In the grand tradition of the WordPress update haiku and WordPress 3.3 gold release right around the corner, we would like to present the latest version of SlideDeck JavaScript Core and SlideDeck for WordPress! WordPress 3.3 is going to bring some fantastic new editing features and we’re taking advantage of them in this release as well as implementing some great interface improvements and bug fixes. Check out whats new!

Full WordPress 3.3 Support

WordPress 3.3 is greatly improving the way the rich text editor is implemented, making it extremely easy to integrate into any plugin… which unfortunately breaks every single hack that was previously required to implement these editors. This new implementation required a lot of code re-writing to make things work, which had the added benefit of allowing us to implement some great improvements:

• Improved data storage for better HTML support in visual and HTML editors
• Improved technical implementation of slide editors for better cross-browser compatibility and quicktag support (in WordPress 3.3+ only)
• Greatly improved preview window for much more accurate previews

Better Configuration Options

More configuration options have been added to the manual and dynamic SlideDeck editing views for greater control over how users interact with your SlideDeck. We have consolidated many of the configuration options for dynamic SlideDecks to be in one place and given you the ability to control touch screen swipe support.

Bug Fixes Galore!

We’ve implemented a bunch of fixes for better Internet Explorer support, better skin handling in the editing interface and fixed some bugs when looping slide playback. We’re pretty happy with this release, but as always, there may be some unique environment out there we haven’t encountered yet, so be sure to post your bug reports on our support forum.

Here’s the detailed change set for this release:

• Added support for WordPress 3.3
• Re-factored much of the TinyMCE implementation to accommodate better for cross-browser and WordPress version support
• Improved SlideDeck editor interface to not load all available skin files, only loading the skin that the SlideDeck was last saved with
• Improved SlideDeck preview window to size properly and accommodate better for skins that have padding
• Improved SlideDeck skin support interaction to automatically set and lock-out required SlideDeck settings
• Added Touch Screen configuration options
• Consolidated playback and interaction options for Smart SlideDecks with the rest of the options in the interface instead of being in the sidebar
• Re-factored commands for adding slides to a regular SlideDeck to use an AJAX based routine for both vertical and horizontal slide addition. This was done to accommodate for WordPress 3.3′s new TinyMCE implementation (wp_editor()).
• Fixed issues with TinyMCE and Internet Explorer that was preventing the editing interface from working properly
• Improved slide data storage method with WordPress 3.3 that allows for better HTML markup support in visual editor and HTML editor
• Updated SlideDeck JavaScript core to 1.3.2
• Fixed looping bug when vertical slides were the last slide in a SlideDeck

Who are those people? There’s a good chance that they’re your parents. So SlideDeck is joining the movement to make this Friday, November 25th, Upgrade Your Parents’ Browser Day.

If you’re home this Thanksgiving Holiday, consider lending a helping hand to Web standards by upgrading your parents’ browser. Instead of hitting the malls at 4am or languishing in your food coma all day, simply pop on to Mom and Dad’s computer, and update their browser. They’re helpless without you – but you have the power to take them from IE6 to IE9. Or switch them to Firefox or Chrome. Replace that dusty IE6 desktop shortcut with a shiny new standards-friendly one. They might not notice, they might not thank you, but we will. And you’ll be doing your part to make the Web a better, standards-based place for all of us.

So this Thanksgiving, do your part and upgrade your parents’ browser. And while you’re at it, have a Happy Thanksgiving. For all of our international friends and customers, enjoy your weekend, we’ll be off gorging ourselves, grateful to have you as customers, users and friends. If you find yourself visiting your parents, do a quick check on their computer and upgrade them. It wouldn’t hurt if you removed some of those AOL desktop shortcuts while you’re at it, either.

Image via: Wave Break Media/Shutterstock.

Customer Acquisition Metrics

• (CPM) – The cost to buy 1,000 ad impressions.
• Cost Per Click (CPC) – The cost of one click from a pay-per-click ad unit (like Google AdWords).
• Click-through Rate (CTR) – The number of clicks divided by the number of impressions. Used to determine how effective your ads are at inspiring user action.
• Conversions – The number of converted visitors by ad or traffic source. Can be any conversion you care about, like an email subscriber, a product purchase or a download.
• Cost Per Action (CPA) – The cost to get one converted user, either a purchaser, subscriber or other business-critical conversion.

Customer Value Metrics

• Lifetime value (LTV) – The revenue associated with one customer on average over the entire relationship with the customer.
• Gross Margin – The difference between revenue and cost; typically production costs and customer acquisition costs (also known as cost of goods sold) COGS.
• Revenue – The amount of money your company takes in over a period of time.
• Operating Profit – The total amount earned before Interest and Taxes (EBIT)
• Cost of Goods Sold (COGS) – The costs associated with the production of goods or services and the acquisition of customers for those goods.
• Purchase Rate – The rate at which visitors, subscribers or members purchase from you. Typically is measured compared to a period of time or by cohort. For example the purchase rate of new members within 30 days of joining your site.

Customer Loyalty/Referral Metrics

• Net Promoter Score (NPS) – Measures, in aggregate, the likelihood of your current customers to refer your product or service.
• Referral Rate – The rate at which your users refer new friends to your site.
• Viral Coefficient (K) – Measures the viral growth rate and spread of your idea, app, or site.
• Average Number of friends referred – The number of new users you’ll gain from each existing user, on average.
• Referral conversion rate - The rate at which sent referral invitations are accepted by their recipients.
• Repurchase Rate – The rate at which previous purchasers return to buy from you again.

Email Marketing Metrics

• Email Open Rate – The percentage of emails opened compared to emails delivered.
• Email Click-through Rate – The percentage of emails clicked-through to emails delivered.
• Click-to-Open Rate – The percentage of emails clicked to emails opened.
• Subscribers – The number of email subscribers you have in your database.
• Cost Per Subscriber – The average cost to acquire one subscriber.
• Opt-in Percentage – The percentage of your user database that have opted-in to receiving email marketing.
• Undeliverable Rate – The percentage of your email opt-in subscriber list that consist of bad email addresses.
• Soft Bounces – The number of email addresses in your opt-in subscriber list that return a temporary bounce message, like vacation auto-responders or mailbox full messages.
• Hard Bounce – The number of email addresses in your opt-in subscriber list that return a permanent bounce, like the mailbox no longer exists.
• Spam Complaint Rates – The number of subscribers who flag your email as spam in the various Webmail clients, like GMail, Yahoo! Mail, etc.
• Subscriber growth rate – The growth rate of your subscriber list over a period of time.
• Re-activation Rate – The rate at which previously active users, who are now dormant, can be reactivated via your email marketing efforts.

e-Commerce Metrics

• Conversion Rate – The measurement of the number of conversions to the number of visitors to your site over a given period of time.
• Bounce Rate – The percentage of visitors who view just a single page of your website and leave without taking any further action.
• Unique Visitors – The number of unique people (or as close an approximation as your Web analytics provider can get) who visit your site in a given period of time.
• Pageviews – The number of pages viewed by visitors to your website.
• New Visitors – The number of visitors who visit any page of your website for the first time via a particular browser.
• Returning Visitors – The number of visitors who return to your website after previously visiting.
• Visits to Purchase – The average number of visits it takes for a user to convert.
• Average Order Size – The average dollar amount for each order made on your site. Calculated by the dividing the revenue by the number of transactions for a given time period.
• Number of Orders – The total number of transactions for a given time period.
• Per Visit Value – The average value of each visitor to your website. Calculated by dividing the revenue of your site by the number of visitors in a given time period.
• Time on Page – The amount of time spent by one unique visitor on a given page of your website.
• On-site Searches – The number of searches performed on your site.
• On-site searches per visit – The average number of searches performed by a visitor.
• On-site searches per purchase – The average number of searches made before a visitor makes a purchase.
• Cart Abandonment Rate – The percentage of people who start the checkout process but do not complete it. Calculated by taking one (1) minus the number of purchasers divided by the number of users who added an item to their cart.
• Checkout Page Completion Percentage – The percentage of users who get to the checkout page and complete their purchase.
• Average Number of Days to Repurchase – The average number of days it takes for a previous purchaser to come back and make a subsequent purchase.
• Coupon Redemption Rate – The rate at which coupons are redeemed for discounts on your site.

Referring Sites

• Top Referring Sites – The top traffic drivers for your website.
• Transactions by Referrals – The number of transactions driven by each referring site.
• Value per referred visitor – The value of each visitor from each referring site.
• Bounce rate – The bounce rate of visitors from a particular traffic source.

Social Media

• Facebook Shares – The number of times your content is shared on Facebook.
• Twitter Mentions – The number of mentions your brand or company receives from Twitter users.
• StumbleUpon Shares – The number of times your content or site is shared by StumbleUpon users.
• Reddit Upvotes – The number of votes your content or site receives from the Reddit community.
• Number of Fans – The number of people who have liked your company or brand on Facebook.
• Number of Followers – The number of people who follow your updates on Twitter.
• Number of RSS Subscribers – The number of people who subscribe to your blog feeds.

Online Advertising – Selling

• CPM for Inventory – The average Cost per 1,000 impressions for ad inventory on your site.
• Number of New Advertisers/Sponsors – The number of new advertisers/sponsors you’re adding to your roster for a given time period.
• Number of Repeat Advertiser/Sponsors – The number or percentage of existing advertisers who make a repeat buy with you.
• Top entry pages – The top entrance pages for traffic to your website.
• Top exit pages – The top exit pages for people leaving your site.
• Pageviews per Visit – The number of pageviews a user views on average while on your site.
• Time on Site – The amount of time a user spends on your website.

Digital Products/SaaS

• Number of Downloads – The number of product or content downloads made by visitors.
• Number of Trials Started – The number of free accounts or trials started by visitors.
• Number of Expired Trials – The number of free accounts that did not convert to paid accounts.
• Average Revenue Per User – The average revenue value for one user of your product.
• Daily Active Users – The percentage of your user base that is active on a daily basis.
• Monthly Active Users – The percentage of your user base that is active on a monthly basis.
• Revenue Per Active User – The average revenue value for one active user of your product.
• Churn Rate – The rate at which paying subscribers do not renew their subscription.

What are your favorite metrics to measure? We’ll take your comments and update the list.

Images via flickr, courtesy of: images_of_money, wwarby, sepblog.

SEO (search engine optimization) is an important part of any website. Being found by people looking for your products or services via search is the lifeblood of many companies. That’s why it’s critical that every Web designer have a solid understanding of what page elements, code and content help and hurt site rankings.

Many slider plugins lack proper HTML markup and standards, making them inaccesible to, or ignored by, search engine spiders. But SlideDeck is a standards-based slider that uses standards-based HTML markup, with fully-indexable slide content that can actually help your search engine rankings. Here’s what you need to know in order to get the most SEO bang for your SlideDeck buck.

SlideDeck and SEO – Five Things to Know

1. Keep Keywords Focused – SlideDeck lets you organize content in a new and interesting way that is different from most Web pages. That doesn’t mean that you can be any less focused in your message and content. Keep your keyword focus and avoid targeting multiple, unrelated keyword phrases in your SlideDeck. If the page is about “blue surfboards,” don’t make a slide featuring “orange bikinis” too.
2. Header Tags – It’s important to maintain proper markup formatting with your slides and the page the SlideDeck lives on. You only want one <h1> tag per page. That <h1> tag should highlight the most important information on the page. Then you can use <h2> and <h3> tags in your slider as necessary to call out other important content while still maintaining proper page structure.
3. Calls to Action – Keep your calls to action to the ones that really count, and use relevant, keyword-focused link text where appropriate. Remember that relevance to Google goes beyond keywords, make the page work for visitors and you’ll be rewarded with repeat visits, word-of-mouth traffic, and higher quality scores if you use Google’s paid search.
4. Tags – Because SlideDeck uses standards-based markup, you can optimize elements within the SlideDeck for search too. Use Alt, Title and Caption tags for photos, add video with keyword-targeted anchor link text and more. Your standard on-page optimizations work great right within SlideDeck.
5. Don’t Go Slide Happy – SlideDeck’s work best when they’re seven slides or less. More than that and you start to lose visitor interest pretty quickly. Question the value of each slide and decide if you really need it in your deck or not. If it can go, axe it mercilessly. Ensure that you only add slides that help tell your story and convert visitors into customers.
6. Bonus: SlideDeck and Link Bait – On-page optimization is one thing, but great inbound links can really drive some Google juice. SlideDeck makes creating compelling content a breeze. Take some information relevant to your industry and present it in a SlideDeck. Reach out to people you know and ask them to share it with their readers and followers. People are always looking for interesting content, and a SlideDeck can be just the thing to present information in a new way – one that gets rewarded with fresh, valuable inbound links.

SlideDeck is a jquery slider built to be SEO-friendly. With standards-based markup and search engine-friendly design, you can use it to present your content in a compelling and engaging way that attracts the notice of human users and search spiders alike. By keeping your focus and being smart about how you position and mark up content, your SlideDeck can give you the SEO love your site needs.

SlideDeck is also a a stylish content presentation engine and can lead to more inbound links, juicing your rankings. So what are you waiting for? Give your site’s SEO a shot in the arm, add a SlideDeck today.

Have a great SlideDeck SEO success story to share? Let us know in the comments!

Images from flickr: code & magnify.

Tune Up Your Product Pages’ UX

Good product pages are important to a successful e-commerce website, so why are there so many bad ones out there? We break down 7 ways to improve the UX of your product pages & increase sales.

Note: What works for these sites might not work for yours. It’s up to you to test features and functionality against your existing product pages to determine what works best for your business.

(Like this SlideDeck? PRO users can choose the “Stacked Nav” skin, and build it with vertical slides!)

Putting it all together

Product pages can make or break your websites. It’s up to you as a UX professional to create an experience that converts as many visitors into customers as possible. By experimenting and testing with these seven tips you’ll be able to identify the main conversion drivers on the product pages for your website.

Want to learn more? Check out the full article at the KISSMetrics blog.

Have more great tips or sites that have best-in-class product pages? Let us know in the comments. And if you test out any of these tips on your site, come back and let us know how they worked for you.

#1 News Ticker

Need to surface a lot of new content quickly and regularly? SlideDeck makes for a powerful, visual news ticker. The European Rugby Club website uses SlideDeck to keep their readers informed on the latest in the rugby world with a constantly rotating slider full of the day’s news. The image-driven navigation and high-quality photography makes reading the headlines of the day engaging and exciting.

#2 Step-By-Step Guide

SlideDeck’s flexible slide structure and intuitive navigation make it perfect for all kinds of guided wizards. Whether you’re helping your users plan a day of activities, or walking them through instructions to assemble a piece of furniture, SlideDeck makes creating step-by-step as easy as 1, 2, 3. Let users choose their own adventure and step them through complex content with ease.

#3 Build a Custom Design

SlideDeck comes with skins right out of the box, but it really starts to shine when you wrap it in your own custom design. Check out Go Ape. They created a custom skin for their SlideDeck that makes it the seamless centerpiece of their website. Be bold, put your personal stamp on SlideDeck and watch your website come to life.

#4 Showcase Products

A SlideDeck is a great way to showcase products in e-commerce websites. A rotating image gallery gives prospective buyers a wide range of shots and angles to help them evaluate your product. Images are critical to e-commerce sales, and SlideDeck makes adding, arranging and rotating through product shots a breeze.

UncommonGoods.com showcases their eclectic mix of products with SlideDeck. Each slide represents a different collection of things that you just won’t find anywhere else, making it easy to browse their catalog.

#5 Multi-Step Forms

Not every form is as simple as name and email address. Sometimes you just need more information. SlideDeck can break down long forms into multiple, bite-sized steps that walk the user through the process. Whether you’re collecting information to quote a home loan or register someone for online guitar lessons, SlideDeck makes long forms intuitive and less intimidating.

The 90-day Guitar Guide uses a SlideDeck to customize their online learning course based on the user’s experience level and available equipment.

Over to you!

There you have it. Five new ways to put your SlideDeck to work for you. From conferences to lead capture, product photos to daily planners, SlideDeck gives you the ability to connect and engage with users in an easy-to-use, intuitive way. So get out there! Experiment and see what you can do with your SlideDeck. And when you come up with a cool new way to put SlideDeck to use, let us know. We’re dying to see where you’ll take SlideDeck next!

Holy cow!

We’re about to reach what we feel is a pretty significant goal very soon: SlideDeck, and its sister product, Hello Bar, are on the cusp of surpassing a combined 1 billion views since launching! Yes, billion. It’s a deeply humbling milestone for us, and we want to sincerely thank all of you for helping us reach it.

Update: The SlideDeck and Hellobar Billion Views giveaway has now ended – but stay tuned for more awesome announcements!

“Geronimo!”

This month, we scoured more than a few alternate timelines looking for awesome custom SlideDecks out in the wild – lo and behold, we stumbled across this amazing example on BBC America’s website for Doctor Who. Here’s a quick rundown of the things they did to take SlideDeck “to infinity – and beyond!”.

Wait, he says that, right? No? Oh, uh…hm.

*cough*

How did they use it?

The good folks at the BBC have really leveraged SlideDeck’s flexibility to create a comprehensive codex for the entire show’s content in an extremely small space. Immediately upon arriving, longtime viewers can get recaps of the latest episodes, while show newbies can easily catch up by exploring Doctor Who‘s rich universe of events and characters. All without leaving the page!

This SlideDeck is essentially acting as a virtual concierge that gently guides visitors to where they need to go, preventing them from becoming overwhelmed with choice – a must for any site with a robust amount of content.

Breaking it down – why we love it

There are a bunch of things that this particular SlideDeck does right, (aside from featuring a time-travelling immortal who crosses the galaxy fighting a race of killer robots – we’re not difficult to please), so how about we go through them, one-by-one?

Attention domination

Instead of the standard letter-box style that most SlideDecks tend to use, this example sports a bolder square proportion, helping to to dominate visitors’ attention on the page, as well as giving Her Majesty’s TV people more vertical space within which to stack the content in each slide. Notice also, that they’ve disabled the ability to scroll past the SlideDeck, so there’s literally no way you’ll miss what they have to say (here’s how to disable that option in the jQuery and WordPress versions).

Growing a spine

The Doctor Who SlideDeck makes great use of custom spines to help it seamlessly blend in with the overall look & feel of the site. The devil’s in the details here – take special note of the custom vertical slider indicators and navigation tabs. It sounds complex, but all of these elements can be modified by editing just one image file – find out more about customizing SlideDeck’s image sprites to give your SlideDeck skins a slick, unique new look.

Bring the eyecandy

Striking imagery is almost never a bad thing (unless you’re wallpapering your bedroom), and the good Doctor’s SlideDeck is no exception. While this example doesn’t use background images, it still uses bold, evocative images that serve to keep things interesting, and convey the mood of the show.

Share & share alike

Here’s something special: within each slide in this SlideDeck, a visitor can easily post their own message and a link to the content in question to Facebook & Twitter! Try it out.

What would we suggest?

There’s always room for improvement, and this is no exception. So what would we do to kick this SlideDeck up a notch?

1. Embed video content – Let visitors view exciting video clips from within the SlideDeck, instead of requiring them to click through
2. Vary the slide templates – Shake things up a little to keep people engaged with the robust amount of content presented here
3. Make sharing functionality more apparent – While the call-to-action doesn’t get much clearer than “Post to Twitter/Facebook”, we completely missed the fact that you can write a custom message for the post within the SlideDeck. For all the effort it likely took to get this great feature working, we’d want to make sure people don’t miss it!
4. Interlink between slides using the API – Clicking through the slides in sequence is like asking the Doctor himself to take the bus. By hooking into SlideDeck’s simple API, we could have visitors jumping between any two slides in the whole deck, Tardis-style! (That metaphor kinda works…right?)

Want to go all Time Lord with some custom SlideDecks of your own? Why didn’t you say so? Download the free Launchpad bundle to get up and running with your quest for customization. But not before you let us know your thoughts on Doctor Who’s SlideDeck in the comments below!

Backgrounds are great - but try to make sure your content stands out, mm-kay?

Looking for a quick and easy way to add some personality to your SlideDeck? Add a background image. Whether you go subtle or bold, background images can transform your SlideDeck design from ho-hum to awe-some. And the best part? It’s easy. With SlideDeck for WordPress you don’t need to know CSS to add pro design touches, it’s all part of the admin interface. Just upload the image you want to use as the background for each slide and you’re pretty much good to go.

For all of our SlideDeck for WordPress users out there, here’s how to add a background image:

1. Make sure you have SlideDeck Pro.

 Don’t have PRO yet? Fret not – you can instantly upgrade right here.

2. Navigate to the slide you want to add the background image to.

3. Upload the image to the WordPress Media Gallery by clicking on the image icon at the top of the text editor.

4. Set the image as the background image by clicking the Upload/Set button below the text editor.

For the best results, make sure your image is sized appropriately for your SlideDeck.

5. Navigate to the image in the Media Gallery modal window and copy the Link URL.

6. Close the Media Gallery and paste the URL into the Slide Background Image URL field.

7. Click Upload/Set.

Nice work. You’ve just added a touch of style and class to your SlideDeck. If you’ve created an awesome SlideDeck using background images, let us know in the comments!

Download the free bundle, strap in, and get to work!

While we definitely admire the dedication of our community, we thought we’d help grease those creative wheels a bit with some resources to help all you budding skin designers and developers. Behold, the SlideDeck Launchpad Bundle!

We’ve put together a couple of preformatted template files to help designers and developers alike chop hours off the time it takes to roll your own skins. Best of all, we offer this to you for free – we only ask that you use it for good; not evil.

Included in the bundle:

• A Photoshop PSD template for the Classic SlideDeck skin
• An HTML/CSS preview page

ZIP file, 449kb

P.S. This is just an initial offering, give us a shout in the comments if there are other things you think would be useful to include in this bundle.