[00:00:10.360] - Gordon
Hello.
[00:00:10.640] - Taylor
Hello.
[00:00:11.170] - Gordon
My name is Gordon from Drayson Design.
[00:00:12.910] - Taylor
And I'm Taylor from The Creative Tinker.
[00:00:15.070] - Gordon
And welcome to "This Week with Taylor and Gordon", a weekly podcast and vidcast where we talk about things that have affected our businesses over the last seven days. Welcome back. It's been a busy seven days as always, and you'll notice a couple of things, hopefully. Both Taylor and I have now managed to get a haircut. The barbers are open.
[00:00:39.670] - Taylor
Yeah, I was there on Monday.
[00:00:41.080] - Gordon
First in the queue, well nearly.
[00:00:43.000] - Taylor
Close.
[00:00:43.600] - Gordon
It was it was snowing here on Monday. And so we both thought it would be a good idea to sort of get ahead of the queues of people thinking maybe we won't go out just yet because it's snowing. In fact, I sent Taylor because he was going anyway, and I told him to give me a call if there wasn't too much of a queue. And he did. And so I went and ended up going to a completely different place, as it turns out. But we both have nice short hair now, which is a big difference from how it has been
[00:01:16.810] - Taylor
Yeah, feels weird.
[00:01:17.710] - Gordon
It does. It's not quite as warm anymore. All the heat is being allowed out. And second thing that I've done this week, because I was a very brave boy, I went down and had my vaccination, my first vaccination. I was the last one in this family to have it. Everyone else has had theirs before me. And I'm not a big fan of needles. I don't like needles. But the lady who did it was lovely. She was very, very good at it. And I'm all done. So there we go.
[00:01:47.800] - Taylor
Part one.
[00:01:48.910] - Gordon
Part one. Yes. I actually said to the lady, do I not get a lolly? Because I only got a sticker. And she said on my second one, when I come back, I'll get a lolly.
[00:01:58.210] - Taylor
I didn't get a sticker.
[00:01:58.810] - Gordon
Did you not get a sticker? Oh, maybe you didn't have it done properly.
[00:02:02.870] - Taylor
Maybe not.
[00:02:03.490] - Gordon
Maybe not. Anyway, let's talk about some business things. So this week, shall i go first?
[00:02:09.720] - Taylor
Yeah you can go first.
[00:02:11.920] - Gordon
So this week I want to talk about some software that both of us have recently purchased. It's called "Hockey Stack" and it can be found at hockeystack.com, and it is an alternative to Google Analytics. So if you have a website, you will know that having analytics on your website is a must. It's something that you need to have in place so that you can check to see how the website is doing. It will also tell you if there's any big major problems on the site like pages that aren't working. And you can find out things like the pages that people go to, how they go from one page to another page, so the order of pages in which they go. And quite often you can see how far down a page they go and where they come from, the country that they are at, the browser and the operating system and the type of device they're on. All of this is really useful information because you can take this information and use it to make your website better so you can find out, for example, if you get lots of people that come to your home page and then go straight to your contact page, then maybe there's a lot of people who are just trying to find out how they can contact you, and they're not necessarily interested in some of the other things that you have. So maybe because they're going straight to the contact page, maybe you should have that contact information on the home page.
[00:03:52.090] - Taylor
Yeah.
[00:03:52.450] - Gordon
Which will then obviously make it a lot easier for your visitors to get the information that they're looking for quickly.
[00:03:58.720] - Taylor
Yeah, I'm doing electrician's website and a big thing for them is kind of telephone or email and so I have it in the header on every single page and it means that it's easily accessible and people can very easily just click "call now" and go through to the electrician, which is kind of all they're really looking for, they don't need kind of big contact forms that don't need quotes, things like that, they just want people to get in touch with them.
[00:04:27.580] - Gordon
So Google Analytics has been the way that has been recommended for tens of years. You know, I think they've been going sort of fifteen-ish years with Google Analytics, that sort of length of time. And you put a bit of code onto your website and every visitor that comes to your website is then recorded, not as an individual, so it doesn't know who they are, it's all anonymous. But it allows Google Analytics to keep track of all this information. Now, the problem is, well there's two problems in fact; the reason Google Analytics is free to use is because Google like to use the information that you collect for their own purposes. So they will be able to see who's coming to your website, where they're coming from. Because Google has cross site information, it can tell that someone's gone from one site to another site. Again, it's all anonymous they don't know who these people are, they just know that a person has gone from there to there. If you're logged into Google, they may indeed know who you are. Not always, but sometimes. They'll also know what search terms you're using if you've gone to a website from Google, so they'll know how to change their search algorithms to give people the information they want. So if, for example, you search for something, you go to a site and you're there for three seconds and then you come back to Google and search again, they know that the site that the person went to is possibly not the right site for the search terms that they use. So there's lots of information that Google is taking from this, which is why they allow you to use it for free.
[00:06:15.750] - Taylor
Something I did see, was if you ever do a search on Amazon and you get the product, you go to the product page and it has a bunch of kind of looks like random kind of strings. That is a way of Amazon basically tracking, and they use it, so if you copy that link and send it to a friend, they can actually track between who you are and who you're sending it to. So then they can give you targeted products based on, you know, the products that your friend has sent you that obviously they think you're going to be interested in, which I thought was really interesting
[00:06:50.610] - Gordon
That is good, yeah. So because you've sent it to someone else, then Amazon is then assuming that that person is interested in whatever that product is. And the type of product that is.
[00:07:03.960] - Taylor
And they can link the accounts together. So if I...
[00:07:07.460] - Gordon
And they know your friends then aswell.
[00:07:08.370] - Taylor
Yeah, and they'll recommend stuff that I'm looking at for you, as well.
[00:07:11.720] - Gordon
Clever, very clever. So Hockey Stack is an alternative. Now one of the issues recently with Google Analytics is the fact that they use cookies. And cookies are a little bit of code that is left on your device when you visit various websites, and it's a way for you to, for example, go to a, Amazon, for example, and instead of logging in, you just view something, Amazon will put a cookie on your device. And then when you go back to Amazon, it knows who you are because of that little bit of code. Now, cookies need to be, because of all the changes that are happening in the internet at the moment, cookies are something that you need to inform a customer or a visitor that you are collecting.
[00:08:04.530] - Taylor
Most commonly from GDPR Cookie policies and kind of, do you accept cookies?
[00:08:09.600] - Gordon
And you have to allow people to accept or reject the ability for cookies to be used. And that is potentially an issue because you can't track people properly if you're not able to put cookies on their device, but Hockey Stack does away with cookies. It has a way of of using code on your website that then doesn't use cookies, therefore, you don't have to ask the visitor if they're going to allow it because it's automatically being collected, all the information's being collected even without a cookie. It's not free. It is a paid for service, but it does give you all the relevant information you need, and the company behind it are very good, they're adding new features of every week at the moment. And the cookieless tracking is just one of the recent additions, which is really good. They've also got goals and funnels, which are two separate things that I haven't looked into fully yet. But if it's the same as on Google Analytics, a goal is where you set up a sort of a path to see how many people go from this page, to this page, to this page. So, for example, product page to the checkout, sorry to the cart, and then to the checkout and the success page. And you can say that the success page is a goal and you can track how many people fulfil that goal and you can set up lots of different goals so that you can track lots of different things. And then a funnel would be something like a lead generation. So you have a lead generation landing page, for example, with a button on it to sign up. And then you can see if you've got several steps to this funnel. You can see how many people go through the funnel and at what points they drop off. So, you know that, you know, the second stage is where most people stop and don't continue along the funnel. So therefore, the second page is the bit you need to look at and optimise to try and convert more to get people through the rest of your funnel. And that is all in there. And they've actually got codeless tracking. So it'll look at the data it's receiving, it will see what people are doing, and it will suggest goals and funnels for you, which is really, really good. Taylor and I both have bought a lifetime deal on it. It was on AppSumo and I don't believe it's on AppSumo anymore, I think it's stopped now. But even if it's not available as lifetime deal, it's definitely something I would highly recommend you go and check out. We will leave a link to it in the notes. And it might be, if they have one, it might be an affiliate link, which means that if you were to take out an account with them, then we get a little bit of money, which helps us with this podcast and all the hosting of the website.
[00:11:27.750] - Taylor
We'd still recommend it even if we didn't.
[00:11:28.950] - Gordon
We do recommend it. But it's important we tell you that so that you know that we may get something from it if you purchase, but both of us already have it. So it's not like we're recommending something we have no experience with.
[00:11:41.460] - Taylor
Yeah, definitely.
[00:11:43.200] - Gordon
So tell me, Taylor, what would you like to talk about this week?
[00:11:46.380] - Taylor
This week I was working on, so basically I have lots of ideas and I really like playing around with, kind of trying to build stuff.
[00:11:56.340] - Gordon
You like Problem-Solving.
[00:11:57.510] - Taylor
Yeah. And
[00:11:58.800] - Gordon
Until it gets frustrating.
[00:12:00.360] - Taylor
No, because that's the point. You've got to try to break it down further as to why something isn't working. And I've got a big list basically of stuff that I want to try and implement. So one of them is building the "Shopify" Check-Out inside of WordPress. A big reason for this is because Shopify have done lots and lots of testing as to what converts the best. And so if I can kind of use that as a template, because the WordPress e-commerce platform called "Woo Commerce" doesn't have the best kind of checkout
[00:12:43.710] - Gordon
experience.
[00:12:44.480] - Taylor
Yeah, it's very kind of it needs updating, but hasn't been updated in a long time. So I want to see if I can update it and change it so that it's a lot more user friendly and uses techniques that are kind of proven to convert.
[00:13:01.280] - Gordon
So just so that those people who don't know, Shopify is a third party service that you can open a shop on and it doesn't require you to install any software. It's web driven, it's cloud based. You just upload your product. You have your own sort of designer within their system and you can start selling products, and it's a paid for service, so it's a monthly cost, but it does mean you don't have to then have hosting, you don't have to hire a web designer, etc etc. But yeah, you're right, the Shopify checkout is very good. It's designed and has been optimised to make sure it's as frictionless as possible.
[00:13:46.390] - Taylor
And since they are kind of e-commerce based, they've obviously done lots of tests on it, whereas WordPress is open source, I mean originally was just for blogs and it's since then grown to brochure sites, to e-commerce,
[00:14:00.760] - Gordon
To do everything.
[00:14:01.300] - Taylor
To vendors, to
[00:14:02.980] - Gordon
Memberships,
[00:14:03.820] - Taylor
Membership sites. And so, you know, I want to try and see if I can take a page out of their book and go, okay, how can I implement that in the system I use? But I've got lots of these ideas that I think would be really cool, trying to implement things from other places. And one of them was being, people being able to 'favourite' a post. So whether that be a job listing website, so say you have properties and you want to favourite the properties that you want to come back to later and kind of have it in your kind of wish list or kind of like a bookmark, or if you've got a blog in your magazine and you kind of want to read it later, you can star it. Or if you really enjoy that post and you want to keep it for safekeeping.
[00:14:43.780] - Gordon
Bookmark it.
[00:14:44.440] - Taylor
Yeah, it can be used for that. And so I want to try and build or find out a way to use this plugin called "Favourite Posts". And it was a really nice plugin because it was very much developer focussed. So they had lots of different actions and hooks basically that allowed you to get into the code and pull out data based on stuff they'd already defined and configured for you and basically use it to be able to add a favourite button to the post and the single post pages. And yeah, then be able to show that in a nice grid that people can then see all their favourited posts.
[00:15:23.440] - Gordon
And if I'm right, it works really well for people who are logged in. So membership sites, that sort of thing. But I think it also allows you to have favourites for people who aren't logged in.
[00:15:36.490] - Taylor
Yeah. So there's two
[00:15:37.390] - Gordon
Using cookies maybe?
[00:15:39.100] - Taylor
So there's two, three, three kind of things you can do, the first one is have it just as I like, bit like social media where you can just say, yeah, I like that post. And obviously then people can then see, if you've got the option they can filter by which one has the most likes on it, favourites. And this is a good way for people to have to show that they like a post and for everyone else to see, okay, what did other people like? But then also you can if you're not logged in, you can do it via a session or a cookie. So a cookie is what we were talking about earlier, where you store a bit of code on someone's computer or device and then when you come back, it will remember those settings in a way and where you have the option of a session. This is basically if you have a tab open, it will store that information. And if you kind of stay in that tab, or that kind of window, I think in your browser, then it would keep or remember that. However, if you leave the browser, it will basically destroy the code.
[00:16:37.990] - Gordon
That's the end of the session.
[00:16:38.800] - Taylor
Yeah, that's the end of the session.
[00:16:40.090] - Gordon
So if you then come back again, you're starting a brand new session.
[00:16:42.580] - Taylor
Yes, exactly whereas cookies if you close your browser and re-open it, as long as the cookie hasn't expired, it will remember all of your settings and you can change how long your cookie is set for. Some people set it for seven days, fourteen, thirty days and then they expire and then they're gone. But if you have an account obviously then they are saved to your profile in the database.
[00:17:06.190] - Gordon
Yeah. So that's really good because I've got a project that I'm working on at the moment which requires favourites. So that's one of the reasons you started looking into it at this point.
[00:17:16.420] - Taylor
Yes. I mean I used this plugin on a website about a year ago now, and I didn't have the same skills I have now, nor did I really know what I was not doing, but like, I didn't know what the capabilities of this plugin were and kind of now that I've had a bit of play around with it and realised there's a lot of possibilities out there. You know, there's a lot of fun to be had to see what else I can come up with.
[00:17:41.830] - Gordon
Which is great. And, of course, anything that you create now, as we've said in the past, you can then use for other sites that you build.
[00:17:49.720] - Taylor
Yeah, definitely.
[00:17:50.680] - Gordon
And just sort of add this functionality in.
[00:17:53.470] - Taylor
Yeah. It makes it really nice because I can just kind of copy and paste it because it's basically...
[00:17:58.410] - Gordon
create once and then use many times.
[00:18:00.070] - Taylor
Yeah. And that's what I kind of like doing. I either use kind of projects that I want to learn and to learn how to do something. And so I take some of the cost, it's kind of like a training cost. So for example, if I say the website is a certain amount, I will then dedicate extra time to that project, which isn't obviously billed to the client, but is basically me taking training money out of the business to be able to spend some time to learn a new skill similar to if you were to send employees on training events or to conferences, things like that, where they can up their skills and things like that. It's kind of like that. And then I can obviously then use that for other projects in the future, which, you know, some projects I may not have been able to take because I didn't have those skills.
[00:18:52.390] - Gordon
It's great. One thing I will say about cookies is we've mentioned them several times and there's lots of changes happening with cookies at the moment on browsers. So Chrome, Safari, possibly even Firefox are sort of giving the user the option to not allow cookies if they so wish. So privacy has become really important recently, and
[00:19:19.390] - Taylor
Most of it's due to big corporations like Facebook, Google that
[00:19:24.250] - Gordon
Who are going through some anti-trust cases at the moment based on the information they collect. And so to be a little bit more transparent, they are allowing people to not accept cookies and ad trackers and things like this that follow you around the Internet, which is good for the people who don't like them. You don't like to be tracked along the across the Internet wherever they go. Not so good for advertisers because they can no longer sort of pinpoint people specifically. Having said that, those people who are allowing these cookies and so forth, the ad trackers, are still going to benefit from being targeted with certain ads. So it's down to the individual as to what you really want. And I'm, personally I'm pleased with this because I think it's a good choice for the for the visitor, for the browser.
[00:20:21.620] - Taylor
Yeah, well, I use an ad blocker on my browser, not for the reason you'd think. I don't actually really mind being tracked because obviously I'm going to get targeted advertisements. You know, I'm interested in technology, some some sports, things like that. And so, you know, I don't really want to be targeted with make-up and things are irrelevant to what I'm interested in. So I don't actually mind it too much. There's a level to which, you know, people will take tracking, but I use it for actually speeding up my websites or not my websites but other people's websites. Because we have bad Internet, with the ad blocker, it blocks a lot of scripts from running and loading, and what that does is it basically makes the website load quicker, and since we don't have great Internet, it just you know, it takes a couple of seconds off maybe the load time, but it makes a big difference in the long run, which is why I use it.
[00:21:20.980] - Gordon
Top tip for you. If you have slow Internet get an ad blocker, but not for the purposes of stopping ads, but for the purposes of browsing quicker.
[00:21:30.880] - Taylor
Yeah.
[00:21:31.360] - Gordon
Excellent. Very good. Well, that's it for me.
[00:21:33.940] - Taylor
Yeah, same with me.
[00:21:34.990] - Gordon
Thank you for joining us this week. As always, you can find us on Facebook and YouTube. And if you do, then please like, share and subscribe.
[00:21:45.790] - Taylor
You can also go to our website thisweekwith.co.uk where you can find all of our past episodes. Hopefully if you have done keywording right, then you should be to do a search for cookies and find some other episodes, if you're interested about finding out about cookies, you should have some other episodes about that.
[00:22:05.170] - Gordon
Great. Something else I need to check before I do all the show notes for this. Anyway, thank you very much for joining us. We'll see you next week at 1:00 pm. Until then, my name is Gordon from Drayson Design
[00:22:16.360] - Taylor
And I'm Taylor from The Creative Tinker.
[00:22:18.460] - Gordon
Good bye
[00:22:18.850] - Taylor
Bye.
