Wednesday, October 28, 2015

Product Update: Optimizing Advertisements, Radmin Neighborhoods & More

No comments: Posted by Anonymous at 9:10 AM

Our biweekly Product Updates give you a rundown of all the features and bug fixes that are being deployed - plus one handy tip of the week. Note - next week's Product Update will be delivered in person at The Summit!

We are optimizing the display of all advertisements to make load times as fast as possible without sacrificing image quality.

In the last Product Update, we let you know that we were doing something similar for /p pages. Optimizing advertisement displays across the network are the next step towards eliminating unnecessarily large image loads and speeding up the sites (even more).

This display optimization occurs automatically - so there's nothing new that you have to do when uploading your ads (aside from observing the recommended image protocol).

You may have noticed that we're doing a lot of work to speed up the sites.

Check out how our server response times have decreased over the fall:

And check out the impact on average page loads:

We're adding Neighborhoods to Radmin.

You will soon be able to create and edit Neighborhoods in Radmin...

... so that you can more efficiently sort your Venues by Neighborhood in Venue Beta Search:

We're adding 'Create a new scraper for this venue' buttons to Radmin's Venue Beta Search

By popular request! These buttons will take you directly to a screen where you can create a new scraper for the particular venue.

We're adding "Through (End Date)" flags to ongoing events that are shown in the main listings.

Prior to this update, these flags only appeared for ongoing events inside the ongoing and repeating event widgets.

We're adding a LearnStuff link to Radmin.

We fixed a bug that was preventing ongoing and repeating events from correctly appearing in merge search.

A note that merge search results are capped at 20 results.

Another note that ongoing events should always show up in merge search as long as their end dates are either today or some time in the future.

We ensured that Instagram links will correctly display on the front end if entered into Radmin.

Tip of the Week: JPGs vs. PNGs

You have the option of saving an image as a .jpg or a .png. How do you know which format to choose? Which of the two is better for your site?

If your image does not have transparency, then the answer is JPG.

PNG is a lossless compression format - which means that saving an image as a PNG compresses the image without any quality loss. However, the quality 'lost' when saving images in the JPG format is generally imperceptible to the human eye - and can usually reduce image sizes by up to 75%.

So, stick with the smaller, more efficient JPG. And remember: the smaller your images, the more quickly your site loads.

How You (and the network) Did Last Week - 10/26/15

No comments: Posted by Anonymous at 7:12 AM Labels: KPI Updates

Winner of the Week:
Do206 + Do317!

We'll keep things brief around here, since we're all getting good and amped for summit next week. You can check out the current standings in the App User Leaderboard, and then prepare yourself for some hot and heavy sharing of app partnership ideas come summit time.

Two metros went buck wild with topical content pieces this last week; you can read about their exploits below:

Do206: Seattle had their highest week of traffic...of all time thanks to this timely postcelebrating Back to the Future day by showcasing Seattle as it looked in 1985. A total of 62 shares helped earn the piece 14K in organic reach, far more than any other post this quarter. That translated to 6.4K pageviews and their single highest traffic day since launch. Perfect example of taking a nationally trending phenomenon and contextualizing it locally with unique content. Nothing new, but savvy metros are always on the lookout for an opportunity to hitch their local content wagon to a national headline.
Do317: Indy has only cracked the 19K weekly sessions mark twice in the 69 (hehe) weeks we've sent out the KPI report. The first time was NYE last year. The second was last week. What made the non-NYE difference? In short, this post that received 112 shares. That was good enough for 9K organic reach, the second most of any FB post for the quarter (only after How To Do Fall). End result was over 8K pageviews from social, and over 10K pageviews to their haunted places list since it went live. A fantastic example of seasonal content that clues your audience into something fairly secretive to go out and do (sound familiar?)

After immersing yourself in nostalgia, frights, or frightening nostalgia, check out the entirety of your metro's stats below:

How You (and the network) Did Last Week - 10/19/2015

No comments: Posted by Anonymous at 7:41 AM Labels: KPI Updates

Winner of the Week:
DotheBay + HazDF!

It's Monday, which means the App User Leaderboard awaits you with another round of freshly updated stats. DoNYC leapfrogged Do312 to get the 3rd most new app users last week, trailing consistent leaders DoLA and Do512.

We've got a couplet of Winners this week, so let's get to it!

HazDF: Our south of the border brethren had their highest week of traffic in 5 months, and 4th highest week of traffic of all time. The page that received the majority of that traffic was this Oktoberfest giveaway where they ran a Twitter contest to win free beer. Thanks to some love from a fest they work with, they now had their giveaway in front of 108K Twitter followers. All of that created the rare instance where Twitter became the majority traffic driver of the event. The giveaway page racked up over 1K pageviews, and most importantly, the event HazDF promoted seemed to have a whole crowd of happy people slamming cervezas.
DoTheBay: TIMF crashed into the Bay Area last week, and with it came a 61% increase in YoY traffic. Pretty simple story to this one - this year they hosted a whole passle of night shows on DTB. Last year they hosted a couple of pre-parties. This year they got 5.3K pageviews to the night shows, almost all of which was referral traffic fromTIMF. Last year they got 400 pageviews. Oh and another 6.3K pageviews on their Deep Eddy-sponsored TIMF guide and related content (mostly from paid social) doesn't hurt either.

Take a second to think if there are any latter-year fests you can partner up with in your market, then check out all of your updated your weekly stats below:

Product Update: Snapshots, Event Activity Feeds, Radmin Categories & More

No comments: Posted by Anonymous at 9:55 AM

Our biweekly Product Updates give you a rundown of all the features and bug fixes that are being deployed - plus one handy tip of the week.

Snapshots

Within the next few days, we will be unveiling 'Snapshots' (working title) on the desktop versions of our sites. You may have already noticed Snapshots on event pages in the app, directly below Recommendations.

Snapshots are composed of Twitter and Instagram posts by culture-forward show-goers from all the cities in our network - and their goals are both to tell the story of a band on tour and also to successfully document the atmosphere of the live show (in order to help our users find awesome things to do as easily as possible).

For now, we've been adding Snapshots from our HQ here at DoStuff Media (where we all will soon be eating tacos and playing bocce) - but we'll be opening these up for metro contributions soon. Stay tuned.

Event Activity Feeds

With the introduction of Snapshots comes the changing of desktop event activity feeds to more closely mirror the app and to better surface the content that users interact with the most.

The area below the poster image field (or below the event description field if no poster is present) will now look like this:

The long lists of users who added the event to their calendars will be going away - which means not only a sleeker event page display but also no more incidents with angry users who were frustrated that their names appeared on these pages.

'Download The App' Banners

The recently-created 'download our app' banners did not perform as well as we would have liked.

In fact, they've only amounted to around 100 downloads across the network thus far.

Therefore, we've pulled them down from desktop - as well as mobile for users that already have the app installed - so that we can spend some time revisiting and improving them.

Our goals with the upcoming revisions are to insert metro-specific language to each banner, to make the call to action more clear and to improve the designs of the banners. We'll likely start testing new banners as soon as next week - and we'll let you know the moment we do.

Add, Edit and Delete Categories In Radmin

By popular demand, the ability to create, edit and delete categories will be added to Radmin before the end of the week.

Prior to this update, metros could only create and edit event categories from within the 'Add Event' or 'Edit Event' forms. They couldn't delete event categories - nor could they create or edit venue categories at all without Support's help.

That all changes this week. Keep your eyes peeled for proper, intuitive and fully operational category management links underneath your "Events" and "Venues" categories.

Note: we won't immediately remove the ability to add and edit categories from within the Radmin event forms - so that you have some time to get used to (and test out) the new system - but please be advised that will ultimately be going away.

Other Features & Fixes

We are making some changes to /p page images to speed up load time. After we deploy, all images uploaded into the inline editor that are larger than 1200px will be automatically re-sized to a maximum width of 1200px (which is the largest size with which images can display on our pages). Smaller images will not be affected. You should still upload optimized images if possible.

This will be a huge win in speeding up page load times - especially on the app - since excessively large images have historically caused /p pages to load incredibly slowly (especially on mobile).

Please note that this fix will not be retroactive and will therefore only affect images uploaded after this week. Do I smell a future tip of the week related to re-uploading your larger images?

We're adding pagination to 'All Tastemakers' pages in order to better expose these pages to Google and improve SEO.

We also fixed a bug that was affecting users ability to switch between pages of Latest posts.

Tip Of The Week

Pop quiz for Content Managers!

Q: Which fields actually get 'updated' when replacing an existing event with a new event in the dupes queue?

A: All the fields you can see when working in the dupes queue - and nothing else.

We realized that we'd never explicitly said that (or at least not in a long time).

How You (and the network) Did Last Week - 10/12/15

No comments: Posted by Anonymous at 7:59 AM Labels: KPI Updates

Winner of the Week: Do312!

We'll cut to the chase and let you know that App Stats are updated with the recent week's additional users. Some familiar names are at the top, with 512, LA, and 312 taking the top 3 new user spots last week.

Winner of the week moves out to Do312, and not just because the Cubs are beating the Cards. This week, rather than dialing in on a specific win, we'll take a more macro look and see how a market that's as mature as Do312 was still able to post 50%+ growth from the previous year (as they did last week). We'll focus on 3 examples from 3 different channels that all spurred growth:

Email: As is the case with most metros, one of the largest drivers of newsletter traffic is festival giveaways. Sure enough, the highest traffic page from email last week was this Freaky Deaky fest giveaway, which received 1K sessions from email alone. That combined with a related Zedd discounted ticket offer accounted for more than a third of total email traffic for the week, making them the 2nd and 3rd highest traffic pages on Do312 last week. Total email traffic was up 41% YoY.
Social: The most popular page on Do312 last week was their How To Do Fall page, which racked up 2.5K pageviews. Unsurprisingly, the majority of these were through Facebook, which is the norm for these more editorial-heavy content pieces. In this case, their fall piece was part of a larger content program sponsored by Deep Eddy andpromoted on social. Social traffic was up 77% YoY.
Referral: Outside of festival aftershows, the largest drivers of referral traffic are RSVP partners that drive traffic to your DoXYZ site. That's exactly the case with Do312's very popular Activate RSVP, the 4th most popular page on Do312 last week. It received the most referral traffic of any page, thanks to the Chicago Loop Alliance sending 89% more traffic YoY

All of those combined with a strong YoY uptick in organic traffic contributed to Do312 getting 50%+ more traffic than last year. That's not to say you need to do of those to see that growth. Often times it's one single factor, like DotheBay's YoY doubling of TIMF nightshows referral traffic leading to 60%+ growth. However, it should give you an idea of the various tools you have at your disposal to realize growth in your market, no matter your maturity.

Of course, the best part of all that is the symbiosis between audience growth and revenue growth, as all of the above Chicago examples are paid deals for Do312 as well. Check out all of your audience stats below, and figure out which ones you can start growing along with your dollars:

How You (and the network) Did Last Week - 10/5/2015

No comments: Posted by Anonymous at 12:39 PM Labels: KPI Updates

Winner of the Week: Do502!

September has come and gone, and with it, another 20,000+ users on the DoStuff app. Do512 led the month with 4,861 new users, followed closely by DoLA's 3,217 additional app users. Do416 was the metro to surpass their monthly goal, thanks to their strong showing in the Canadian app store. Still plenty of work to do to drive downloads, as we're sitting at around 10% of our year-long network goal of 473K downloads. Check out your metro's contribution in the updated App User Leaderboard.

Winner of the Week awards stay in the Southeast region, as Louisville takes over from Nashville with another partnership and slick piece of content that drove beaucoup traffic:

The Louisville Music Awards have only been around since 2013, and this year they were looking for a partner to take them to the next level by helping engage Louisville at large. In stepped Do502 to host both the public nomination and final voting phases on their platform.
The result? Check out this gem: http://do502.com/p/louisville-music-awards. And people all over Louisville loved it too. Tons of social sharing from local bands to venuesto LMA themselves. Literally hundreds of shares spread across all those pages.
Traffic-wise, this was good enough to produce 8,776 pageviews over the past couple weeks, the vast majority of which came from social. Year to date, the page has received 13,000+ pageviews, which makes it the second most popular page on their site for the entire year (only after their Forecastle Late Night shows).
Perhaps most important, Do502 got access to LMA's 4K email list and the ability to sell in sponsors next year, two highly monetizable components of this partnership (outside of the immediate boost in traffic).

If all of this smacks of deja vu, it might be because you've seen Do312's last couple years ofsuccessfully partnering with their local entertainment awards show. This is a great opportunity to posit your metro as the source of all things award-worthy in your scene, so think about if this opportunity exists in your market...and then go make it happen!

Of course, in the meantime, you're always more than welcome to check out your stats from last week:

Product Update: New Search, Create Your Own Deep Links, 'Download The App' Banners

1 comment: Posted by Anonymous at 10:57 AM

Our biweekly Product Updates give you a rundown of all the features and bug fixes that are being deployed - plus one handy tip of the week.

New Search

We are making two changes to our front end search functionality in order to help users find what they're looking for as quickly and efficiently as possible. Please note that these changes will go into effect for all metros, conferences and ECPs within the next 24 hours.

1. We are replacing our slow-loading search results pages with slimmer text-based editions.

So this:

Will become this:

And the search results will update in real time to match your query.

Please note that this change only affects the display of search results that are displayed after a user hits 'enter.' The results that display before a user hits 'enter' will not change.

2. We are also removing the flyaways from search results pages.

So, the search windows on results pages will look like this - even when you're modifying your search query.

Note: the search flyaways that you're used to seeing will remain the same on all other pages of your site. These are only going away when viewing pages of search results.

'Download The App' Banners

We are adding 'download the app' banners to our desktop and mobile sites that invite users to text the app themselves or their friends.

Please note that these phone number fields accept hyphens but not dots - so please enter your phone number as either '5742292470' or '574-229-2470' to text this functionality out. Friends in Mexico - please use the format '+52 1 55 2225 45 89 32'.

Users who 'X' this banner will see it again the next time they visit the site in a new browser window - but we do not expect this to be an issue since the banner is unobtrusive.

Create Your Own Deep Links

Metros now have the ability to create their own deep links. Deep links are custom page links that behave in the following ways when clicked (depending on where they're clicked):

Mobile iOS (app already downloaded): the link opens the page in the app in whichever metro property the user visited last
Mobile iOS (app not downloaded): Goes to App Store to download and then opens the selected metro's main event listings page
Mobile non-iOS: Goes directly to deep link page, but in a web browser
Desktop: Goes directly to the deep link page, but in a web browser

Click here to make your own deep links.

Please note that deep links will only work for the portions of your site to which you can link directly on the app. These include /p pages, venue pages, user lists and artist pages - and do not include photo galleries, 'All Tastemakers' pages or lists of search results.

Tip Of The Week

HTML is stripped out of event descriptions on the app (at least for now). So, if you have to insert a hyperlink in an event description, it's best to avoid language such as "Click here to..." or "Go to this link..." since there won't actually be anything for app users to click.

Instead, use language that makes sense whether a certain sentence includes a hyperlink or not.

Here's an example of the recommended procedure - on desktop:

And here's how that looks on the app:

Please let us know if you have any other questions about simultaneously optimizing your content for both the site and the app.

Product Update: Full Page Ads, Share Icons, Beta Search COG Wheels

No comments: Posted by Anonymous at 9:41 AM

Our biweekly Product Updates give you a rundown of all the features and bug fixes that are being deployed - plus one handy tip of the week.

Full Page Ads

Radmin will now allow you to target full page ads to the app. Please note that full page ads will show up in exactly the same manner as 1/4 page ads on the app.

A reminder from a previous product update that if you struck exclusivity deals with any partners for the app launch, then you should remove all other ads for the first two months after launch. Then, add your regular partners back in. Make sure they all are fully aware of the new value they are receiving and use this as an opportunity to increase rates for 2016.

'Share' Icons

We recently realized that the 'Share' icons on event pages were adding an extra 20%-50% to page load times - and weren't being used nearly enough to justify their existence. In fact, we were averaging less than 10 shares total per day, on average, across the entire network.

Therefore, we decided to remove these icons and speed up our event pages.

Features & Fixes

We've added COG wheels to our Radmin -> Events -> Beta Search screens.

All of the functionality that you're used to seeing in the (old) event search COG wheels will now be available in Beta Search except 'Delete' - which is coming soon.

We added validation to advertising URL fields to prevent metros from saving ads with blank spaces before or after the URLs.

We discovered that if a metro added additional spaces to these URLs that it would cause the app to crash. So, we're making that impossible to do.

We are adding Recaptcha to HazDF.

Preparing to do this means that we've also completed the work required to add Recaptcha to other Spanish language metros going forward.

We also fixed a bug that was causing event start time to appear in the incorrect time zone in beta search.

Tip of the Week

Here's something every metro should do regularly:

Click the calendar icon in the top left-hand corner of Radmin to view any day's approved events, sorted by popularity.

From these screens, you can edit the popularity of each event (using the in-line editor) to add a personal touch to the order of your daily listings. Hard refresh after changing each event's popularity to see the new listings order for that day.

A few things to check (we recommend doing this for each day, at least one week ahead):

Are there any advertised events that need a bump in popularity?
Are there any off-brand events that are too high in your listings?
Have any 'main listings' weekly or ongoing events accrued too much popularity?
Are there any cool events near the bottom of your listings that should be brought to the top?

Remember that our popularity algorithms can only go so far. The rest of the work required to maintain a collection of event listings that fully embodies the culture and pulse of your city is up to you execute.

We'll be back with another Product Update next week.

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Wednesday, October 28, 2015

Product Update: Optimizing Advertisements, Radmin Neighborhoods & More

We are optimizing the display of all advertisements to make load times as fast as possible without sacrificing image quality.

This display optimization occurs automatically - so there's nothing new that you have to do when uploading your ads (aside from observing the recommended image protocol).

You may have noticed that we're doing a lot of work to speed up the sites.

Check out how our server response times have decreased over the fall:

And check out the impact on average page loads: