The best and worst features of Google ‘Allo’
“Allo mate!” It sounds like something that should be on a tourist ad – but no, this is just me and my imagination as I read over Google’s latest app development.
Currently in the testing phase, ‘Allo’ initially seems very similar to Whatsapp – although there are of course some notable differences. So far the reviews have been mixed, with some suggesting the app would be better bundled with ‘Google Duo,’ Google’s 1-to-1 voice call app. So with that said, let’s have a look at the great, the okay, and the not so great.
Thumbs up Features
Incognito Mode – With end-to-end encryption, you can chat privately with your contacts. Simply choose how long you want messages to stick around for, and when they should expire. You can also make sure your chats stay private from snoopy people sitting behind you on public transport by using the private notifications setting.
Google Assistant – Want to know the weather report for the weekend, the best local japanese restaurants, or simply need a reminder for an early wake up alarm? No problem! Just use the microphone button to ask a question, and Allo’s Assistant will give you an answer (or in the case of an early wake up, set your alarm).
allo google assistant
Image from Android Police
Individual message deletion – According to Ausdroid, Allo will allow users to delete individual messages from their chat stream. For example, let’s just say that your partner sends you an emergency text with their credit card details – you certainly don’t want those hanging around on your phone do you! With Allo, you can simply delete any messages as you feel fit. While this is certainly not a revolutionary idea by any means, it’s still one that is helpful. Just be aware, deleted messages will only disappear from your device.
Independent artist sticker packs – According to Allo, their app will offer users 3 sticker packs to get started (each containing 24 stickers), with the option to purchase more (in total there are 24 packs). Similar in part to some of the Hangout emoticons, you’ve got everything from the funny and cute, to the sassy and cheeky (such as ‘pudding the cry baby,’ ‘fun-der the sea,’ ‘worst day ever,’ and ‘talk to the hands’). Just be aware however, there are a few packs that are possibly NSFW – including ‘Julio the Bull,’ a bootylicious character who, let’s face it, is in no need of an ego boost! All stickers are designed by independant artists and studios from around the world.
Ink – as mentioned earlier, Allo will allow you to get creative by ‘inking’ photos (essentially, drawing and doodling on them).
Search Function – With Allo’s dedicated and extensive search function, you won’t have to worry about endlessly scrolling through your chats to find a specific text (as with Hangouts). Hallelujah for that!
Features that are a bit MEH
Smart Reply – According to Allo, this feature will allow your phone to automatically respond to pictures and text messages automatically – without you having to type a single word. Apparently, the app does this by learning over time what your response style is, and then adapting from there. For example, if your friend sends you a picture of their new puppy, Smart Reply might suggest that you respond with ‘aww how cute!’ or ‘Love!’ You then have the option to click on one of the suggested responses.
Personally, I think it’s a bit average. I mean, are we really so time poor that we’d rather a machine converse with our friends as opposed to us? I know I’d rather have a real conversation with my friends and family – and receive genuine responses from them – without the ‘help’ of automatic suggestions.
And let’s not even get started on what would happen if it automatically sent off an incorrect response!
Thumbs down Features
No cloud backup – According to Android Police, it seems that Allo does not have a dedicated backup or cloud function – something which seems rather strange. For some this could possibly be a killer, as once uninstalled, your chat history and one-one-one texts, along with images you’ve sent and videos you’ve received, are all gone.
However, given that the app is still in its testing phase there’s hope that perhaps this function will be fixed by the time the final app version is released (we really do hope so!).
No ability to play videos within the app – Unlike other mediums, users will need to play videos through a preferred media player
No trimming – If you’re hoping to trim that lengthy video before sending, it appears this won’t be an option sorry.
Auto-Wifi – Hoping to save data by limiting your auto downloads to Wifi only? Sorry, it seems this also isn’t a possibility yet.
As mentioned Allo is still in the testing phase – so there is still hope for change. What will stay or go however, remains unknown for now.
What are your thoughts on Allo? Do you think it will replace Hangouts or Whatsapp as your preferred app? Let us know!
Common AdWords Faux Pas – Don’t Get Caught Out!
Do these emotions/actions/ feelings sound familiar in the anticipation of your first AdWords Campaign; ‘electrified’, ‘fast and shallow breathing’, ‘excitement’? It seems straight-forward; easy even, but fast-forward a few weeks and you have noticed no difference in leads let alone sales. You begin thinking that maybe you’ve missed something, that maybe the simplicity of setting up a campaign belies the complexity of the entire system.
Don’t Leave Your Online Marketing Until It’s Too Late!
Time and time again, I see businesses put weeks, months, even years of planning and research into business models. But time and time again, I see companies throw in the towel mere weeks into trade. I wonder if they have ever looked at the time and effort they have put into setting up their business and compared it to their marketing…?
“I’ll just use the newspaper; I get a few calls from that!”
I’ve heard this on too many occasions, a client hasn’t received positive ROI in the first 3 weeks and they decide that the money would be better spent on something that is getting ROI, albeit limited. The writing is on the wall, digital media is growing and newspapers are declining. They’re an old medium for news access, plus we have a tiny device in our pockets that allows us to gain an insight into the world’s information. Tell me how one would grow their business in a dying media and I’ll show you an advertising executive from the old guard.
Rome wasn’t built in a day and neither was a company. People invest in their business from the get-go, insurance, equipment, fees for registering the name, etc. This is all before anything has even been sold. This can take months, even years before the business is ready to trade.
I understand that there needs to be revenue, even if it isn’t positive ROI, there needs to be some ROI, but we have to look at the facts before jumping the gun and terminating an online strategy prior to it taking flight. Imagine buying a plane with the view of escaping to the Bahamas (or a destination of your choice), organising all the flight path requirements, gaining all the necessary documents, employing a pilot, taxiing to the runway, as the g-force of the take-off begins you run up to the cockpit and just as the wheels leave the asphalt, yell at him to power down because you’ve realised that the jet fuel is expensive and you could buy a rowing boat to get there cheaper.
“I will just do flyer drops!”
This amuses me, as I’ve had experience outside of work with this sort of advertising. It might bring in a couple of people, sure, and for some businesses a couple of ongoing customers is great. I had a friend with a gym and he did flyer drops in the local area, just like the eight or nine other gyms in the local area did. People did the free trial and yes, some signed up, but what happens then? Do you do another flyer drop in the hopes that you missed someone? What about the person in the suburb just over who drives through your suburb on the way home from work? There’s no way a flyer will catch them. There’s a much broader market out there that is being missed out on and that market is digital.
This is why the online strategy must be prepared for, budget allocated for several months to find the right strategy. There’s no magic button, you may be lucky and strike gold in the first month, or you may have to slog it out for 2-3 months before you find something that works. This is the nature of business.
“I would’ve expected more by now!”
There’s a few, quick and broad, steps that I take, particularly in regards to AdWords, which sets the stage for a broader strategy:
1. Ensure the Keywords are relevant.
2. Remove search terms that are irrelevant.
3. Analyse the activity of people who are relevant on the website.
4. Ensure market targeted is correct
5. Optimise both the campaign and the website based off that information.
Once you know what returns business, take it to the next level, use that as a basis for your SEO, Facebook, etc.
To make it in business, investment is required. We are at the cusp of a revolution, in my opinion, that will return the power of business away from the corporations and into the hands of the little guy, aided by the internet and politics. Begin your journey now and be ahead of the game when this revolution takes hold; make sure Get More Traffic is there with you to help your business make the most of it. Call us on 1300 332 256 today!
Google Shopping for Christmas 2015
Part of my job is setting up Google Shopping for my clients; all that time spent liaising with web developers from overseas creating manual Data Feeds when the web developers aren’t able to pull one from the site, setting up a Merchant Center (sic) and spending time on creating Shipping Rates tables, creating the campaign in the AdWords account, troubleshooting, and when you think you have entered everything correctly you find that one tiny detail that wasn’t required on other accounts is now suddenly is required on this particular account! It’s enough to pull your hair out (lucky I don’t have much there)!
There is some real joy in setting up a Google Shopping campaign, but that comes right at the end when you begin to see actual results and conversions coming in. The build-up though can be exhausting and time consuming. Google has recently added extra requirements which allow us to provide customers with a better experience, which is of course great, but it does take a little more time.
The key to setting up a successful Google Shopping campaign in time for Christmas is all in the organisation and preparation. Much like a SEO campaign, which needs to be implemented many months before you begin to see results, a Google Shopping campaign needs to be given sufficient time to be set up so that once Christmas actually rolls around, it’s up and ready to serve. A Google Shopping campaign has many components that must be set up, reviewed and validated prior to the campaign even going live.
Depending on the efficiency of your web team, or the capabilities of your web platform, pulling a Data Feed can take time. Some platforms don’t even allow it, so a manual feed must be produced and depending on the extent of your product database, you could be sitting there inputting data for quite some time.
Updated shipping requirements are time consuming too. If you’re a ‘single rate’ business, then good for you, but if you’re not, get comfortable, and this is all before the ads are put under review by Google.
There is also the inevitable scenario that not every product on your website is going to give you an instant ROI, so optimising your Google Shopping campaign will require attention too. Hopefully your digital strategist has been on top of things and provided you with this same advice and your Google Shopping campaign for Christmas 2015 is well underway. If not, then perhaps it’s time to have a word with us here at Get More Traffic, so call us today on 1300 332 256.
Google+ Gets a Refresh, Again!
Well, what a year it has been for Google+! The widely criticised online platform, which truthfully, was originally created to compete with Facebook, has faced so many twists and turns that the product we see today is vastly different. With Google Photos pulling free from G+ around May this year (and with big success) and with comments on YouTube now only appearing in YouTube, not G+ too, as of July this year, the G+ we see today is much less cluttered, simplified and hopefully, easy and intuitive to use.
The Wonderland of #Google Tag Manager
You may have come across Google Analytics and Google Tag Manager during your foray into the world of Conversion Tracking. If that’s the case, then this blog will probably have you salivating in anticipation for this instalment by the Bearded Dragon (TM), me.
If you’ve already put the Conversion Tracking code on your “thank you” page, excellent, I have taught you well, young Padawan, you will go far. If you haven’t, I’m not mad, just disappointed. There is hope to redeem yourself, though.
Go to www.google.com/tagmanager while using your Google Account and create an account (yes, at present there is a lot of account creation; an issue I’m sure Google is working on). It’s relatively simple, once you’ve created the Tag Manager account, it provides a piece of code that goes on every page of your website, just after the opening <body> tags.
If you have difficulty, you probably should have your web developer put it on. Don’t feel bad, there are so many different types of websites out there that the simple instructions above can’t service them all.
Google Tag Manager houses other pieces of Google code, allowing you to add Analytics, Remarketing and our old friend, Conversion Tracking, without having the code of your website looking like an extended version of War and Peace written in Wingdings.
So now we have Google Tag Manager installed, I’m going to bypass the fiddly details of installing Analytics, Remarketing, and Conversion Tracking into the Tag Manager, despite it being one of the most exciting things I do. There’s information out there, but I want to talk about something more important to a business owner; the analysis. Let’s say that your Online Marketing Magician waves his wand in a SFW manner and suddenly your GTM is loaded with all the pieces of code, including Analytics. You can see real time tracking of people viewing your site, but you notice that while there are many people visiting, none are contacting you. It puzzles you, but you understand that the internet is subject to trends and one day is not able to represent any meaningful data.
You return in a week, because you’ve read somewhere, like here, right now, that allowing data to accumulate over a decent period of time gives a better understanding of what is happening in the website. Here are a few simple tips for initially reviewing data in Google Analytics:
- Bounce Rate.
If the bounce rate is above 60%, something is awry on the site. I like to see a 40% or lower Bounce Rate. Maybe your clients are being greeted with a wall of text; maybe they aren’t being greeted with enough information. This is one of my first indicators of whether a website is ‘working’ and is relevant to the interests of the person who has found your page.
- Time Spent on Site + Pages Visited.
If people are visiting many pages and spending many minutes on a page, your website MUST be working, right? Not necessarily, especially if they jump off your site after doing their research without leaving their contact details. It is possible to gain these clients back using a Remarketing strategy, however, I would first look into why they are spending so much time and not contacting you. Maybe your website is a ‘brochure site’, giving people all the information they need to make a decision. If you want people to get in touch with you, you may need to revamp your website to be a ‘sales page’, in that it provides just enough interest to whet the appetite and leave them begging for more, where the only way to find out more is to contact you.
3. Channels
This is where your traffic is coming from and can indicate what advertising strategy is working best for you.
- Goals!
Like Conversion Tracking, only more in depth and across all of your channels. You can set up Goals and Goal Funnels, giving an insight into the behaviour of people on the site when it comes to getting in touch with you. If you are an e-commerce site, Goal Funnels may display to you the choke point in your sales process. Some of my clients have complained that they were getting many abandoned shopping carts, but after taking a look in Analytics we have found the drop off point and determined there was a glitch, a bug or even something as simple as requiring too much information of the potential client.
There are so many factors that influence the behaviour of people on the internet. Analysing data over weeks, months, and years will assist in figuring out the right strategy to catch new clients. Install Tag Manager, as I’ve recommended, as the possibilities for Tracking are growing within it. An as always, if you’re keen to get started sooner rather than later, then get in touch with the team here at Get More Traffic on 1300 332 256 today.
Mobile Technology, But Not As You Know It!
The suffix ‘-near me’ is becoming more prevalent in search queries on Google, having experienced a significant increase in the last year alone. As the world becomes more and more comfortable with the fact that the device in their pockets, and more importantly, the websites that they visit are becoming better to navigate on mobile devices, we will continue to see better and more targeted results from Google. Google is putting a lot of research and development into responding to more ‘human’ enquiries. Humans don’t talk in ‘keywords’; they ask questions, make statements, and the more Google is able to recognise these, the more in-depth its returning results will be.
Think about this, you’re driving down the road listening to the music on your device connected wirelessly through your car stereo (this alone is a ‘future is now’ scenario) when the music dims and your GPS navigation reminds you to turn left. As it does this, it also mentions that there is a sale on at that store you like on the same street. Intrigued, you pull up outside said store and wander in. You find that item which has been sitting on your ‘want’ list for quite some time and purchase it.
You jump back in the car with your shiny new item, keen to get home to test it out. You make your way to your final destination of which you have forgotten where you were going. You ask your phone, “where was I going?” and it replies, “to the supermarket for ingredients for the dinner party you’re throwing for your friends”.
You arrive at the supermarket – what are you going to buy? You speak into your phone, “what would you suggest for a dinner party of 15 friends that doesn’t include coriander as an ingredient?” and your phone supplies you with several options. You choose one and log in to the supermarket’s website, pushing your order direct. You saunter up to the counter and pay for your groceries with your phone at the mobile PayPoint. There’s a beep and you’re on your way home.
Believe it or not, this type of mobile device advanced development is 100% in the works. Google has purchased apps to integrate with Maps that will allow companies to push specials to you *as you approach their venue*, and you’ll be able to talk to your phone like you would to a human. Even omni-channel experiences are very much already here in our major department stores. Search is going to change as we know it and it is vital that your business is adaptive and fluid enough to be able to handle that change. Get in touch with Get More Traffic on 1300 332 256.
Do You Even Know How to Google, Bro?
Years ago I worked for an Insurance Brokerage in their Marketing department. It was only a small firm and my position encompassed many varied tasks, with Internet marketing at the time being a small piece of the overall puzzle. How times have changed!
One day all the Brokers were invited by one of the major underwriters to go on one of those Adventure Races, you know the type, there’s clues hidden around the city and teams must find them in a race to be the first to find the final clue. Not being a broker, I was illegible to attend this event *frowny face*. Instead, I was entrusted with the far more important task of being the ‘eye in the sky’, the guy in the office that my team called to ask for help in regards to the clues. This was back in the days before smartphones were ubiquitous, betraying my advancing age.
I felt like I was a better looking Tom Arnold and they were the Arnold Schwarzenegger in True Lies; they’d relay information from the clues and I would go to task on Google, translating and decoding! Well, not really decoding, but it felt like I was decoding, considering I was able to completely deconstruct the clues easily and simply, by using a few simple tricks I’d picked up well before I’d even began my stellar career based solely in the online sector.
My team won, largely based off of my Google-fu. Now, I can’t remember the clues, we’re talking almost a decade ago, but there were certainly some Googling tactics I tried which brought home gold.
The first thing I tried for the first clue was to put inverted commas around the exact wording of the clue, so for example, ‘test’.
BOOM! I got the perfect result.
The second clue was harder. The inverted commas around the search terms didn’t immediately bring up the results I needed, as they were probably too general. I noticed that the results repeated another keyword that I didn’t want, so I placed a ‘-‘ ‘in front of that word, e.g., -word.
BAM! The third result was exactly what I needed, and my team were off and running (except George, who was, shall we say, a larger gentleman).
Again the phone call came through; the third clue was intimidating, even for an internet warlock like me. This one had me stumped, so I arranged four computer screens in front of me at my desk (because I’d seen it in Swordfish), none of them flat screen, only one of them working.
I cracked my knuckles and got down to business, the sweat on my brow dripping down my nose, my furrowed brow focusing my energy on the screen in front of me. My fingers began blurring as I tried a variety of techniques.
I searched for related words to the clue using ‘~’, as in: ~search
No match. The clock was ticking. A lightbulb struck, the clue might be missing some keywords in the phrase, so I tested out the theory by placing an asterisk between the words, like thus: Search * words
No luck. Time was running out.
I remembered briefly seeing something related in the newspaper (remember, this was back in the day when printed news was still a relevant thing) related to the clue, so I typed in the name of the newspaper’s website and the clue, hence: Site: clue
Success! Just in the nick of time, my team had received the final clue and was off to the finish line.
I was hailed as a hero that day on the abandoned floor of that Insurance Brokerage. I was by myself, but still…
Google has continued to develop little tricks or ‘hacks’ as I refer to them, hoping I am out of earshot of anyone in 4chan or Anonymous. In particular the rise of the social network has resulted in a number of additions to Google Searches that make it easier to find, such as:
- +username for a Google Plus page (put the + after it if looking for blood type).
- @username for a social tag.
- And, of course, the good old (new) #hashtag for trending topics.
If you’re looking for an item with a price, just put the name of the item and the price you’re looking for with the dollar sign: Item $XX
Or if you’re looking for a price range, place two periods between the numbers: Item $XX..XXY
There are some fun things you can do, too, like typing in ‘do a barrel roll’, or ‘askew’, both resulting in some amusing changes to the page. As a lover of language, it can translate, or define, be a thesaurus or give the etymology of any of the words you put in.
Who knew Googling is so much fun!