WordPress 3.3 gets a healthy facelift!

Here at Think Around Corners, we’re big users of WordPress to develop not only blogs, but full-blown websites. It’s our favorite tool.

So, when WP makes a (relatively) big upgrade to their interface, we’re reporting!

Big Things.

1. Easier Uploading

File Type Detection & Drag and Drop

Now, there is only one type of file type image to click on. A few more file types have been added, too – it can handle rar and 7z file formats, now!

Drag-and-Drop Media Uploader

As the image displays, you can drag your media – whether video, image, or otherwise – right into the Add Media window. That means in images and all types of media are easier to import than ever before

Drag and Drop - SCHWEET.

2. Dashboard Design

Responsive Design

Responsive Design means a design that fits any window – whether desktop, laptop, tablet, or smartphone. WP is now IPad optimized – that means you can work from anywhere, now, with any device. BTW, we do responsive design.

The new "responsive design" of WP 3.3 means you can edit and admin from smart phone, tablet, or desktop.

Flyout Menus

The toolbar now works way better with menu fly outs, that keeps everything compact, and out of your way. Easier to select things, too.

Header + Admin Bar = Toolbar

A new top menu has been streamlined to give you more space to write and build content.

Help Tabs and Feature Pointers

The Help Tabs has a bit of a facelift and better organization. Feature pointers and contextual help Feature pointers give you support for help, which is great, you don’t have to go to another place to find out what a certain thing does. Similarly contextual help is more useful to people learning on the fly.

Little Things.

3. Content Tools

• Better Co-Editing: Co-editing is always been a little clunky. Now, it actually works. If you get an alert that somebody is working on the page that you’re looking out, it means they really are.
• Tumblr Importer: Now, you can import your tumbler information and blog directly into WordPress. This importer is being added to a growing list of importers from other blogging platforms.
• Widget Improvements: Ever test a few themes and then your widgets change position? Got, we hate that. Now, the specific sequence of widgets are held in place for each theme.

4. Under the Hood

• 

  Thank you WP for an Editor API overhaul!

  Flexible Permalinks: You have more freedom when choosing a post permalink structure. Skip the date information or add a category slug without a performance penalty.

• Post Slugs: Sometimes things like “&” can result in strange URL slugs. WP cleaned up the ruleset and it’s more intuitive on what it includes.
• jQuery and jQuery UI: WordPress now has jQuery libraries ‘baked right in’ – so no need to insert code for them anymore (we hope, we’re testing). Basically, this means WordPress is gearing up for more adaptability to modern scripting.
• Editor API Overhaul: For us, this is a major point. We kinda tweak our WP setup, so the streamlining of the Editor API is a big plus for us. We’ll see how it goes, but considering how much the WP community bitched about this, it’s probably fixed nicely.

Isn’t it nice to know that WP gets better and better?

What a bunch of C.R.A.P.!

There are four principles of design that we want you to get under your belt.

If you’re a designer, you’ll know this stuff already. If you’re a programmer, you might not. What’s important to understand is that if you can get these 4 principles under your belt, then over time you’ll develop a feel for why designs don’t work, and you’ll identify that really, really fast.

It’s like you’ll have some secret superpower.

Watch the video, read the stuff below, and suggestion: if you haven’t ever seen this stuff before, print it out, put it on the wall, and absorb!

The 4 Principles of Design

Follow these four rules for better design!

C. is for Contrast.

Creating contrast for elements means that discrete elements stand out. Contrast is all about making things stand out. A call to action that is red on a black and white website will stand out in a big way. Users know where to look first, second, third, last. This helps with scanning, especially with making ‘special’ things stand out.

R. is for Repetition.

Repetition, for instance making a header and footer the same color, makes scanning a website easier. Bullet lists are easy to scan, right? Because the repetition of the little dots makes it so. This can create a cohesive look to a website. Obviously, color and shapes are important with repetition.

A. is for Alignment.

Columns within a page makes it easier to scan horizontally. Newspapers use this to great effect. Aligning a whole bunch of elements with one another makes them scan faster. Alignment makes things easier to read.

P. is for Proximity.

Proximity means that things are associated with one another – or not. The closer things are, the more they are associated. The farther things are away from one another, the less they are associated. This helps immensely in navigation. This kinda folds into the ‘chunking‘ method of making data more digestible.

Tell you what, just watch the C.R.A.P. video, OK?

- Gregory and Mark

Listen: OTL 14 – Communicate Better With EmployeesJoin us for our On The Lakepodcast, where we talk about the importance of employee (and boss!) assessment in the workforce, to harness our natural talents as communicators, as well as controlling our own behaviors when resolving conflicts.

Why we interviewed Dani.

As our team grows, my goal as leader of Think Around Corners is to establish great leadership – and that means great communication on overall goals as a company, as well as ensuring that all my employees have an open channel of communication to me – to voice concerns, and to establish rapport.

So, in hiring Dani Werner, I discovered that although I have great leadership qualities, I need to voice my needs in different ways, and Dani helped me do that. Mark and I are communicating better than ever, and it shows in the quality and quantity of work we have been able to accomplish over the past 6 months.

About Dani.

Dani Werner has been leading creative teams in organizational and leadership  development for over a decade. With a diverse background in learning, technology  and  marketing, she has a deep understanding of the issues leaders face,  particularly in  times of transition.

As Director of Organizational Development for Accord Management Systems,  Werner  provides objective feedback to executives seeking to grow their  businesses in a  challenging economy.

She is a member of Women in Technology International (WITI), the American  Society of  Training and Development (ASTD), the International Society for Performance  Improvement (ISPI), and the Society for Human Resources  Management (SHRM).

Podcast Links:

• All Podcasts
• Our Podcast RSS Feed

Get ready for a nice, long swim. buddy.

Even More Madness.

Even more map fails for your viewing pleasure. Enjoy – G.

A quick and dirty method of user testing, based on the wonderful book by Steve Krug, Don’t Make Me Think.

User testing?

Yes, user testing! It’s fast, it’s free, and it can save you THOUSANDS of dollars over your web development cycle. Learn what C’mere testing,

Geek out!

- Gregory & Mark

Multi-Channel Funnels allow you to compare the most financially beneficial channels.

If you’re serious about tracking campaigns through AdWords / CPC, Email newsletters, or Affiliate marketing, this video will sum it up for you.

What’s In There…

When you track Google Analytics Campaigns across channels, it’s important to define each channel so the data is clear. Watching this video gives you access to a few very powerful tools, including a bulk campaign tagging tool, very useful to layout all your campaigns in one shot. Here’s another one from EpikOne.

You can find the presentation of the video here in PDF format.

We start a new video series today for all you Geeks out there!

When: 2/month, we talk about what we want you to know.

Our new video series, 2 Geeks Thinking

Every other week or so, we’ll be highlighting a particular tool or tactic we use to build awesome sites.

Who is this series great for?

High-end web developers, and folks who know how to code. But it will also feature great design principles, so it’s good for designers, too!

What will we talk about?

jQuery, UX, UI, interactivity, engagement, Google Analytics and tracking sites, CMS, visual layout, coding, CSS, and how to make your customers happy.

Why are we doing this?

Because we love you, and want to connect with our peeps!

Stay tuned, more coming!

- Gregory and Mark.

Why is this important?

For one, not every conversion (goal) is as straight-forward as…

“customer comes to website > sees product > buys product > everyone’s happy”

- there might be many blushes with the idea of purchasing a product – or signing up for a newsletter, or downloading a white paper.

Understanding what led to a purchase or goal is as important, at times, as reaching the goal.

Someone might conceivably…

1. See you mention a new white paper on Facebook, then
2. Visit your website, ponder downloading white paper, then
3. Signup for your newsletter, then
4. Be reminded that white paper exists when receives first newsletter, then
5. Downloads white paper.

In this case, the goal would be attributed solely to the email sent to the newsletter recipient. Which isn’t really true; Facebook had something to do with it too!

Enter Multi-Channel Funnels.

The Cross-Channel Mix allows you to see all the blocks that built the conversion or sale, not just the last one.

Multi-Channel Funnels examines all ‘blushes’ with your marketing message – that’s why it’s so important! These ‘Cross-Media Funnels’ are important in understanding how people in understanding…

1. Where a visitor saw you first
2. How many times it took them to finally make a decision
3. What was the message that ‘triggered’ the conversion

It’s kinda like ‘assists’ in basketball…

Why are assists counted in basketball? Because they’re important. No one plays basketball in a vacuum; assists help make the score.

Not available yet to the general public…
but you can sign up for early access, here!

Seed articles…

• Multi-Channel Funnels & Assists Coming To Google Analytics at Search Engine Land
• Google Analytics Multi-Channel Funnels – Analytics Talk by Justin Cutroni

So you’re getting 500+ visitors per day. But are they really ‘engaged’ with your website? Do they stick around? Are the lookie-loos or serious visitors?

Your basic dashboard results showing all traffic.

Here’s how to tell.

Here’s an Advanced Segmentation test in Google Analytics that’s super-simple to setup and gives you a better estimation of your true visitor traffic.

What we start with:

We start with a basic Dashboard Visitor Traffic element, then apply 2 Google Analytics Advanced Segments to show us more.

The 10-second Advanced Segment.

Building an Advanced Segment is easy. Let’s make one!

1. Access Google Analytics, and go to the Advanced Segments button.

Apply the Time on Site dimension, and put 'greater than 10 seconds'.

1. Select “Time on Site” as the dimension. Once you drag that in there, enter Time is Greater Than 10 seconds.
2. Name it something descriptive, like “Time on Site greater than 10 seconds.” It doesn’t have to be fancy, just descriptive so you can find it again.

1. That’s it! Now, apply the segment to your basic visitor traffic, by going back to the Dashboard and selecting the ‘Advanced Segments – All Visits dropdown box. Find your 10 Second segment, and apply.
2. Now you’ll see two lines instead of one. The new (non-blue) line will be your traffic that lasted longer than 10 seconds on your website. Neat, huh?

Dashboard showing 10 second Advanced Segment applied.

1. Want to apply the Advanced Segment quickly? Use this quick link to apply the segment automagically! (you should be logged into Google Analytics before you do!)

The 2-minute or 5 pageview Advanced Segment.

The 2-minute/5 pageview Advanced Segment works the same way, but you’ll be apply an “OR” statement to this segment, to select visitors that have spend either more than 2 minutes, OR have visited 5 pages, before leaving your website.

1. Again, go into your Advanced Segments. You’re going to apply two dimensions, this time.
2. Follow the image below, and apply both the Time on Site > 120 (seconds, or 2 minutes), and with an OR statement between them, Pageviews > 4 (which means it will capture 5 or great page view visitors…

Time on Site > 120 (2 minutes in seconds), OR Pageviews > 4 (for 5 or more page views).

1. Again, apply the segment to your Dashboard view, and voila! Three lines.

The Dashboard view showing both segments applied.

1. And here’s your shortcut to making the magic happen.

Note how different the visitor traffic can be.

Note that traffic on the Advanced Segments is considerably less. Time on Site > 10 seconds can often be only 50% of the traffic, and Time on Site > 2 minutes OR 5 Pageviews less than 25% of your ‘total’ traffic.

A breakdown of 'true traffic' - your Advanced Segments are showing you that not all traffic is 'engaged'.

This is not necessarily cause for alarm – every site will have lookie-loos. Engagement doesn’t happen for all visitors.

But now that you have these two fundamental Advanced Segments, you can apply them to various standard Google Analytics reports, to determine which many things. Play play play! – G.

Where are you spending your effort and time with social media tasks?

And we’ll be talking about this and more at the group that I organize, the FCOMG!

Would you take a 15 second poll?

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