For the final project of the semester, our group decided to compare two companies using the social media comparison tools that were provided to us. The companies that we decided to compare were Hollister Co. and American Eagle. We chose these companies because they target the same group of people, mostly young adults, ages 15-25. Because their target market is of a younger generation, they are more likely to use social media sites like facebook and twitter, to share how they feel about the product. We began by assessing both of the facebook pages for American Eagle and Hollister. American Eagle had less followers with just over 5 million, while Hollister had just over 6 million. The page layouts were a little bit different as well. The Hollister website had many images of air brushed models working at promotional campaigns and events. The pictures didn’t really show any of the customers wearing the product, but instead, paid employees. As for American Eagle, the poto section of the facebook was filled with user pictures from all over the world. AE had a photo album that was designated for people to upload pictures of themselves wearing AE cloths and that were in mazing places around the world. This shows that AE is trying to involve the customer more than Hollister is. Along the same lines, American Eagle also responds to almost every person that asks a question on the AE wall. Hollister on the other hand didn’t respond to anyone who had questions. The posts on Hollister’s page were a mix of positive and negative while AE had overwhelmingly positive feedback.
Our group also used other web applications to help our group find out more about how people feel about these two companies. Tweetfeel allowed us to look at what people were tweeting about both companies. This application showed us not only the tweets people were posting about the companies, but also gave us a percentage of good vs bad publicity. Hollister had a much higher negative feedback rate than American Eagle did. This shows that a lot of users have been posting negative comments about Hollister and their clothing stores. Some of the posts suggested that the Hollister store was too cramped and dark. American Eagle had a much higher positive rating with people saying how much they love their brand and how durable their jeans can be. Its easy to see through this tweetfeel that AE is doing a much better job reaching their customers positively than Hollister is doing. When we visited both companies twitter pages, we also found something interesting. Hollister was following only one other person while AE was following over 3000. This shows that AE really is interested with what the customers have to say and will answer as many questions as they can. Through the use of these, and other applications, our team has decided that Hollister needs to become more user friendly like AE. If they do this, their popularity might increase which could increase sales. American Eagle is doing a great job of connecting with their customers and should keep up the good work!
Privacy on the Internet has become a hot topic of discussion as technology continues to advance rapidly. Many people in today’s society are clueless as to what some companies are tracking on some of the most popular websites to date. Most of the time, the information that is being tracked by the tracking software is fairly general and most consumers don’t have a problem with it. On the other hand, some software, such a “beacons” can track an individuals mouse as it moves across a website. This can be a little scary because information that is considered private by many is being used to provide them with advertisements. For example, in the Wall Street Journal article, a young lady was researching uterine diseases because she was concerned that she might have a disease that would prevent her from having children. Now, a few months later and after finding out that she was in fact clear of any diseases, this individual is still receiving advertisements for fertility tests. This example shows a situation where someone’s private information is being used without consent of the individual.
The Wall Street Journal article that we read in class also goes on to explain how these software programs actually track information and how this information is sold in a somewhat “stock exchange” kind of setting. I found that most of the information that is being tracked and sold is for the most part general and is not personalized. Most of the time, a tracking system will assess a user a code, which means the tracking software isn’t recording you by your name. Also, the information that is being tracked is for the most part basic. When you visit a web site, such as Dictonary.com, and you look up a definition of a word, tracking devices will provide you with ads that are related to the word you looked up. Although some people might consider this invasive, I view this as an opportunity to provide the consumer with ads that will address some of their interests. As long as tracking doesn’t get too personal, I believe it provides us a great service. Now, when I go to NHL.com, instead of receiving random woman’s clothing advertisements, I will receive men’s hockey jersey advertisements. That being said, I don’t believe all tracking is good.
Tracking has the tendency to get too personal, and with little governmental restrictions in place, many people don’t know if they are being tracked ethically or not. If I’m looking up personal health issues one day, I don’t want to receive advertisements on the same topic the next day when I’m surfing the Internet with a friend. I think government officials need to start setting up regulations on tracking, especially because many consumers have no idea they are being tracked. Also, I think it is a little unethical that companies are making big bucks off of consumer’s actions online. Most people don’t know that their web surfing information is being used for someone else’s profit, which could cause some issues. I’m not saying that consumers need to be reimbursed, but maybe there should be some regulations that allow consumers to have a choice in whether or not their information can be used.
Google analytics is a great application when it comes to analyzing how well your websites work…here are some of the things i found interesting about my site that i found using google analytics.
1. My page has 20 page views with 36 visits. The views all came from illinois, most from the DeKalb area. The bounce rate is 50%, which is high, but not unexpected. The majority of views were using firefox, which is one of the internet providers that NIU lab computers use. The average time on site is about 3 minutes.
2. As said before, all my visitors were from Illinois, most being in DeKalb, which makes me think that a few students are using my page as a reference for homework assignments.
3. The two main pages that were viewed was my home page and my about page, other then that there were only a few other page views
4. The majority of my landings have come from people that are accessing my pages directly. There has been no search related landings on my site
5. No one has landed on my page via a search
6. The information that analytics provided didn’t really surprise me all that much. I knew no one besides some people i know in class would access my page> I expected the bounce rate to be high because of spammers and the location that all the accessors were close to NIU. That being said, i can see why analytics is a great tool for marketers that have sites that are meaningful to product or service sales.
Ad:
Tasty Giant Fortune Cookie
Customizable fortune cookies, free shipping!
I chose to go with this ad because its simple and to the point. My demographic is focused towards people who like to customize items, as well as people who like a deal. My call to action is “free shipping” because it lets the consumer know that if they act, they won’t have to pay for shipping costs.
Keywords: Customizable, fortune, cookie
Customizable: The competition is high for this word and there are 201,000 global searches and 165, 000 local searches.
I would choose “customizable gifts” as one idea because you can give these cookies as gifts. I would also choose “customizable food” because cookies are just that.
There is no CPC for the word customizable, which is good because it won’t cost extra for the word, where as “customizable gift” has an $.89 CPC. The estimated daily cost is $.02 and the click through rate is .02
SEO stands for search engine optimization, which basically means trying to get your web page found more often by search engines such as google and bing. You can ad plugins like we did to our blog page that help “crawlers” find your page and bring it up in the search. This is important because there are thousands and thousands of websites on the internet and it is easy for your website to fall into the background. With SEO, your website can be found much easier and quickly than ever before, allowing you to connect with your customers much more often.
Some of the words that came up in my keyword density tool search were: Market, marketing, post, and admin. These are not too surprising because I have been posting a lot about marketing practices that affect many different markets. The post and admin words are just repetitive within the site and are very generic. I think I should start to use more words that have to do with marketing and using my name instead of admin.
On the McDonalds website it takes one click to get to the section that has a drop down selection box to search job categories. Although the drop down screen didn’t have an Information Technology selection, I found the jobs available in the IT department by searching “IT” in the search tool box. There are four jobs available in the IT department, along with some jobs listed under “accounting” that show up from the search. Each job has a link that takes you to the description of the job and allows you to apply for the job or e-mail the description. It isn’t too hard to find the proper information when searching for a job on the McDonalds website. The colors are pretty generic, but they are the McDonalds colors which is a good thing, because if the page was flashy and had a bunch of different colors it would be confusing to the reader. The navigation is extremely easy and it feels like you have a say in what job you would like to look into further. All in all McDonalds has done a very good job with structuring their careers website.
As for Walgreens, the website is a bit more cluttered with text and is more confusing to navigate. There is still useful information under each job available on the Walgreens site with job descriptions and required fields.
Both of the ads i created portray the image of a happy dog, one suggesting that he has been adopted (saved) already while the other suggests to the reader that he wants to be adopted. The differences between the two images are the logo (one is new and one is old), the size (225×225 and 200×200) and the text that represents the call to action. The A/B ads can help in deciding which ad will be the most effective. The landing page i chose was the adoptable pets section of the On Angles’ Wings website. One metric that can be used is having a click rate to see which ad was chosen more often.
Funny cat i made in Photoshop lab!
Last class period, Ryan Eugene, a guest speaker from IT Supplies took time out of his day to come and talk to us about his daily job responsibilities and Internet marketing. We learned that IT Supplies was founded in 1998 by Greg Lahart, as a small business selling printer ink toner. The company was originally a phone catalog company but as the company expanded they had to start their own website. As ink jet technology expanded, so did the demand of products from IT Supplies, thus increasing the amount of items in their catalog. One major job that Ryan is in charge of is product descriptions. These descriptions are what place IT Supplies ahead of its competitors along with its use of blogging. The Blog helped gain and retain customers from all over, allowing them to address concerns directly. Today, the web site is the main catalog and video postings are being uploaded to show customers how to use their products.
The plug-in i used for twitter was created by Luke Lanchester and i named “HL Twitter.” This plug-in is useful because titter is becoming a huge part of business activities, so having a way to keep up right on your own website is great.
The Plug-in i chose for the NHL was created by Mack Bincroft and is called “Mack’s NHL Hockey Newsfeed.” This is important because i’m hoping to pursue a career in sports marketing for the NHL, so it’s always good to stay up to date on the NHL.