My apologies for neglecting my blog for the past few weeks. It’s been a crazy time planning photo tours, workshops and an expedition to find out what global warming is doing to the Polar Bear.
From India, to Greenland, Tofino and up possibly as far as Baffin Island the next 18 months is going to add to the air miles.
If you are interested in some great travel opportunities, or simply want to learn how to take better photos; check out what I have been planning through “The Photographers Lounge”
At the Photographers Lounge we understand that everyone learns at their own speed, budgets and through different methods. That is why we offer a number of different programs designed to help every photographer.
It does not matter if you are an amateur wanting to learn to shoot better family photos, or a professional looking to expand your knowledge; the workshops, seminars and photo tours at the “Photographers Lounge” of Waterloo region are designed to help you on your own personal journey.
Saturday, 24 March 2012
Monday, 12 March 2012
Master the "Exposure Triangle"
Photography, or “Foto graffi” literally means writing with light in Greek, and exposure is the combination of three factors that determine what the light writes… hence the Exposure Triangle.
Those three elements are: ISO, Aperture and Shutter Speed.
ISO - The ISO rating (which is an international standard) measures the image sensor’s sensitivity to light.
Aperture - The Aperture determines how much light enters the lens and is registered by the image sensor (or film); this is designated by the f-numbers on the lens barrel.
Shutter Speed - The Shutter Speed determines the amount of time the light enters the lens and is registered by the image sensor. Note that the Shutter Speed on your camera is delineated in fraction of a second increment.
The combination of these three elements results in a given subject’s exposure value (EV). What is critical to remember is that any change in any one of these elements will cause a predictable impact on the other and consequently impact the final image (i.e. by changing the Aperture, you change depth of field; by changing ISO rating, you change the amount of light required to obtain an image, and by changing the Shutter Speed, you effect how motion is captured). Such that you will never be able to independently control a given element, because you have to take into account how the other two elements will interact for the final exposure.
Fortunately, the mathematics of photography happen to work in such a way that each element in the Exposure Triangle has a relative “stop of light” value. Such that if you increase the light by one stop by reducing the Shutter Speed, you can regain the original EV by either decreasing the Aperture by the same stop value and/or adjusting the ISO rating accordingly.
Here’s a real world example; I’m at the beach with my family and the sun is going down, and I want to get a shot of my daughters smiling face. I take out my camera, do a quick meter reading with the shutter set 1/60th and get a EV on her face of f/4. I set the aperture to f/4 and take my photo. I look at the image on the display screen, and while I love the way the red and purple light dances on her face, I don’t like the depth of field – I can see too much of the background. I want as shallow a DOF as possible, which means I need to increase my aperture setting. I open the lens wide open to f/1.4. This is a 3-stop difference, which lets in 8x as much light. To compensate, to get back to the same EV that gave me such a pleasing image, I would need to increase the shutter speed by 3-stops – so I crank it up to 1/500th. I quickly take the picture again (that sun is going down)… and viola! I have my photo with the EV that gives me that amazing quality of light AND with the shallow DOF.
Shutter Speed is measured in fractions of a second and it determines how fast the shutter opens and closes, thereby controlling the key element in photography – light, glorious light; specifically the time-frame in which light registers on the image sensor (or on film). The Shutter Speed captures the world in split seconds, but it can also be slowed down to a few seconds (or remain open longer at the photographer’s discretion). This enables all sorts of possibilities in determining what is actually recorded to the image sensor.
Aperture is the opening in the lens that determines the amount of focused light that reaches the image sensor. It’s measured in f-stops. The beauty of the f/stop arithmetic is that regardless of a lens’ focal length, the f/stop measures the same amount of light; such that f/4 on a 50mm lets in the same amount of light as f/4 on a 120mm. The opening’s diameter may differ, but the amount of light is the same because the length of the lens is different.
So what is correct exposure? That’s mainly subjective, but we can agree that it is when the camera effectively reproduces a subject on the image sensor where the most uniform amount of picture information is visible in the highlights, midtones and shadows.
How do you determine the specific exposure you want? All dSLRs have an EV meter in the viewfinder that provides an EV on the subject that you are metering.
An effective way of ensuring a correct exposure is to employ Exposure Bracketing. This is a technique in which you’ll be taking at least 3 exposures – one at the designated exposure value (EV), one 1/3 of an f/stop above, and one at 1/3 of an f/stop below. On some features-laden cameras, you set the ISO, f-stop and shutter to acquire an exposure value (provided by the TTL meter), and press the shutter release. The camera will automatically shoot the upper and lower bracketed exposure. When you review the bracketed exposures, you’ll be able to see subtle, but key differences in the images – most specifically if there is any over- or underexposure. Professionals bracket all the time to make sure they get the best possible negative for later.
What exactly is under- and? It’s when there is excessive loss of image information within the highlights and shadows. There is typically no way of “finding” that lost image information with digital photography in particular (i.e. when the subject emits so much light that the image sensor is overwhelmed, it records that section of the image as zero; and the same thing is true when the subject emits so little light that image sensor believes there is nothing there). No matter how much tweaking you may try with a 3rd party image process, there’s no recorded information to be discovered. Incidentally, this is not always true with film and the photo-chemical process.
So how do you avoid under- or overexposing your pictures, before you master the art and craft of photography? You can use the Automatic Exposure Lock or AE Lock that’s available on most dSLRs. AE-Lock is a feature that, when you have the camera set to one of the automatic modes (i.e. Shutter-priority, Aperture-priority), it enables you to lock the EV and take continuous photos without have to resample the lighting in a given scene.
The wonderful thing about digital photography is that you can continue to experiment at no cost to you as you learn and master the three elements of the Exposure Triangle, going from semi-automatic to full manual.
Those three elements are: ISO, Aperture and Shutter Speed.
ISO - The ISO rating (which is an international standard) measures the image sensor’s sensitivity to light.
Aperture - The Aperture determines how much light enters the lens and is registered by the image sensor (or film); this is designated by the f-numbers on the lens barrel.
Shutter Speed - The Shutter Speed determines the amount of time the light enters the lens and is registered by the image sensor. Note that the Shutter Speed on your camera is delineated in fraction of a second increment.
The combination of these three elements results in a given subject’s exposure value (EV). What is critical to remember is that any change in any one of these elements will cause a predictable impact on the other and consequently impact the final image (i.e. by changing the Aperture, you change depth of field; by changing ISO rating, you change the amount of light required to obtain an image, and by changing the Shutter Speed, you effect how motion is captured). Such that you will never be able to independently control a given element, because you have to take into account how the other two elements will interact for the final exposure.
Fortunately, the mathematics of photography happen to work in such a way that each element in the Exposure Triangle has a relative “stop of light” value. Such that if you increase the light by one stop by reducing the Shutter Speed, you can regain the original EV by either decreasing the Aperture by the same stop value and/or adjusting the ISO rating accordingly.
Here’s a real world example; I’m at the beach with my family and the sun is going down, and I want to get a shot of my daughters smiling face. I take out my camera, do a quick meter reading with the shutter set 1/60th and get a EV on her face of f/4. I set the aperture to f/4 and take my photo. I look at the image on the display screen, and while I love the way the red and purple light dances on her face, I don’t like the depth of field – I can see too much of the background. I want as shallow a DOF as possible, which means I need to increase my aperture setting. I open the lens wide open to f/1.4. This is a 3-stop difference, which lets in 8x as much light. To compensate, to get back to the same EV that gave me such a pleasing image, I would need to increase the shutter speed by 3-stops – so I crank it up to 1/500th. I quickly take the picture again (that sun is going down)… and viola! I have my photo with the EV that gives me that amazing quality of light AND with the shallow DOF.
Shutter Speed is measured in fractions of a second and it determines how fast the shutter opens and closes, thereby controlling the key element in photography – light, glorious light; specifically the time-frame in which light registers on the image sensor (or on film). The Shutter Speed captures the world in split seconds, but it can also be slowed down to a few seconds (or remain open longer at the photographer’s discretion). This enables all sorts of possibilities in determining what is actually recorded to the image sensor.
Aperture is the opening in the lens that determines the amount of focused light that reaches the image sensor. It’s measured in f-stops. The beauty of the f/stop arithmetic is that regardless of a lens’ focal length, the f/stop measures the same amount of light; such that f/4 on a 50mm lets in the same amount of light as f/4 on a 120mm. The opening’s diameter may differ, but the amount of light is the same because the length of the lens is different.
So what is correct exposure? That’s mainly subjective, but we can agree that it is when the camera effectively reproduces a subject on the image sensor where the most uniform amount of picture information is visible in the highlights, midtones and shadows.
How do you determine the specific exposure you want? All dSLRs have an EV meter in the viewfinder that provides an EV on the subject that you are metering.
An effective way of ensuring a correct exposure is to employ Exposure Bracketing. This is a technique in which you’ll be taking at least 3 exposures – one at the designated exposure value (EV), one 1/3 of an f/stop above, and one at 1/3 of an f/stop below. On some features-laden cameras, you set the ISO, f-stop and shutter to acquire an exposure value (provided by the TTL meter), and press the shutter release. The camera will automatically shoot the upper and lower bracketed exposure. When you review the bracketed exposures, you’ll be able to see subtle, but key differences in the images – most specifically if there is any over- or underexposure. Professionals bracket all the time to make sure they get the best possible negative for later.
What exactly is under- and? It’s when there is excessive loss of image information within the highlights and shadows. There is typically no way of “finding” that lost image information with digital photography in particular (i.e. when the subject emits so much light that the image sensor is overwhelmed, it records that section of the image as zero; and the same thing is true when the subject emits so little light that image sensor believes there is nothing there). No matter how much tweaking you may try with a 3rd party image process, there’s no recorded information to be discovered. Incidentally, this is not always true with film and the photo-chemical process.
So how do you avoid under- or overexposing your pictures, before you master the art and craft of photography? You can use the Automatic Exposure Lock or AE Lock that’s available on most dSLRs. AE-Lock is a feature that, when you have the camera set to one of the automatic modes (i.e. Shutter-priority, Aperture-priority), it enables you to lock the EV and take continuous photos without have to resample the lighting in a given scene.
The wonderful thing about digital photography is that you can continue to experiment at no cost to you as you learn and master the three elements of the Exposure Triangle, going from semi-automatic to full manual.
Wednesday, 7 March 2012
A list of TIPS for using Facebook
FACEBOOK TIP: The best times to update the facebook pages are Wednesday and Sundays, but Wednesdays are the better of the two days.
FACEBOOK TIP: If you read someone’s post or look more closely at their pic(s), the least you can do is like it, even if you hate it… That’s a common courtesy payment for the piquing of your curiosity.
FACEBOOK TIP: Studies show that fill-in-the-blank posts garner nine times more response than other types of posts. That’s what I call ____.
FACEBOOK TIP: Try not to LIKE your own posts. It makes you look desperate.
FACEBOOK TIP: Save time by having a planned strategy before you login. Know what you are there to do.
FACEBOOK TIP: Your face is your logo in the world of social media. It’s called “Facebook” not “Logobook.”
FACEBOOK TIP: Don’t over-post. It annoys your audience. Limit posts to 1 x 4 hrs. If you need more, go to Twitter.
FACEBOOK TIP: Start by making friends & being social. Don’t worry about selling. People do biz with those they like. So use your Facebook page to have more fun than blast out deals.
FACEBOOK TIP: Likes do not lie. If you’re not getting Likes, it means people don’t like what you’re posting. When you post something good, people will let you know with likes.
FACEBOOK TIP: I don’t care how famous you are. Everyone should take time to comment respond to those who comment on your posts. Not responding may make you seem anti-social, rude and self-absorbed (even if you’re not!).
FACEBOOK TIP: Research from Buddy Media shows that there is an 18% increase in engagement for posts made on Thursday and Friday. The less people want to be at work, the more they are on Facebook!
FACEBOOK TIP: DON’T over-capitalize your POSTS. It arouses suspicion, and makes you LOOK like you are TRYING too hard.
FACEBOOK TIP: Give details about the pics you post, including who, what when & where. Like a soap opera, not everyone has been watching from day one. Keep them informed.
FACEBOOK TIP: Follow my 25% Rule for Facebook Posts by not posting too much about one thing. Diversify your posts for the best results, and to accomplish your goals.
FACEBOOK TIP: Don’t worry about posting the wrong thing, so long as you share your heart, you can’t go wrong. Be yourself, unless you’re a creep.
FACEBOOK TIP: According to research by @BuddyMedia, you get 20% more engagement on Facebook when peeps are home from 8pm-7am.
FACEBOOK TIP: Link your Facebook account to your twitter account. A post on twitter will then be seen on your Facebook.
FACEBOOK TIP: If you read someone’s post or look more closely at their pic(s), the least you can do is like it, even if you hate it… That’s a common courtesy payment for the piquing of your curiosity.
FACEBOOK TIP: Studies show that fill-in-the-blank posts garner nine times more response than other types of posts. That’s what I call ____.
FACEBOOK TIP: Try not to LIKE your own posts. It makes you look desperate.
FACEBOOK TIP: Save time by having a planned strategy before you login. Know what you are there to do.
FACEBOOK TIP: Your face is your logo in the world of social media. It’s called “Facebook” not “Logobook.”
FACEBOOK TIP: Don’t over-post. It annoys your audience. Limit posts to 1 x 4 hrs. If you need more, go to Twitter.
FACEBOOK TIP: Start by making friends & being social. Don’t worry about selling. People do biz with those they like. So use your Facebook page to have more fun than blast out deals.
FACEBOOK TIP: Likes do not lie. If you’re not getting Likes, it means people don’t like what you’re posting. When you post something good, people will let you know with likes.
FACEBOOK TIP: I don’t care how famous you are. Everyone should take time to comment respond to those who comment on your posts. Not responding may make you seem anti-social, rude and self-absorbed (even if you’re not!).
FACEBOOK TIP: Research from Buddy Media shows that there is an 18% increase in engagement for posts made on Thursday and Friday. The less people want to be at work, the more they are on Facebook!
FACEBOOK TIP: DON’T over-capitalize your POSTS. It arouses suspicion, and makes you LOOK like you are TRYING too hard.
FACEBOOK TIP: Give details about the pics you post, including who, what when & where. Like a soap opera, not everyone has been watching from day one. Keep them informed.
FACEBOOK TIP: Follow my 25% Rule for Facebook Posts by not posting too much about one thing. Diversify your posts for the best results, and to accomplish your goals.
FACEBOOK TIP: Don’t worry about posting the wrong thing, so long as you share your heart, you can’t go wrong. Be yourself, unless you’re a creep.
FACEBOOK TIP: According to research by @BuddyMedia, you get 20% more engagement on Facebook when peeps are home from 8pm-7am.
FACEBOOK TIP: Link your Facebook account to your twitter account. A post on twitter will then be seen on your Facebook.
Friday, 17 February 2012
Rick Sammon Weekend Workshop in Kitchener, Ontario - September 22 and 23, 2012
Saturday Schedule
Speedlite Demonstration from 10-12 with a model
Presentation on Exploring the Light from 1 - 4 showcasing his best photographs and tips from around the world.
$97.50 for the saturday (inc hst)
Sunday Schedule
10-1 hands on shooting workshop with maximum of 30 attendees at MacLeans Junk Yard
2-4 is back in the classroom for an editing workshop with Rick learning HDR processing.
$112.50 for the sunday (inc hst)
$157.50 for both days (inc hst)
Much more details, the venue and payment methods announced here by the end of February.
Some have already confirmed attendance and we appreciate your interest, your space has been reserved.
For others that want to confirm attendance please contact me through www.kpepphotography.com
Speedlite Demonstration from 10-12 with a model
Presentation on Exploring the Light from 1 - 4 showcasing his best photographs and tips from around the world.
$97.50 for the saturday (inc hst)
Sunday Schedule
10-1 hands on shooting workshop with maximum of 30 attendees at MacLeans Junk Yard
2-4 is back in the classroom for an editing workshop with Rick learning HDR processing.
$112.50 for the sunday (inc hst)
$157.50 for both days (inc hst)
Much more details, the venue and payment methods announced here by the end of February.
Some have already confirmed attendance and we appreciate your interest, your space has been reserved.
For others that want to confirm attendance please contact me through www.kpepphotography.com
Wednesday, 15 February 2012
Connect With Your Customers On Facebook and Grow Your Business Socially
You should continually strive to ensure that your customers know, like and trust you. How do you do that though? It usually doesn’t happen during the sale, it’s what you do after that makes all the difference. That’s where Facebook comes in handy, and the fact that over half of all the people in Canada are on facebook, half of your customers will have one as well, and what that really means is that you have a way to become part of your customers online social graph. Below you will learn a simple, yet powerful way to connect with your customers on Facebook and at the same time, through the Law of Reciprocation, earn a testimonial and a recommendation.
1. First, take a picture of yourself, next to your customer. Ask your customer if it’s okay if you tag them in it on Facebook. You’re playing the odds here and the odds are pretty good that they have a Facebook page and the odds are even better that they will say yes to tagging them. This photo will then link to your customers profile page and place the picture on their wall (their profile page).
2. If you can, connect with your customer with their help, that way you can ensure that you have found their profile and not somebody else with the same name.
3. Tag them in the picture.
4. Go to the picture sitting on their wall that you placed and say something along the lines of, “It was really great working with you. I really enjoyed the time we spent together at my workshop (or at your wedding), you are the reason why I enjoy what I do. Thank you for being one of my favorites!”
Because of the Law Of Reciprocation, which states that we, as human beings, feel an obligation to repay an action with a like action, your customer will return the favor and say something like, “It was great working with you as well! We’ve never had such a positive buying experience in our entire lives!”
Now take a look at what you have. There is a picture of you and your customer sitting on their Facebook wall for all of their friends to see. On top of their friends asking them questions about it they see the kind words that the said about you. Think about how powerful that is and the fact that one peer testimonial is worth two hundred traditional media impressions… that’s one awesome testimonial!
5. Don’t stop there. Go back to their page a few days later, thank them and say something along the lines of, “As you know it’s important to me that my customers feel comfortable enough with the way I treated them to send referrals my way. Let me ask you, do you feel comfortable enough, should the need ever arise, to refer somebody you know to come see me?”
Of course their going to say yes and now you have both a testimonial and a recommendation AND all of their Facebook connections can see it!
That’s powerful stuff and 80% of the time it works just like that.
Kev
1. First, take a picture of yourself, next to your customer. Ask your customer if it’s okay if you tag them in it on Facebook. You’re playing the odds here and the odds are pretty good that they have a Facebook page and the odds are even better that they will say yes to tagging them. This photo will then link to your customers profile page and place the picture on their wall (their profile page).
2. If you can, connect with your customer with their help, that way you can ensure that you have found their profile and not somebody else with the same name.
3. Tag them in the picture.
4. Go to the picture sitting on their wall that you placed and say something along the lines of, “It was really great working with you. I really enjoyed the time we spent together at my workshop (or at your wedding), you are the reason why I enjoy what I do. Thank you for being one of my favorites!”
Because of the Law Of Reciprocation, which states that we, as human beings, feel an obligation to repay an action with a like action, your customer will return the favor and say something like, “It was great working with you as well! We’ve never had such a positive buying experience in our entire lives!”
Now take a look at what you have. There is a picture of you and your customer sitting on their Facebook wall for all of their friends to see. On top of their friends asking them questions about it they see the kind words that the said about you. Think about how powerful that is and the fact that one peer testimonial is worth two hundred traditional media impressions… that’s one awesome testimonial!
5. Don’t stop there. Go back to their page a few days later, thank them and say something along the lines of, “As you know it’s important to me that my customers feel comfortable enough with the way I treated them to send referrals my way. Let me ask you, do you feel comfortable enough, should the need ever arise, to refer somebody you know to come see me?”
Of course their going to say yes and now you have both a testimonial and a recommendation AND all of their Facebook connections can see it!
That’s powerful stuff and 80% of the time it works just like that.
Kev
Saturday, 28 January 2012
My TOP 20 Reasons to use Google Analytics
Further to my recent post on ANALYTICS!, the following are the TOP 20 reasons you should install Google Analytics
1. Setting Goals – If you don’t set goals, Google Analytics will not really help you grow your business. If your photography business has you shooting events, your goal is probably to find newly weds. If your business is teaching and mentoring, your goal is a registration to your newsletter and booking new students.
Once you have your business goals setup in Analytics, you are able to unleash a huge amount of data about what’s working and what’s not in your marketing efforts.
2. Comparing Date Ranges – In the old Analytics, there was no easy way to compare how your site is doing relative to a different point in time. In the current version, Google analytics allows you to compare two different time periods and chart them. This will allow you to identify growth or decline in your web traffic.
3. Deep Geographic Data – You can also see how your site is performing in a variety of ways by city or country. For example, users on my site in my geographical area spent 39.25% more time on my site last month, while the number of new visitors from the United Kingdom decreased by 24%.
4. Local Conversion Data – If you setup “conversion goals”, you can also see how well your site is converting in different locations. For a photographer, this means you can adjust your offers based on how they are performing geographically, much like photographers that had store fronts have done for years.
You can also buy geographically targeted AdWords for regions that seem to be producing sales for you more than others.
5. Bouncing visitors – This is a fancy way of saying “where do users bail out of your website?” By knowing this information, you can attempt to fix the parts that seem to be scaring users away.
6. Navigation Summary – This report shows how users maneuver through your site. For example, you can see where users go from the first page they land on, or how most of them get to your contact page. If people aren’t following your desired navigation, it means you need to re-arrange some things on your website to force users click the right spots.
7. Complete AdWords Integration – If you advertise through AdWords, Analytics will provide you data on each campaign, group, and keyword. More specifically, you can look at each of these areas and see the number of displays, clicks, the cost, conversion, and if it results in a transaction or another defined goal. You will then be able to calculate your ROI.
8. Customize Your Dashboard – The old “Executive Summary” has been replaced with a totally customizable Dashboard where any report can be added and arranged via drag and drop functionality. For example, if you want to see how a particular goal is converting each time you login, you can move this report to the Dashboard for quick access by clicking the “Add to Dashboard” link.
9. Email Reports – If you focused on marketing, chances are you prefer to receive reports in email rather than login and track things down in your analytics program. One of the key features of Analytics is the ability to setup reports, and schedule when and to whom they will automatically be sent.
10. Keyword Source – Knowing how customers find you are one of the most important questions in sales and marketing. Google Analytics tells you what search keywords people are using to find your site. If certain keywords are proving hot, you might want to consider catering keyword buys, content, and offers to them. This feature can also alert you to news and trends; for example, the #2 keyword phrase searched on my site last month was “500px vs smugmug”.
11. Referring Sites – This is a feature of any basic analytics program, but with Google Analytics you can not only see traffic, but goal conversion on the sites sending you traffic. Thus, you can get a read not only on the number of visitors a link partner is sending, but the quality of the traffic.
12. Browser Capabilities – Does your site not support Safari? Do your photos get skewed in the latest version of Firefox? Better make sure you’re not alienating a bunch of your users. Analytic’s Browser Capabilities feature let’s you see what browsers people use to view your site, and again, let’s you drill down to see how well users of different browsers convert against your goals. If those 0.57% of remaining Netscape users are converting like teenager girls at a Justin Bieber concert, better make sure your site supports them!
13. Connection Speeds Data – Connection speed data helps you determine how to prioritize your site’s design. If you still have a fair amount of people on dialup in your area, you may want to make your site a little less load heavy than if your site is all broadband users. For photographers, that means compressing the size of your images to allow for faster upload times.
14. Exclude Internal Traffic – Chances are you spend more time on your site than anyone else, which can skew your data if it’s not excluded. To make sure it’s not counted, Google lets you filter out traffic from IP addresses that you specify.
15. Visitor Loyalty – How often to your visitors come back? Reducing the percentage of people that only visit once should be one of your constant priorities, and Analytics let’s you track this piece of information over a specified date range.
The more a person comes to look at your images and services, chances are you have a better chance on converting them to a buying client.
16. Visitor Type Contribution – This dynamic pie chart tells you the contribution your returning visitors are making versus new ones. My testing showed that my return visitors load more pages and spend more time on my site and they bounce less than new visitors.
17. Search Engine Traffic – Knowing which search engines are sending the most traffic and how well its converting can help you optimize your spend and SEO efforts or purchase keywords on specific search engines. While Google will likely provide you the most traffic, if Yahoo or BING converts better, you might want to see how you can get more visitors from them.
18. Top Content – For each page on your site, Google Analytics will tell you how many times it has been viewed how much time the average visitor stays there, and how many people leave your site after visiting. If you have a popular page that everyone leaves after viewing, you should think about adding something attention grabbing on it.
19. Top Exit Pages – Knowing your trouble spots tells you where you need to improve, and Analytics lets you see your top exit points over a specified date range.
20. Export to PDF – For a nice clean file with Analytics data, you are now able to export reports into Adobe PDF format.
There are my top20 reasons to ad Google analytics to your website and help you grow your business. If you have any more to add, please feel free to comment below and add to this list.
1. Setting Goals – If you don’t set goals, Google Analytics will not really help you grow your business. If your photography business has you shooting events, your goal is probably to find newly weds. If your business is teaching and mentoring, your goal is a registration to your newsletter and booking new students.
Once you have your business goals setup in Analytics, you are able to unleash a huge amount of data about what’s working and what’s not in your marketing efforts.
2. Comparing Date Ranges – In the old Analytics, there was no easy way to compare how your site is doing relative to a different point in time. In the current version, Google analytics allows you to compare two different time periods and chart them. This will allow you to identify growth or decline in your web traffic.
3. Deep Geographic Data – You can also see how your site is performing in a variety of ways by city or country. For example, users on my site in my geographical area spent 39.25% more time on my site last month, while the number of new visitors from the United Kingdom decreased by 24%.
4. Local Conversion Data – If you setup “conversion goals”, you can also see how well your site is converting in different locations. For a photographer, this means you can adjust your offers based on how they are performing geographically, much like photographers that had store fronts have done for years.
You can also buy geographically targeted AdWords for regions that seem to be producing sales for you more than others.
5. Bouncing visitors – This is a fancy way of saying “where do users bail out of your website?” By knowing this information, you can attempt to fix the parts that seem to be scaring users away.
6. Navigation Summary – This report shows how users maneuver through your site. For example, you can see where users go from the first page they land on, or how most of them get to your contact page. If people aren’t following your desired navigation, it means you need to re-arrange some things on your website to force users click the right spots.
7. Complete AdWords Integration – If you advertise through AdWords, Analytics will provide you data on each campaign, group, and keyword. More specifically, you can look at each of these areas and see the number of displays, clicks, the cost, conversion, and if it results in a transaction or another defined goal. You will then be able to calculate your ROI.
8. Customize Your Dashboard – The old “Executive Summary” has been replaced with a totally customizable Dashboard where any report can be added and arranged via drag and drop functionality. For example, if you want to see how a particular goal is converting each time you login, you can move this report to the Dashboard for quick access by clicking the “Add to Dashboard” link.
9. Email Reports – If you focused on marketing, chances are you prefer to receive reports in email rather than login and track things down in your analytics program. One of the key features of Analytics is the ability to setup reports, and schedule when and to whom they will automatically be sent.
10. Keyword Source – Knowing how customers find you are one of the most important questions in sales and marketing. Google Analytics tells you what search keywords people are using to find your site. If certain keywords are proving hot, you might want to consider catering keyword buys, content, and offers to them. This feature can also alert you to news and trends; for example, the #2 keyword phrase searched on my site last month was “500px vs smugmug”.
11. Referring Sites – This is a feature of any basic analytics program, but with Google Analytics you can not only see traffic, but goal conversion on the sites sending you traffic. Thus, you can get a read not only on the number of visitors a link partner is sending, but the quality of the traffic.
12. Browser Capabilities – Does your site not support Safari? Do your photos get skewed in the latest version of Firefox? Better make sure you’re not alienating a bunch of your users. Analytic’s Browser Capabilities feature let’s you see what browsers people use to view your site, and again, let’s you drill down to see how well users of different browsers convert against your goals. If those 0.57% of remaining Netscape users are converting like teenager girls at a Justin Bieber concert, better make sure your site supports them!
13. Connection Speeds Data – Connection speed data helps you determine how to prioritize your site’s design. If you still have a fair amount of people on dialup in your area, you may want to make your site a little less load heavy than if your site is all broadband users. For photographers, that means compressing the size of your images to allow for faster upload times.
14. Exclude Internal Traffic – Chances are you spend more time on your site than anyone else, which can skew your data if it’s not excluded. To make sure it’s not counted, Google lets you filter out traffic from IP addresses that you specify.
15. Visitor Loyalty – How often to your visitors come back? Reducing the percentage of people that only visit once should be one of your constant priorities, and Analytics let’s you track this piece of information over a specified date range.
The more a person comes to look at your images and services, chances are you have a better chance on converting them to a buying client.
16. Visitor Type Contribution – This dynamic pie chart tells you the contribution your returning visitors are making versus new ones. My testing showed that my return visitors load more pages and spend more time on my site and they bounce less than new visitors.
17. Search Engine Traffic – Knowing which search engines are sending the most traffic and how well its converting can help you optimize your spend and SEO efforts or purchase keywords on specific search engines. While Google will likely provide you the most traffic, if Yahoo or BING converts better, you might want to see how you can get more visitors from them.
18. Top Content – For each page on your site, Google Analytics will tell you how many times it has been viewed how much time the average visitor stays there, and how many people leave your site after visiting. If you have a popular page that everyone leaves after viewing, you should think about adding something attention grabbing on it.
19. Top Exit Pages – Knowing your trouble spots tells you where you need to improve, and Analytics lets you see your top exit points over a specified date range.
20. Export to PDF – For a nice clean file with Analytics data, you are now able to export reports into Adobe PDF format.
There are my top20 reasons to ad Google analytics to your website and help you grow your business. If you have any more to add, please feel free to comment below and add to this list.
Friday, 27 January 2012
The importance of an analytical tool for a photographers website
Analytics… without a measurement “yard stick” how are you ever going to know what is working on your website and what is not working? Are you ever going to know who is looking at your photos? Do you know what visitors do when they look at your content on your website? Where are your website visitors coming from? Have you ever wondered why people are looking at my photos or services, but not buying anything from you? Are you posting the proper size of photos online to fill up a user’s entire screen? What programs are your users using to access the internet with, and is your site optimized for various web browsers?
If you would like to know the answers to these questions, you should consider an analytics tool to help you get those answers.
Let’s think of it this way… You take a photo and are proud of it. You blast out a photo to your Twitter followers, you then post that same photo on your Facebook profile for all your friends to see, and maybe you have a Google+ account that you want to share your photo on… OK, done, you did all that… now what?
If you are serious about photography as a business, you should know exactly how many people clicked on that link you put out on those three websites, what these people did on your site when there, and ultimately did they contact you to buy something.
Of course, the above paragraph is simplified, but basically, that’s what you want to be doing. I know that every time I post a blog entry on Twitter I get 8% to 9% of my followers coming to my website to read my BLOG. I know how long they spent reading, I know if they looked at anything else, and I monitor the questions or comments that come from this online traffic.
I also know that every time I post a link on Linkedin of a new BLOG post that I get on average of 30 views within the first day of posting it on LinkedIn. I then track the residual visits over the next 30 days. I see that every time I post on LinkedIn I average 100 people coming to read that blog post. Plus, I track what else they did.
Without going into a longer dissertation about all the places I post and what traffic I get to my website; let’s just say that I have it down to a science. I know, within a small margin of error how many website visitors I will get by throwing website content out into the internet on various places.
To add to this, every time I sell something, a photo, get a client for a workshop or a mentor program; I ask one simple question, “How did you find me?”
By asking that question I put the final piece of the puzzle together, my conversion ratio. By doing that I know what social media and what mass marketing initiative is working. It then becomes a numbers game. The more I focus on what’s working, the more money I make, the more camera gear I can buy, the closer I get to achieve my goal.
So how the heck can you get that kind of measurement on your website?
Google Analytics provides you, the photographer, a powerful tracking for monitoring your web presence. It's one of the most effective and free, web analytics solutions on the market today.
Google Analytics shows you how people found your site, how they explored it, where they came from and where they went after they visited your website. Through this information you will spot trends and you will be able to adjust how your content is displayed and inevitably enhance their visitor experience, ultimately improving your return on investment, increase conversion ratios, and make more money on the web.
As a business owner you will be able to understand (1) which marketing initiatives are being most effective, (2) what are the traffic patterns on your website and (3) which customer segments are most valuable to you for generating revenue. Throw on your marketing hat and you will be able to see where your visitors are coming from and what they do while they are on your website, help you understand how to convert more visitors to customers and which marketing spend is most effective in sending people to your website.
To sign up for Google Analytics, you should ensure you have an account with Google and visit this page, GOOGLE ANALYTICS SET-UP
Once you begin to register your website for Google analytics you must first ensure that you place your Google Analytics tracking code on your web pages. Between Google and you’re your website provider, they will help you. Google Analytics code is a small JavaScript snippet that needs to be added to each page of your site, either manually or through the use of plugins or tool.
For the more advanced web user, you want to install this code manually into your pages, copy and paste the code segment into the bottom of your content, immediately before the body tag of each page that you wish to track.
For a person that just read this previous sentence and didn’t understand what I just said; get your webmaster involved. However, sites like smugmug have a simple interface where you can just grab your analytics code from Google and paste it into a place on your smugmug account. It will not be immediate, but in a day or so, your account will be live and you will be tracking visitors to your site in a much more advanced and effective way.
To conclude, measurement is key to success. It helps you obtain goals, it aids you in creating a better user experience, and it will ultimately help you generate more income.
I hope this helps give you some direction with analytics and puts you on a better path for success. If you would like to hear more, please contact me on twitter @kpepphotography or email me on my Contact Me! page of my website.
If you would like to know the answers to these questions, you should consider an analytics tool to help you get those answers.
Let’s think of it this way… You take a photo and are proud of it. You blast out a photo to your Twitter followers, you then post that same photo on your Facebook profile for all your friends to see, and maybe you have a Google+ account that you want to share your photo on… OK, done, you did all that… now what?
If you are serious about photography as a business, you should know exactly how many people clicked on that link you put out on those three websites, what these people did on your site when there, and ultimately did they contact you to buy something.
Of course, the above paragraph is simplified, but basically, that’s what you want to be doing. I know that every time I post a blog entry on Twitter I get 8% to 9% of my followers coming to my website to read my BLOG. I know how long they spent reading, I know if they looked at anything else, and I monitor the questions or comments that come from this online traffic.
I also know that every time I post a link on Linkedin of a new BLOG post that I get on average of 30 views within the first day of posting it on LinkedIn. I then track the residual visits over the next 30 days. I see that every time I post on LinkedIn I average 100 people coming to read that blog post. Plus, I track what else they did.
Without going into a longer dissertation about all the places I post and what traffic I get to my website; let’s just say that I have it down to a science. I know, within a small margin of error how many website visitors I will get by throwing website content out into the internet on various places.
To add to this, every time I sell something, a photo, get a client for a workshop or a mentor program; I ask one simple question, “How did you find me?”
By asking that question I put the final piece of the puzzle together, my conversion ratio. By doing that I know what social media and what mass marketing initiative is working. It then becomes a numbers game. The more I focus on what’s working, the more money I make, the more camera gear I can buy, the closer I get to achieve my goal.
So how the heck can you get that kind of measurement on your website?
Google Analytics provides you, the photographer, a powerful tracking for monitoring your web presence. It's one of the most effective and free, web analytics solutions on the market today.
Google Analytics shows you how people found your site, how they explored it, where they came from and where they went after they visited your website. Through this information you will spot trends and you will be able to adjust how your content is displayed and inevitably enhance their visitor experience, ultimately improving your return on investment, increase conversion ratios, and make more money on the web.
As a business owner you will be able to understand (1) which marketing initiatives are being most effective, (2) what are the traffic patterns on your website and (3) which customer segments are most valuable to you for generating revenue. Throw on your marketing hat and you will be able to see where your visitors are coming from and what they do while they are on your website, help you understand how to convert more visitors to customers and which marketing spend is most effective in sending people to your website.
To sign up for Google Analytics, you should ensure you have an account with Google and visit this page, GOOGLE ANALYTICS SET-UP
Once you begin to register your website for Google analytics you must first ensure that you place your Google Analytics tracking code on your web pages. Between Google and you’re your website provider, they will help you. Google Analytics code is a small JavaScript snippet that needs to be added to each page of your site, either manually or through the use of plugins or tool.
For the more advanced web user, you want to install this code manually into your pages, copy and paste the code segment into the bottom of your content, immediately before the body tag of each page that you wish to track.
For a person that just read this previous sentence and didn’t understand what I just said; get your webmaster involved. However, sites like smugmug have a simple interface where you can just grab your analytics code from Google and paste it into a place on your smugmug account. It will not be immediate, but in a day or so, your account will be live and you will be tracking visitors to your site in a much more advanced and effective way.
To conclude, measurement is key to success. It helps you obtain goals, it aids you in creating a better user experience, and it will ultimately help you generate more income.
I hope this helps give you some direction with analytics and puts you on a better path for success. If you would like to hear more, please contact me on twitter @kpepphotography or email me on my Contact Me! page of my website.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)