Digital Insights

Thoughts on Changing Perspective

It is very easy to get into a rut.  To always think the same way about a problem.  As someone who works with a wide variety of companies, I often get the question, “What do you know about our industry?”

My value to clients is knowing online marketing and to take the time to find out what YOU know about your industry. Let’s just start by saying that I have worked in dozens of industries at this point in my career and have a strong background in areas that seem down right unrelated. It has suited me well, because I always like to be learning and exploring.

Today, I was chatting with a client about some information architecture changes to his website. The changes were being proposed to create a better user experienced and the organize content that had professional value that we buried in a blog.

It is generally the same tale. A client has taken down an old website, and doesn’t bother to redirect any of the old pages or redirects every page to the homepage.  There is a lot of value in creating redirects.  

This information graphic shows the big three reasons why you should create redirects for your old website.

There was news that Google Data Studio was globally released this week. However, I think the bigger news was that there were some upgrades to the features available including an improvement to the filters and the additional of custom segments from Google Analytics.

Let’s step through the filter updates first.

In a usability study we did for a client pitch in 2009, we queried users how they looked for auto repair vendors. We didn’t ask them how they ‘searched’ for these repair shops, so we got answers like “I ask my dad” or “my husband picked a place”  . . . a pretty typical scenario.  

We further asked them, what factors they ultimately used to make the selection.  Where location and distance from home/work a factor? The resounding answer was YES.