Getting Answers -- Fast

It's 10am, you've got a fresh cup of coffee, and you're excited to implement your latest Google Analytics-related idea. Today, you'll be setting up your ecommerce reporting or perhaps re-examining all of your keywords with the help of Motion Charts. You begin working and suddenly, you're not sure how to proceed. You have a question, and you need an answer -- hopefully before your coffee gets cold and your inspiration runs out.

A quick search of the Help Center yields an article that only partially addresses your question. You need help from someone who has already worked through this particular roadblock.

We're pleased to announce that, as of today, you have a new way of quickly getting the help you need. We've launched a new Forum within Google Help that allows you to ask questions about Google Analytics and have them answered by both Google employees and other Google Analytics users. You can easily identify answers from Google Employees, top contributors, seasoned posters, or new posters. The "Best Answers" (as voted by the community) gain the most visibility so that everyone can share valuable information. And a list of "Related Questions" comes up even as you are typing your question.

If you are in the forum to help other users, it's easy to find questions that need answers. Based on your contributions, you can be distinguished as a Top Contributor or seasoned poster. The old Analytics Help Group will still be accessible for information searches, but is closed for additional posts. This will allow the Google Analytics support staff to focus all their efforts on your new forum.

Now, back to work, before your coffee gets cold!

Posted by Melissa Hsieh, Google Analytics Team

Cyber Monday is next Monday

You may not know it, but the busiest shopping day of the year, Black Friday, is shortly followed by the biggest online shopping day of the year, Cyber Monday. This year Cyber Monday falls on December 1st, and a little preparation can help you make the most of the day.

Here's a few tips to help you prepare:

• Check your budgets, and consider increasing them. You're likely to see increased traffic and you won't want to exhaust your budget early on a day when there are so many potential buyers.
  
  
• Give customers peace of mind about shipping times. One of the most stressful parts of online holiday shipping is not knowing if a present will make it in time. Be up front about delivery dates and let customers know ordering deadlines for gifts to make it in time for the holidays.
  
  
• Promote any special offerings in your ad text. If you have a holiday special that differentiates you from the competition, be sure to showcase it in your ad.
  

The holiday shopping season continues beyond Cyber Monday, and we hope all these tips can help you attract more customers this winter.

Posted by Trevor Claiborne, Inside AdWords crew

Professionals: Online Course on Hispanic Marketing - Spring 2009

After four successful semesters, an online course in Hispanic Marketing Communication will be offered again this Spring by the Florida State University Center for Hispanic Marketing Communication. The Center, headed by Dr. Felipe Korzenny, is pioneering education in Hispanic Marketing Communication.

The online course is available to anyone interested and is particularly recommended for professionals currently addressing the Hispanic market, or those who would like to start a Hispanic marketing initiative. The course, during the last four semesters, attracted students from many industries across the United States and provided a forum for learning and discussion about strategy that enriched the practice of many these professionals. The course has become an opportunity to share experience in an integrated framework.

Students in the course have testified that participation in it enriches their experience via online discussions with other professionals, case studies, readings, and guest lectures. Joining the group is more than studying the discipline because it encourages thinking and sharing of practices and ideas. The course creates synergy for communication and links professionals that otherwise could not meet each other to discuss their common Hispanic marketing problems and solutions.

The Spring 2009 session has duration of fifteen weeks (classes begin January 6 and end April 24) and includes topics such as language use, Hispanic cultural insights for marketing, and case studies relating to Hispanic marketing. The course will also address research and marketing strategies. A certificate of completion will be issued to all non-degree seeking students who satisfactorily complete the course, and eligible students can receive three hours of undergraduate/continuing education credit. THOSE INTERESTED ARE ENCOURAGED TO APPLY IMMEDIATELY AS REGISTRATION IS LIMITED. REGISTRATION IS OPEN NOW! For application information contact Jennifer Boss at inquiries@campus.fsu.edu or by phone at 850 644 7551.

Google TV Ads program targeting enhancements

Today, we announced new improvements to the Google TV ads program targeting feature. With program targeting, you can reach more customers when your message is most relevant, which means you're more likely to see better results.

Simply enter a keyword related to your product or service, and we'll provide you with a list of relevant TV programs to choose from. You can access this feature during the 'Target Campaign' step when setting up a TV campaign.

To learn more about how this works and to watch a demo video, check out the blog post on the Traditional Media Blog.

Posted by Emel Mutlu, Inside AdWords crew

Display ad builder: Wider availability and improvements

We recently announced the launch of AdWords display ad builder, and now we've made it more widely available and easier to use. Display ad builder is a tool that lets you create and customize display ads, allowing you to easily expand your AdWords campaigns beyond text advertising. We've had an overwhelmingly positive response from our advertisers so far, so we're happy to announce that the tool is now available to advertisers in the UK, Ireland, and a number of other countries.

In addition, based on your feedback, we made improvements to the display ad builder to enable greater customization and make building display ads even easier:

Image picker: You can now choose from previously uploaded images when creating your ads.

Real-time editing: See what your text and other customization edits look like, automatically -- without having to click the 'update preview' button.

Quicker way of seeing available ad sizes: You can see which sizes your ad can run in for each ad template without having to complete the ad creation process. You can also preview how your customization choices affect each size.

Additional templates: Choose from even more templates for customizing your ads.

We think these improvements will help you more easily and efficiently create engaging display ads. As always, we welcome your suggestions on how we can improve the display ad builder.

Next week, we'll post best practices to help you build effective ads with the display ad builder. In the meantime, you can view our tutorial video or visit the display ad builder site to learn more.

Posted by Emel Mutlu, Inside AdWords crew

Beta Testing News: An Updated AdWords Interface

We've just asked a small group of US advertisers to start testing an updated web interface for AdWords. (If you're in the test pool, you'll see an alert when you sign in to your account.)

We're testing changes to the ways that AdWords advertisers see and manage the data in their accounts. These changes should make it easier to tackle common tasks, like navigating between campaigns and editing keywords across several ad groups. We hope the updates will give advertisers clearer insights into their ad campaigns and simpler ways to act on those insights.

To answer a common question: The updates we're testing won't affect how ads run. Bidding, ranking, Quality Score, and the other key AdWords performance fundamentals are not changing with these updates.

We've started advertiser testing very early, while we're still working on changes to the updated interface, so that we can make adjustments based on comments from our testers. That's one reason why this test group is pretty small. We'll gradually increase the number of advertisers testing the updated interface (and make it available to international testers) in the coming months. We'll be sharing more details about key features along the way.

In the meantime, if you'd like to be considered for the test, please submit your AdWords account information on our beta sign-up page and we'll contact you when we're ready to add you as a tester.

Posted by Amanda Kelly, Inside AdWords crew

If You Don’t Look Up, You Might Just Loose Your Head.

While I was on my morning trail run, I got to thinking.

There was a light coating of snow on the ground, the morning sun was just starting to peak through the tree limbs, I was following the soothing flow of a creek and I literally had miles of woods all to myself … and I was missing it.

I realized that, in order to not break an ankle, my eyes never left the path 4-6 feet in front of me.  I could have easily run right by a deer, coyote or hawk and never notice it because I was more concerned with the occasional rock and root in my path.

Don’t get bogged down by the rocks and roots in your day … take some time to look up and enjoy the journey.

In trail running, you need to look ahead to plan your route or you could end up doubling back to avoid a downed tree … or worse, get crowned by it.

Don’t loose your head.  Take some time to look ahead of the day-to-day “rocks and roots” to see what other obstacles or opportunities might lay ahead.   

Take care,

Eric