I use a lot is Word. The common elements that are shared between all Office products help you to get going fast. I thought I would be intimidated with the new ribbon features, but I have found with books and a video tutorial that I am getting proficient quickly. If you are moving from Office 2007 this is definitely a worthy upgrade. You will find many of the features you never knew you would like but now have and love in Office 2010. I got my software for about $400. The price is steep, but out of all the upgrades I have done or reviewed recently, this is one of the best. I highly recommend Office 2010 to you. Just upgrading Outlook to 2010 is worth the price.
Since I wrote about watching your website with Google Analytics and monitoring your bounce rate there have been a few questions from readers and customers that I felt I needed to address.
First, Google Analytics gives you an overall website bounce rate as well as a bounce rate by page. The higher the number the less relevant your page content is to your readers’ search queries and for that matter to your main website theme.
What causes a high bounce rate?
There are a few factors that can bump up your bounce rate. They are:
Your site is attracting the wrong type of readers
Your site is not user friendly and needs improved navigation
Your website has a long page load time and visitors are not waiting and leaving
You may be driving poorly targeted pay per click traffic to your website
I’ve see a few instances recently where there is great informational content on a site, but the content is driving up the site’s overall bounce rate. I can think of an example on my own website. I provide how-to’s as a courtesy on Outlook, email signatures, and other questions and topics from my newsletters over the years that clients have repeatedly asked for help with. Although this content is not about my services or even what I provide, it is archived on my site. I frequently point clients to pages of this informational content when they ask for how to fix a computer or email issue. As a result, these pages have been widely linked to around the web, and they drive traffic to my site. However, they typically have a very high bounce rate as the readers are not interested in my services just the information or how to. This could be a good reason for a high bounce rate.
If Google starts penalizing me for this content, these pages will be the very first I will delete. You may have similar types of pages on your site. Now, if you don’t have pages like this, and all your pages are about your own services, then a careful review of my list above may help you to isolate the issue causing your own high bounce rate.
If it makes sense to your business, you want to lower your bounce rate when possible but without hurting your overall traffic or reason you have content in place. Think carefully about your own situation and what your needs are for traffic before you start deleting files or dropping content blocks. You want to build on the things you do right not screw things up for yourself.
To remain current and grab market share of the social networking phenomena, Google has rolled out as a beta test Google+, which is touted to be Twitter and Facebook all rolled into one application. So will it be a Facebook Killer or just another failed attempt by Google to get into the social game?
Google+ Screen Shot
What exactly is Google+
More than the +1 button, Google+ is a new online social networking application. Reviews so far have been good, but not everyone has seen it yet. I received my invitation in the middle of July and am heavily testing the application. For now, only a few users are in the game, but the press so far has been tentative based on Google’s other tries in social media.
With Google+ you are able to friend anyone, like on Twitter, and read their updates without getting an approval to friend someone as you may have to do on Facebook. Users will have to group followers into circles. Permissions can be given to your own personal circles to allow certain types of updates or posts to be seen selectively by the people you desire.
Google has banned businesses so far and is only allowing individual users access. Additionally no third party tools for post scheduling have been allowed API access to the platform.
Here are a few of the key features you will find in Google+:
Hangouts – allow up to ten people to video conference together or share live video feeds. Facebook only allows you to see one person at a time with their video application that is using the Skype backbone. Google+ seems to be adding in the “fun” factor with this but will it really be used?
Huddle – connects all your friends via desktop, SMS, iPhones, and Androids. It is a group messaging application that allows you to connect with the circles you select. Want to meet everyone for drinks after work? Do a quick huddle and get your friends connected at your favorite spot.
Sparks – are topics which are a Google determined compilation of sites on a topic you select such as sports, technology, or other keyword. Google calls this a “sharing engine”. There is no way to add a specific feed to follow or link, so Sparks is not really a XML feed aggregator. For now you have to read what Google supplies in that topic without a way to customize the sites you want to see in that topic. This has the biggest potential for website owners to get inbound traffic as if your site is picked up in a Sparks link you could drive literally thousands of visitors to your site to read an interesting article, blog post, or web page.
The Google+1 button is like the Facebook Like button. Clicking the button allows you to vote up in the organic search results things you like as well as to tag a like, website, and even AdWords ads and share them with your friends or Google+ Circles.
What is the feedback so far on Google+?
So far the feedback from pros using it has been good. The comments have ranged far and wide:
“As of Thursday [7/14/11], he writes, Google+ was 66.4 percent male and 33.6 percent female, according to his sampling.” More…
“What he proceeds to show me is a product that in many ways is so well designed that it doesn’t really even look like a Google product. ” More…
“A big feature of Google+ is the toolbar that exists across the top of all Google sites (yes, the aforementioned black one). Once your Circles are set, sharing with any of them from any Google site is simple thanks to this toolbar.” More…
Now Google has built “it” will people come?
That will be the real key once more people start to get access to Google+. Can users be convinced to leave Facebook and move their connection and activities to Google+? And Google is really banking on that action.
My feeling is that once people like something hate to change, and people like Facebook. If all your friends don’t move to Google+ you would still have to manage both applications which would be very problematic and potentially leading to a failure for Google.
Ease of use will also be key. If it is hard to connect or hard to keep your information private Google+ will go the way of Google Buzz and Orkut. I think that the big carrot to move to Google+ for business people and website owners will be that they will be able to capture SEO/organic juice from the Google+1 activity which will be integrated into Google.com. I am not sure that mainstream America will embrace Google+. Facebook is comfortable, easy and able to be locked down for privacy. Although Google+ looks cool, and there’s lots of buzz about the product, if your friends aren’t there you won’t be there either!
Another late breaking note is that Google+ has now banned business profiles which I feel is a very big mistake, but they are not asking my advice – at this point. 🙂
In conclusion, it is from my own view point, that it is simply too soon to say if Google+ is a Facebook killer. From the press and previews it appears that Google has really worked outside the box to try to shape the future of social media with their new Google+ application. Google’s got a lot riding on the success of the application too, as they really need a win to retain relevancy in the search market that is becoming more personalized and keep their dominance in online advertising which they deliver on their properties. If Google+ is received well expect aggressive competition to happen with Facebook for users.
Get in the queue for an invitation.
If you think you want to be an early tester and possible advocate for Google+, here’s the link to sign up to get an early invitation. Or, you can just contact me with your GMail or Google account user name and I will send you an invitation now. My personal reaction so far is that Google+ is fun, kind of like Facebook, but more link and information driven for now than Facebook.
If you didn’t know, Google AdWords is now allowing you to track phone calls from Google generated phone numbers attached to your Google AdWords ads. The big news is that we are really seeing measurable results with this new feature. For clients and account managers this now validates what Google AdWords has said all along; that Google AdWords ads are more than clicks, activity impacts off line activity and phone calls. Now we have the real proof!
It only costs a click plus $1 per phone call to get in the game. Although enabling this function does not track every single phone call that an AdWords ad may actually generate for your account, it does show hesitant clients the true power of AdWords beyond scripted form conversion response tracking.
We have enabled this feature in all of our own client accounts this past month and boy are we starting to see some results! For my own personal account I have always known that people will sit on my landing page and not fill out my form, which is tracked by an AdWords conversion script, but will pick up the phone and call me right there. Now with phone tracking I can actually determine which phone calls came from direct AdWords activity – a powerful thing!
The phone number is only shown at the top of your AdWords ad and will not appear on your landing page, the phone number may change. Besides that Google doesn’t really share what the phone number is with you. What Google does do is forward that call from a Google generated toll free number to your selected office phone and then record the call in your AdWords account.
Not every ad shown will show the phone number. So far we are seeing the phone number show on less than half of all ad impressions, but the results for many clients is striking. Find out more about call metrics by reading this blog post on the AdWords blog so you can take advantage of this new feature too.
