The jQuery Mobile Menu Plugin

Here at Marker we’ve developed a jQuery plugin to do just this:

jquery-mobilemenu.js

The Mobile Menu plugin scans an existing multi-level navigation menu and dynamically builds a dropdown list which navigates the user to the selected page on the select elements change event. It is true that there are a few other plugins out there that do this already, however most of them don’t seem to handle a menu that is more than 1 level deep.

These are the steps to get it working:

1) Make sure your navigation menu is in the format:

<ul>
	<li><a href="/">Home</a></li>
	<li><a href="/services/">Services</a>
<ul>
	<li><a href="/services/web-development/">Web Development</a></li>
	<li><a href="/services/online-marketing/">Online Marketing</a></li>
</ul>
</li>
	<li><a href="/contact-us/">Contact Us</a></li>
</ul>

2) Add the following scripts to your website:

<script type="text/javascript" src="/js/jquery-1.6.js"></script>
<script type="text/javascript" src="/js/jquery-mobilemenu.js"></script>

3) Invoke the mobileMenu function on the empty dropdown list you wish to have populated:

<script>
jQuery(document).ready(function($) {
  $("ddlMobileNav").mobileMenu({ ulsource : "#main-nav > ul", maxlevel : 4 });
});
</script>

The parameters you can specify for the mobileMenu function are:

ulsource
The jquery selector referencing your unordered list.

maxlevel
The maximum number of levels of the main navigation you wish to traverse.

The Completed Select Dropdown Menu

You should now have a dropdown menu that will navigate the user to the selected page. With a bit of CSS wizardry (not supplied), this might look as follows:

Media Queries

And finally, don’t forget to use media queries to hide the main navigation when the screen size is below a certain width, and likewise to hide the select menu when the screen width is larger than mobile.

Enjoy!

For a long time, social media media interaction has been difficult to track. Google Analytics now allows you to track & analyse:

• Social Network Sources – this is now made easier, without having to maintain an advanced segment. You can also see the particular URLs that are being shared.
• Conversions that can be attributed to content shared on social media.
• Pages that are being shared and how they are shared.
• If you are using Social Plug-ins on your site, now you can see which of these are being used.

All of these add much greater insight so you can optimise and focus your social media efforts to those that bring a better response. Find out more on how to access this data.

Exporting Reports

Sometimes I find myself reverting to the old version of Google Analytics because it did not support exporting into PDF. This option is now available.

They have also brought over the email function where you can schedule reports to send to yourself or others on a daily, weekly, monthly or quarterly basis – in any of the 4 formats.

Event Flow Report

You are probably already familiar with the fantastic Goal Flow and Visitor Flow visualisations. Now there is an Event Flow report. If you are using Events on your site, this is very useful in seeing how they are triggered in relation to each other:

Digital Marketing Attribution

Google Analytics Premium has released a special Attribution Modeling tool. It helps to visualise how your different online campaigns contribute to your website goals. Because it uses data already available, you can actually get similar data in the already present Multi-Channel Funnels available to all of us with the free Analytics package.

If you have not already, I highly recommend you take a good look at Multi-Channel Funnels in the Conversion section of your Analytics Report. If you are using Goals it will reveal very insightful charts and funnels showing you how many and in what order visitors touch your different campaigns before making a conversion.

Senior/Intermediate .NET Web Developers

We currently have positions for senior and intermediate .NET web developers to implement web applications for internal and external projects. Marker Studio is a leading independently owned New Zealand based full service digital agency, founded in 2000, and part of the Marker family of companies. You will be working on significant sized projects for many well known organisations in New Zealand, Australia and the UK, using the latest development tools.

We are ideally seeking someone with the following skills and experience:

• Passion for web application development
• Experience with ASP.NET/C#/SQL Server
• Experience with JQuery
• Understanding and project experience with Kentico CMS (ideally you are a Kentico Certified Developer)
• Love working on projects that deliver outstanding user experience
• Familiarity with Agile development methodology and Microsoft TFS
• An understanding of and hopefully some experience with responsive design and HTML5
• Experience with SQL Server data warehouse and business intelligence projects would be a bonus
• Problem solving skills
• Great communication skills
• Ability to work in a team environment
• 3 Years + commercial experience
• Self motivated, organized with time management skills

You will be working in a relaxed environment where your input and ideas are valued.

We are located just off Ponsonby Road in Auckland Central. Apply direct and come in for a chat. If you have any questions about the role, please do not hesitate to call Jon Beattie, Managing Director, on 021 434 133.

careers@markerstudio.com

A report by the international agency TBG Digital (who are in the business of Facebook marketing) has revealed that significant cost savings can be made by directing ad clicks to your Facebook page. Advertisers on Facebook can save 29% of their CPC if the ad directs users to their Facebook page instead of offsite. More impressively, advertisers can save 45% of their CPC if the ad specifically allows users to “Like” the page, again, rather than sending users to your webpage (off-Facebook). – Note that succeeding in obtaining “Likes” will also give you greater influence in Sponsored Stories ads.

It makes complete sense for Facebook to offer this incentive. It encourages advertisers to keep users on the site, exposing them to more ads, and subsequently, persuading brands to improve their Facebook pages & functionality.

While almost all brands and organisations have a Facebook presence, the implication of these findings is that you need to have an excellent Facebook page. One reason why advertisers would rather send traffic off Facebook is because their page is not up to the customer expectation. Users are less inspired to have an experience with a brand that only has the plain Facebook pages & functions. A little investment and plenty of thought is required into a proper Facebook strategy. Only then you would be happy to send traffic to your new innovative Facebook pages and enjoy the lower CPCs.

Read the presentation here.

1. It gives searchers the ability to get personal search results – pulling posts & photos from your Google+ circles.

2. Google+ profiles are made more prominent in search. When selecting a Google+ profile in the autocomplete, you will be returned results about THAT Ben Smith that you already know instead of those you don’t:

3. Searching for a topic will also return results of people who frequently discuss the topic on Google+.

Thinking about these developments for a moment (and using your imagination of what else there is to come), if appearing in search results is important for you, you would want to get a Google+ page and invest in it as best you can as you would your Facebook page.

Google is recognising the people behind the content and the influence of those using it. It has taken steps recently towards this integration such as utilising authorship tags and pulling +1 button recommendations into search results and ads. It is taking search to the point where, in this latest move, the influence and network of the people that follow your Google+ page could be more important than all the pagerank & SEO you have achieved to-date.

Last year you didn’t need a Google+ page. The network’s market share plateaued, its usage slowed after its loud launch and we were all doubtful it would actually fly given Google’s track record in venturing to the social space in the past. However, the introduction of heavily personalised search results based on Google+ data outweighs any resistance to be involved.

Your standing on Google+ will soon determine how you perform on search. This is why it is important to have a Google+ page. Because search is becoming social. And by social, Google is only really interested in Google+.

Videos & screenshots of the new features are on Google’s blog.

This video is overflowing with practical tips on how businesses can properly take advantage of mobile. It is 1 hr 16 mins simply because of all the information he needs to get across including:

• AdWords for mobile
• Using QR codes
• Mobile optimised sites
• Optimising experiences for mobile & tablets
• Measuring the performance of it all

Mobile marketing success relies on relevance and understanding the needs and behaviours of your markets that are using mobile.

Take the lead in bleeding-edge marketing. If you are looking for mobile strategy & ideas and reporting techniques you must see this.

Awards will be announced on 17th November 2011.

The key statistic for me is that usage of mobile devices outstrips that of the website. Let me repeat that, more people accessed the mobile apps than the website.

Download PDF version

• Official mobile application downloaded more than 3 million times
• More than 17 million video clips viewed on the official RWC 2011 mobile app
• The mobile apps generated over 350 million page views compared with 120 million on the website.

This is stunning. Mobile usage was nearly three times that of the website. This is a resounding success for mobile and I applaud these guys for making such a bold move. Nothing like the scale of what they delivered had ever been done before for a major sporting event, and they have proven that if you build it, they will come!

Initially it looks like we will get Visitors Flow and Goal Flow reports, but they plan to roll out additional reports later. Segmentation is supported so you can view reports by the standard or your custom segments (e.g. show me how mobile visitors flow through the site).

This is an exciting new feature which you can expect to be rolled out in the next couple of months.

This is a key metric and only makes it more pertinent for brands, particularly those operating in the markets listed above to understand and implement social networking in their digital strategy. Social networks provide the captive audience for advertisers to promote to and brands to engage with. It is also a goal for networks such as Facebook to keep members using the site for as long as possible in each session. And because your country, your market, is using it so much, your brand really needs to take advantage of this.

View the Experian article.