Guideshoptips

January 27 Update : December 2013 data is now live in Site Analytics as well! To get priority early access to data each month, start your Compete PRO subscription today! Happy new year! Another new year has begun and another month’s worth of new data is live and available in Compete PRO! I hope you enjoyed your holiday celebrations as much as I did and are ready to get right back into the swing of things this year. We’ve got a lot of exciting Compete PRO developments coming up this year and I’m looking forward to sharing more details with you in the coming weeks and months. As in our December 2012 list, NORAD’s Santa-tracking website topped the Monthly Fast Movers list again in December 2013 as parents and families stayed up-to-date with Santa’s latest whereabouts on Christmas Eve. On December 24, more than 1.3% of the entire Internet browsing population visited NORADSanta.org and on average in December, consumers spent nearly six minutes on the web...

Whether gleefully poaching dissatisfied AT&T customers on Twitter or rebranding T-Mobile as the “Un-carrier” and changing long-established wireless practices, T-Mobile made a lot of noise in 2013. At CES in Las Vegas, CEO John Legere announced that all of that noise has moved the needle: T-Mobile had their best quarter in the last eight years in Q4 2013. Coming off of a blocked merger with AT&T and a poor 2012, Legere seems to be reveling in the opportunity to shake up the marketplace and stake T-Mobile’s claim as a viable alternative to the three other major wireless companies. These brash changes seem to be especially effective at attracting online shoppers, as we see in Millward Brown Digital’s data: T-Mobile added almost as many new customers online in December 2013 as Sprint and more than AT&T. This is even more impressive when compared against T-Mobile’s online performance at the end of 2012; T-Mobile has truly come a...

Looking back on December 2013, the Ecards category saw massive growth as Americans wished their friends and families happy holidays. With a 55.22% month-over-month (MoM) growth in unique visitors and a 75.19% MoM increase in total time spent on websites in the category, it was no doubt a very successful month for ecards sites; however, looking at longer-term trends, the category as a whole suffered a 31.81% year-over-year (YoY) drop in unique visitors. When looking at search metrics to the overall category, interestingly enough, generic ecards-related keywords that I expected to dominate the list took a back seat to the keyword “JibJab,” which drove over 4% of search traffic to the category.  Considering JibJab.com is the fourth most popular site in the category, I expected their more popular competitors to rank higher. Other branded keywords for top sites in the category, “123greetings,” “blue mountain cards,” “american greetings,” and “jacquie lawson” all m...

Happy weekend! Hopefully the new year finds you well as we bring you a round-up of the top content we shared this week: notes on email marketing statistics, optimized link creation, keeping leads in your sales funnel, and SEO predictions for 2014. 10 Email Marketing Stats that Will Blow You Away I’m a bit of an email junkie and have about 8 different accounts synced to my phone, so this blog post particularly caught my eye. This collection of handy stats and infographs comes with several tips on how to tailor email/listserv efforts to heighten clickthrough rates (CTR). Simple but effective, this article helps you strategize with intent (for example, personalizing subject lines, providing social sharing buttons, or optimizing the message for mobile viewing). Most importantly, the stats show that email isn’t dead — it will continue to grow and should  remain an important part of your digital marketing gameplan .   Creating Links that Offer the Best User...

Chevrolet is preparing to boldly return to the mid-size pickup truck market with the Chevrolet Colorado (and related GMC Canyon), with the motto “Everything a Truck Should Be. From one perspective adding Colorado gives the larger Silverado more leeway to move upmarket. From another, sales of Colorado will help GM meet more stringent fleet fuel economy requirements. Either way, the strategy emulates that of Toyota and Nissan (each offering both full-size and mid-size pickups) more than Ford and Ram (full-size only). Millward Brown Digital uses automotive behavioral analytics to reveal how automakers drive sales using two core elements: demand and conversion. Demand is represented by the number of in-market lower-funnel shoppers; this proprietary measure is based on observed shopping activity across multiple automotive websites and leverages patented data-gathering and normalization processes. A key benefit of this approach is that it leverages the fact that consumers shop ...