DDA subscribes to several business practices and principles that directs everything we do. They are transparency, ethical conduct, and doing the right thing. The practice of these are both just good, sane, logical and practical approaches to client and vendor relations and emotional, cerebral and feel-good-about-yourself practices and beliefs that allows one to look himself or herself in the mirror each morning and sleep well at night.

Some definitions through the eyes of DDA:

Transparency. I like to think I am a good communicator. I know I am a lousy listener. My other career path might well have been as a history teacher and I sometimes wonder if the excitement of the advertising and business world overwhelmed my common sense.

Despite my best efforts, I recognize that four people in a meeting or discussion will leave with four slightly or largely different understandings of what just happened, what information was shared, what conclusions were drawn, and what the next steps are. Since we believe strongly that good process is at the core of all efficiency, somehow each successful advertising, branding, or marketing meeting must result in common understanding, shared goals, and a focused unified vision of the end game.

Transparency tools are woven into and heaped upon every advertising, branding, or marketing project we undertake. DDA TRAC (Time Resource and Accounting) is an in-house developed, Internet-based time tracking database tool. The result is that every hourly billed project including programming, logo design, graphic design, copywriting, photography, video, 2D and 3D animation, illustration, trade show displays, large format graphics, print design and print production for sell sheets, catalogs, brochures, flyers, direct mail, business cards, training portals and tools, CME design and development and even search engine optimization (SEO) is invoiced accurately. No time, not one minute is rounded up or added on, and every invoice is accompanied by a detailed minute-by-minute description of how the time was spent. On time, On budget, On TRAC every time.

Additional tracking and reporting tools abound. DDA’s search engine optimization (SEO) work has a series of metrics that perpetually report website visitation, usage, pathways, experience-based mapping, rankings, and much more. Website analysis means corporate websites can be better understood, improved, and managed.

Online proofing development websites are assigned to each client and each project. Our clients see every project unfold, improve, and take shape and their input is welcomed, requested, and insisted upon every step of the way.

Transparency is as much an attitude as it is a report or tool. At DDA, we believe that direct communication is the hallmark of a truly professional service-oriented vendor. We answer the phone, have project coordinators for each client, welcome questions and love client interaction. Every project is a blend of skills, expertise, information, and point-of-view provided by both the client and DDA.

Call us anytime. At DDA, the Transparency is clearly better.

Ethical Conduct to follow Monday.

Doing the Right Thing to follow Tuesday.

What is Bounce Rate?

Well lets say that it is the Brad Pitt of current website statistics. The textbook definition is this:

Bounce Rate – the percentage of single page visits, or better defined as visits in which the person left your site from the entrance (landing) page.

Now there can be some technical nuances to this, like the minimum or maximum times by which a visitor must leave in order for a bounce to occur. If they sit on one page for over 30 minutes then move on, most software will count that as a second visit and therefore the first as a bounce. The actual stat for a website is saved as a percentage value — it’s the number of web site visitors who visit only a single page of a website per session, divided by the total number of website visits.

So why is it so popular? Well because it is very easy to understand or should that be hard to mis-understand? On top of that you can quickly see how your efforts can affect it. The lower the Bounce Rate the better, or more sticky, your site is.

What’s also good with Bounce Rate is you can use it to judge the quality of traffic from various sources.

You can measure the Bounce Rate of traffic just from Google, or from an email campaign, or maybe referrals from MySpace versus referrals from Facebook. And what could be even more important, you can use this to help gage the effectiveness of your PPC campaigns. You may get clicks from your ads but you’re not converting if they bounce straight off. At a glance you can compare terms against each other to see which one are under performing and which ones are wasting your money.

So have fun using this info to tweak your landing pages and watch that ROI rise, or if you want find a expert company to help you tailor those pages for maximum stickiness, say, oh I don’t know a company like DDA.

Remembering lunches, sleeping bags, school projects, permission forms and all other necessities for my children for their school week…. ahhh, it must be Monday!

As I wake up and get ready for another work week I try to keep a positive attitude. As a search engine optimization specialist, I know that I will be optimizing a plethora of websites, each design different from the next. No matter how many times I get stuck at every red light on the way in, or notice that there is something that has rubbed off of my son’s hands onto my pants that will bother me until I can get home and shout it out, once I get to work I try to take a deep breath and put my morning (before walking into DDA) aside. It’s a good thing I don’t drink coffee or I am sure that it would have spilled on my lap by now.

I have set up a calendar for myself, just like the calendar that we use to schedule conference calls about website designs and search engine marketing or client meetings to discuss a logo or business card design. In it I have hour by hour designated which site I will be working on throughout my work week. I am hoping this will help be more organized since we optimize many websites, some of which we have designed as well.

I hope to stay on track with my projects for the day, but I am sure that shortly someone will be asking me for software from our large inventory, or ask for a website analysis of a potential client’s website.