How to use Google Analytics INSTEAD OF Google Optimize, to run A/B Tests or Experiments on your website. Now, WHY would you want to use Google Analytics, instead of Google Optimize? I've blogged and vlogged a lot about Google Optimize and have used it a ton for both Data Driven Design and our clients, and it is an amazing A/B testing tool. But Optimize is meant for true "experiments" like deciding with design or content elements within a page work best at converting users. Typically, this works best for "higher traffic sites" with already low bounce rates, because higher traffic sites with already super high engagement rates really need to get super detailed into further optimization using data. Optimize also works well for sites seeking higher traffic, with already strong engagement rates but looking to decide things like: - Which headline or sentence should I use as my web copy? - Which color should a Call To Action button be? - What should that button say? - Which of these two or three photos would best engage users for a particular space? What Google Optimize DOESN'T DO WELL, that Google Analytics does well for A/B Testing, is allow you to create completely separate layouts and test them against one another. This is done through simply creating a variant or multiple variant pages at different URLs. So your variants are PAGES, not ELEMENTS OF A PAGE. This is excellent for website redesign projects in which your business might be debating over two or more homepage "concepts" or running marketing campaigns to landing pages and what to do some initial testing around which one to spend the most money against. Watch this video to see how to set up these kinds of experiments in Google Analytics and get them live on your website.

I've been building a lot of Membership websites for clients over the last couple of years, mainly using WordPress and exploring the best membership plug-in options, which I've documented here...  My number one choice is MemberPress. As such, I wanted to show you real quick how to set things up to have your Members hit the page you want them to hit upon logging in. In other words, this is how to redirect your users to a custom URL upon log-in, using Memberpress.

I've blogged a lot about the Facebook Tracking Pixel, and posted dozens of videos about Facebook Ads, and now I'm starting to get follow up questions from the Data Driven Daily Tip community. I love it. This is another Data Driven Daily "Follow-Up Tip" courtesy of @Tarek Sidani. His question is here, based on this DDD Tip. And after doing a bit of research, I like to start with something super simple to answer Tarek's question, that many of you may be wondering, and that's how to track YouTube embed video views on your website with the Facebook Tracking Pixel, so that you can remarket via Facebook Ads back to an audience of people who you know have viewed the video. Great question Tarek. Here's my take on the simplest way to get this done on your website, YouTube, and Facebook Ads. :) I hope this helps, and have a great day!

The thing I absolutely love about building Membership Websites using WordPress is that any subject matter expert can build their own business. For example, you may be the #1 aficionado on comic books, baseball cards, fitness supplements, or things to do on Thursday nights in small rural towns. Or, you may have an amazing client services business that you want to scale into a premium consulting offering that you want give access to high end clients via a membership site. Or, you may be the administrator or moderator of a user group for a particular type of software. It doesn't matter what type of business you have, chances are, a premium membership website would be a fit for you, and the good news is - they're NOT hard to build. In fact, I wish I would have done a better job of this back in 2006-2011 when I built my fantasy football premium membership website. Don't get me wrong, things can get complicated, depending on what type of CRM integration you want, but they don't have to be too hard. Here's more information on which WordPress Membership Solutions / Plug-ins we've used and why we prefer MemberPress over all of them. And, this Data Driven Daily Tip looks at something super important that you need to know when setting up Stripe payments in MemberPress that is NOT well documented in MemberPress documentation. If you do not manually create an API endpoint for your Stripe Webhook, your users will get an error message when trying to access their content, even through their payment went through. Listen to the audio, and you're welcome. :)

This is my favorite kind of Data Driven Daily Tip. I'm calling it a "Follow-up Tip." It also encompasses my favorite thing about digital marketing.... THINGS CHANGE ALL THE TIME. I wrote a blog a few months ago about the important difference between Facebook Ads Metrics (Website Conversion Value) and (Website Purchase Conversion Value). Since then, Facebook has changed the way that they allow analysts and marketers to add these metrics. They've made it easier. They've removed the "Website Conversion Value" and basically just made one metric that only accounts for the value of real purchases by default. This video breaks down how.  Thanks to Bennett Hardeman who found this article and wrote me directly to ask this question: Where Did Website Purchase Conversion Value Go?

How To Use WordPress and Gravity Forms to Show Users Different Confirmation Pages and Route Emails to Different Employees. Data Driven Daily Tip 250. We've had several clients with multiple business locations ask us how they can automate feedback for a particular store or office location directly to the manager or supervisor of that location, based on a client or customer on the front end selecting that location. We've also had several clients ask how to show a different message or lead users down a different path based on a particular option they choose on a form. Like a "Choose your own Adventure" book. I loved those as a kid. Well, one of the cool things about Gravity Forms is that you can use Conditional Logic on the Notifications Level and on the Confirmation Level to make all of the above happen. This podcast explains how. Enjoy building in WordPress and Gravity Forms!

Data Driven Daily Tip 249. Small Business Owners are some of the hardest working people I've ever met. Which is why it confuses me why some get so mad when I tell them the best way to get to the top of Google is to blog every day. Nobody knows their business like a Small Business Owner, right? They eat, sleep and drink their business. Their business is their child, beyond a shadow of a doubt. A Small Business Owner's blog should be their place to brag about their child, and document their child's challenges, growth, struggles and victories. The second thing that makes Small Business Owners eyes roll is when I tell them that after blogging, repurposing their blog posts into 3-5 social media posts per day is the next best thing for their digital presence, SEO and net new customer acquisition. Up first, Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn and Medium. And in the next wave, YouTube, Podcasting and Google My Business. If you're writing a blog for SEO purposes, you might as well go straight to the number one search engine in the world (where websites still get more than 95% of their organic traffic), and use it's social media platform (Google My Business) to post about your business. Your posts get a ton of visibility when people search for your business name, and posting daily increases your business' chances of showing on Google Maps search results for non-branded phrases related to your products and services. This video shows you how to make posts on Google My Business, from simply telling people what's new, to posting events, offers, and promoting products. The data shows that when you do this, you generate a ton of SEO value for your company. So come on Small Business Owners, start (or keep) putting the same effort into your digital strategy that you do into your daily grind.

WordPress Has Great Plug-ins To Add Schema.org Structured Data to your website. Our favorite, for many reasons, is WP SEO Structured Data Schema Pro. The main reason we like it is because it adds Schema options to each page at the bottom, similar to Yoast SEO.  It also adds it to each post. Adding Schema is important for your website's search engine optimization (SEO), because it tells Google and other search engines what each page/post is about.  For example, this allows you to optimize your website by simply selecting any of the following tabs, and filling out the accompanying fields - Blog Posting, Aggregate Ratings, Article, Book, Course, Event, Job Posting, Local Business, Movie, Music, News Article, Product, Recipe, Restaurant, Review, Service, TVEpisode, Video, QAPage.  The fields that can be filled out are customized to each category and the WP SEO Structured Data Schema plug-in acts as a guide to implement the proper Schema for each page and post to enhance your SEO.  However, we noticed recently that Schema was missing on some of our websites' custom post types, things like Events pages (location was missing) for example. So, this audio covers how to add Schema to custom post types via upgrading to the Pro version of the WP SEO Structured Data Schema Plug-in, configuring it, and submitting it to Google Search Console.

Data Driven Daily Tip 247 - How To Tell If A Location Has A Google My Business Listing and How To Link To It. Remember Google Places? Remember Google Local? Google Plus? Google Maps? They're now all the same thing, thank God. If you've heard the term "Google My Business," it's actually a really good thing for your business. Your Business' Google My Business listing gets a ton of SEO real estate on Google's search engine results page when users are searching for your business name, address, phone number or even keywords related to your business that do not include your business name. For example, "coffee shops in rochester hills, mi" triggers maps results first. These Maps results are triggered by and tied to optimized Google My Business listings. I've blogged at length about Google My Business, but also have created this video for those of you small business owners or marketers of emerging brands who may not have any idea the status of your business listings as it relates to Google My Business. If you have one location or 500+ or anywhere in between, here's how to find out the status of each of your locations' Google My Business Listing.

WordPress and Search Engine Optimization Help Is your WordPress Website getting totally spammed with comments? Are your blog posts seeing any kind of legit comments from real readers? If your answer to the first question is yes, and your answer to the second question is no, then you can and should definitely turn off comments in WordPress. Here's how. 1. Go to your WP Admin 2. Go to Settings > Discussion in the left hand menu 3. Uncheck - "Allow people to post comments on new articles" 4. Save Changes