Net Tuesday Meet-up
There is a really interesting group in Vancouver that has been formed through the “Meet-up” networking site. The “Net Tuesday” group purpose is to support non-profits with technology information and to share information. Part of doing “Tech Help” is keeping up with the nuts and bolts of Google Tools, so I decided to see what I could learn.
This particular meeting was the first one I attended and it was worth it to be able to go through security in the new CBC building. The plexiglas security gates will star in my next lo-budget sci-fi film for sure. Only moving pictures will reveal the wonder of it all.
The topics this evening were: Google AdWords with Omar Al-Hajjar, Search Marketing Director for Magnet, a division of Cossette West and Google Website Optimizer with John Hossack of VKI Studios.
As I have been posting AdWords on my site and considering advertising myself, the Google Ads presentation was timely. The Website Optimizer was a tool that I had looked at, but decided that I do not have enough traffic to use. Both presenters were very informative and it seemed like a great collection of people attending.
John Hossack of VKI Studios confirmed my suspicion that Google Website Optimizer was a tool for larger operations than my own. He described the process of testing multiple versions of the same page and recording statistics of user interactions with the page. A large number of live users were required to obtain statistically significant results. He did have some other advice for all of us that was very useful and I did confirm my suspicions about the tool. It is free to use though, so if you have more than 200 visitors to test you can run some A/B tests that sound quite effective.
Omar Al-Hajjar, Search Marketing Director for Magnet, explained how to maximize your ad within the Google AdWords structure. He gave us a lot of detailed information and I think that a copy of his powerpoint will be made available on the Net Tuesday site.
This group was informative and the other announcements were interesting too. I will try to keep attending these events.
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