Google Analytics has been the go-to tool for website owners and marketers to track their website’s performance for years. This tool provides valuable insights into website traffic, user behavior, and other crucial metrics that can help businesses make data-driven decisions. The good news is that Google recently launched its latest version of Google Analytics, called Google Analytics 4. In this blog, we will explore what Google Analytics 4 is and what it has to offer.

What is Google Analytics 4?

Google Analytics 4 is the latest version of Google’s web analytics tool. It is designed to help businesses better understand their customers’ behavior across different devices and platforms, including mobile apps and websites. This version of Google Analytics uses machine learning to provide businesses with a more accurate understanding of their customers’ behavior, making it easier to identify trends and patterns.

What are the benefits of Google Analytics 4?

1. Cross-device tracking: With Google Analytics 4, businesses can track user behavior across different devices, including mobile apps and websites. This means that businesses can get a better understanding of how their customers interact with their brand across different platforms.

2. Advanced machine learning: Google Analytics 4 uses advanced machine learning to provide businesses with more accurate insights into their website’s performance. This can help businesses identify trends and patterns that they may have missed with previous versions of Google Analytics.

3. Event tracking: Google Analytics 4 allows businesses to track specific user actions, such as clicks and form submissions. This can provide businesses with valuable insights into how users interact with their website and help them optimize their website’s user experience.

4. More granular data controls: Google Analytics 4 provides businesses with more granular data controls, allowing them to control who has access to their data and how it is used. This can help businesses ensure compliance with data protection regulations.

5. Integration with Google Ads: Google Analytics 4 integrates seamlessly with Google Ads, allowing businesses to get a more comprehensive view of their advertising campaigns’ performance. This can help businesses optimize their ad spend and improve their ROI.

Conclusion

Google Analytics 4 is the latest version of Google’s web analytics tool, designed to help businesses get a better understanding of their customers’ behavior across different devices and platforms. With advanced machine learning, event tracking, and more granular data controls, Google Analytics 4 offers businesses powerful insights into their website’s performance. If you haven’t already upgraded to Google Analytics 4, now is the time to do so and start making data-driven decisions for your business.

Are you still using an outdated version of Google Analytics?

If so, it’s time to upgrade to the latest version. Here are the main reasons why:

1. Improved User Interface: The latest version of Google Analytics comes with a fresh and intuitive user interface, making it easier to navigate through the various features and functionalities. This means you can spend less time trying to figure out how to use the tool and more time analyzing data.

2. Enhanced Reporting Capabilities: With the latest version of Google Analytics, you can access more detailed and accurate reports, giving you a better understanding of your website’s performance. You can also create custom reports to suit your specific needs, making it easier to track your key performance indicators.

3. Better Integration with Google Products: Google Analytics is just one of the many tools offered by Google. With the latest version, you can easily integrate with other Google products, such as Google Ads, Google Search Console, and Google Tag Manager, allowing you to get a more holistic view of your online presence.

4. Improved Data Privacy: The latest version of Google Analytics comes with enhanced data privacy features, keeping your data safe and secure. You can also control who has access to your data and how it is used, ensuring compliance with data protection regulations.

5. Access to New Features: Google is constantly updating and releasing new features for Google Analytics. By upgrading to the latest version, you’ll have access to these new features, allowing you to stay ahead of the curve and make the most out of your data.

Upgrading to the latest version of Google Analytics is a no-brainer. It’s easy to use, comes with enhanced reporting capabilities, integrates with other Google products, offers improved data privacy, and provides access to new features. So, what are you waiting for? Upgrade now and start making data-driven decisions for your business.

We’ve been busy!

We want to share the new website we have developed for PTS Group based in Stafford Park, UK.

PTS are specialists with inspection by Non-Destructive Testing (NDT Inspection). Radiographic, Magnetic Particle, Ultrasonic, Penetrant and Weld Inspection. Positive material Identification, Weld Procedures / Welder Qualifications, Quality Assurance & Consultancy. In simple terms, they analyse materials with clever technology to determine what it is or how good the quality is of that material. Correct me if I am wrong, Steve!

It was good to chat with Steve and Ed to get their exact requirements for the new website before development. The website had to be clean, easy to navigate and allow customers to find contact details to contact PTS quickly. We have also added a new 40-second video on the homepage and updated all the content for each service they offer.

Once we launched the website, we had a quick Teams meeting to finalise all the amendments, which helped us understand what they needed.

We are happy with the overall project and continue maintaining and optimising the website.

We would be grateful if you could drop a like or a comment below! 

Over the last year, I have been getting into cycling myself. I’ve always enjoyed getting out into nature, breathing in the fresh air and getting a little muddy. Some weekends I will be walking, fishing or playing a round of golf. All enjoyable but cycling brings a different challenge to the game, especially when it involves rugged, muddy trails and the occasional drop! Being a learner, I’m taking it steady. Still, sometimes you can’t help belting it down a track at full speed, holding on tight, feeling every bump to get the adrenaline pumping!

With all the fun you can have from cycling, your bike will take a beating over time and need servicing. Dan Smith, an old college friend, has set up his own “Carbon Electra” business to help customers with e-bike and cycle repairs. We got involved with the branding, so we designed a logo to fit the business concept. It features a green lightning bolt and the business name shaping into the cycle frame. Dan wanted the branding to be bold and easy to understand. After quite a few amendments, we worked together to produce the ideal logo, and we are delighted with the final concept.

Danny is your go-to business for all your cycling needs! He has spent the last two years training in all aspects of bicycle repair, from disc brake bleeding suspension servicing to e-bike diagnostics, repairs, and firmware updates. Fully qualified, insured, and Cytech accredited.

We are equally happy with the website design, which features high-quality imagery, impacting the homepage and a muddy feel.
The website will feature a blog soon and an online shop to buy various cycling accessories.

To view the website, visit https://carbonelectra.co.uk/

If you are interested in learning how we can help you with your website presence, please get in touch with the office@silvermarbles.co.uk
Thank you for reading.

We were approached by Millingtons Charity earlier this year to design and build them a website.

Millington’s provides sheltered accommodation for people from Shropshire who can care for themselves in their own homes, with or without the help of family members and carers, and that of a resident warden. No age restrictions are applied, but generally, residents range from the late 40s to 90s.

We knew the target demographic, so we wanted to make the website simple and easy to navigate. We featured a video on the homepage that slides through images of the Millingtons house very slowly and subtly. Millington’s provided us with a voice-over, and we did the video editing to put it all together.

The website has around 6 to 7 pages to help potential customers understand the business and a gallery page showing staff, Millingtons house and the various views.

To see the website click here
https://millingtonscharity.org/

If you are interested in learning how we can help you with your website presence, please get in touch with the office@silvermarbles.co.uk

Thank you for reading.

Adding Facebook and Instagram to your website is a great way to show you are passionate about your business; going with current trends, technologies and updating your website with new content regularly.

I’ve mentioned in a previous blog why it is essential to use social media for business.

There are a few ways to add Facebook or Instagram to your website.

• The widgets from Facebook or Instagram which work well but may be difficult to style them to be consistent with your website brand
• Free Plugins from the WordPress repository which do work, may lack features on how to show your feed or organize which posts can or cannot be seen. Sometimes tricky to install.
• Using a professional paid plugin

I would recommend to try all of them and see which plugin best suits your needs and preferences. If you are struggling to get it to work, don’t have time, having problems, it won’t display correctly or compatibility problems. Then I would recommend taking a look at Smashing Balloon for their Social Media Custom Plugins.

I’ve been using their plugins for quite a few years and have found it very easy to install and deploy a feed. Read below some of the reasons why this plugin is beating the competition!

Once you have read through and would like to try their plugin, visit their website on the link above and give it a go. Or if you would like us to install the plugin for you for a small yearly fee, we would be happy to do that. Send an email to me at anthony@silvermarbles.co.uk and I will get back to you shortly.

Over the years it has been increasingly important to make sure your website is working correctly on devices to include mobiles, laptops, PC and Mac’s.

You can easily check your website by using each individual device if you have them, however, if you use Google Chrome (like me) you can check all devices by right-clicking anywhere on the website page and then clicking Inspect. This will bring up the Developer Tools which will show all the HTML code and other things. If you click on the second icon from the left it will show a button called “Toggle device toolbar” which will show the website, you are visiting into a mobile responsive environment.

If you do this with your website, you will be able to check if everything looks and works correctly.

Some things to check…

• Check the logo is the right size, positioned correctly and not overlapping any content.
• Check the navigation works when you click on the menu or the hamburger menu if on mobile and you can easily click on the submenu items.
• Check the homepage image slider is working and showing the image correctly. Most of the websites we build have an image slider which can be full width or full screen for big impact. We use Slider Revolution (SR) to provide responsive images for all devices. Within SR it has 4 device modes to organise your content, those are Desktop, Laptop, Tablet and Mobile. I would highly recommend checking the content objects are the correct size and position. Sometimes on a mobile device, you may need to hide some objects as there might not be enough room to put all the content there. Your website may or may not use SR but check the image slider is working on all devices, then if not, speak to your web developer!
• Check all text has good spacing, margins and paddings to keep the text readable, sometimes the text can be too small or going off the page.
• Check the images are optimised to be the correct size, sometimes I have noticed that images are way too big and the browser is scaling it right down to fit in a small place. The good thing with WordPress is it takes care of this for you by uploading a full, large, medium, small, and thumbnail image for you. Always check though that the full image is not being used in a small space.
• Check contact forms are posting correctly on all devices, put in the message box the device you are sending the contact form from and make sure it is received.
• Check Google Maps are working correctly, all Google maps need an API key to work. Also, sometimes maps can easily be interacted with when scrolling past them which can make things difficult to browse the website.
• Check the footer is correctly formatted, usually, we design websites with 3 to 4 columns of content which will stack under each other. Make sure all the content in each column is displayed correctly with good spacing.
• Check that your chat message icons, messenger icons appear correctly and does not overlap any content on the website. These can appear in the bottom right which can overlap the “back to the top” button.
• Check any Pop-Ups on your website displays correctly. They will usually display correctly on a desktop computer but on a mobile device they can be too big and hard to close them down. Always best to check!

I think this covers most of the main things to check on your website. If you have a developer, reach out to him to make sure that your website is running at its best on all devices. Usually, if there is a small maintenance contract, he or she will take care of these checks for you.

Being a small business owner, it is good practice to be mindful of your website and have a quick check yourself. Rest assured it is running at its best but always best to check.

Happy browsing!

Things have been non-stop here at Silver Marbles working on multiple projects new and existing, for example, we are currently in the process of working on the Google Organic rankings of Victorian Ceramics who are a local Victorian Ceramic Tile manufacturer in Telford, Shropshire.

The results are going really well!

At the moment they are ranking at position Number 1 on Google for a ‘philip webb tiles’ search (see below).

The main goal we are working towards is the ranking of ‘victorian tiles’ which is a broad keyword and very competitive.

At the moment they are ranking at position 47 (up from position 78).

We have achieved good visibility in the Google Maps listings regularly showing with the top 3 maps results on the Google homepage when a ‘victorian tiles’ search is carried out.

The action plan is to continue creating keyword-rich content (including this blog) to the website that will increase the popularity of the website in Google’s eyes and ultimately improve the ranking position of the website. We recommend that you write keyword related blogs on your own website which should help the search engines better understand what product and services your website offers. It is best to have a diversity of blog topics to cover a range of keywords, for Victorian Ceramics it would be Tiles, Decorative Tiles, Porch Tiles, Tile Designer and a mixture of industry and client-orientated posts. Then ultimately blogging consistently every week or month should put you in a good position to rank better on the search engines!

We may also introduce some descriptive domain names to assist Victorian Ceramics with this in the new year.

If you would like us to have a look at your website and analyse the status of any specific keywords please do not hesitate to get in touch.

We often get asked to analyse potential new customers Google Adwords campaigns with the view to highlighting areas where improvements can be made.

To give you an idea of just a couple of things we look at we have included a couple of tips below:

1. Many campaigns run ‘broad’ keywords (which means that Google will also show your Ads for searches with other keywords in).  If this is the case you need to check the ‘search terms’ area for the actual searches your Ads have shown for.  This will enable you to identify any irrelevant keywords which you can then add as negative keywords in your campaign to ensure that your Ad will not appear in any searches with these negative keywords in the future. See “match type” column in the image to the right or below…
2. Often campaigns only have one Ad written per Ad Group. It is always a good idea to have at least two (ideally three) Ads written, this will enable you to compare the CTR (click-through rates) of each Ad which will help you make decisions on what Ads work and this information will help you tailor Ads better in the future.

We hope this information helps you see if your Google Adwords campaigns are working well.

If you would like to have a chat about how we can help you with you Google AdWords management or overall Google Marketing please get in touch.

You may not have been aware but as of the 1^st November Google automatically passed on 2% digital services tax (DST) to the advertiser.
See this link for details: Google Support (‘As of November 1, 2020, a 2% UK DST Fee will be added to your next invoice or statement for ads served in the United Kingdom.’)

The government slapped a DST tax on applicable companies like search engines, social media services and online marketplaces like Amazon who have already passed this DST onto advertisers (see this link for details: Digital Services Tax) so Google have announced that UK users of the Google Ads platform will incur an extra 2% charge on spending, in the form of a Digital Services Tax (DST) fee. This also applies to other countries like Austria but at 5%.  I’m sure you think that 2% is bad as this could cost you an additional £40 on a £2,000 spend (it would be £100 in Austria). 

How is this charged?

Your Google Adwords campaign will run exactly the same is it was before, however, at the end of every month you will see an extra line on your invoice with the DST.  So luckily it will not affect your cost per clicks or click through rates. The additional 2% DST fee will be shown on a separate line in your invoice from your overall campaign spend. However, this means your total invoice could be 2% over your current budget.

What are the first steps to take?

As this will take your spending 2% over your budget you need to decide whether to decrease your budget which will mean fewer clicks through to your website or take the DST hit and lower your ROI.

How can we help?

We have experience in taking Google Adwords campaigns, carrying out an evaluation and identifying areas where money can be saved without affecting efficiency.  As an example, a number of campaigns run ‘broad match’ keywords that if not properly managed can serve a number of irrelevant keywords that have no chance of generating enquiries or orders.