Do you know how effective your website is and if it is showing return on investment? A website can be described as your business’ virtual storefront in the online world and hence needs to entice new leads and clients to come inside and look around. We have already touched on a few design and usability issues to consider in our Development Pitfalls to Avoid post. Still, it is alarming how many companies underestimate the power of a user-friendly website and are perfectly content with a pretty, but functionally useless website.

By installing an analytics package you can transform your website into a powerful marketing tool by measuring visitor engagement with your website. There are various analytics packages available, either paid-for software like SAS Analytics or free platforms like Google Analytics. Below are a few of the questions that you can answer by analysing the metrics you’ll get from an analytics package.

How many visitors and page impressions has your website received?

Your analytics package will show the total number of visitors to your website during a certain time period as well as the number of absolute unique visitors, the number of new versus returning visitors and which browsers visitors are using to view your website.

How did visitors find your website?

Under Traffic Sources in the Google Analytics dashboard you are able to see which keywords and key-phrases visitors used to find your website as well as which websites and search engines directed traffic to your website. The most popular keywords and key-phrases can be used in your keyword strategy to enhance your search engine optimisation campaign.

Are your visitors converting?

An analytics package allows you to assign goals you would like visitors to complete and to measure the success of these goals. Goals can include completing a contact form, downloading a brochure or signing up for a newsletter – all actions that can turn visitors into leads and ultimately clients.

Which pages on your website are the most popular?

Under the Content tab in your Google Analytics dashboard you are able to see which pages are the most popular and which pages have the highest exit rate. You should pay special attention to pages with a high bounce rate. This information can be found under the Visitors tab. Pages with high bounce rate are those that visitors land on and then leave immediately, rather than continuing to browse the site. This could indicate that visitors are not finding the information that they expect on the page, or that you’re navigation is a problem. If visitors from search engines almost immediately click away from your website it is highly likely that your website’s content is irrelevant to the keywords or key-phrases they searched for. The Site Overlay tool is handy to see which menu items and links are clicked on the most.

When used correctly your analytics software can help improve your website’s usability and navigation structure and ultimately your visitors browsing experience. It is wise to compile monthly website analytics reports to track your visitors’ behaviour and to determine whether the changes you make to your site have made any difference.

Imagine walking down a street with a pair of high-tech augmented reality sunglasses. As you walk informative graphics pop-up for places of interest in the area, like restaurants, clubs and museums. If you are interested in a particular restaurant you can instantly access information about it and within a few seconds you will know how the restaurant is rated by other users, what is on their menu, have looked through their current specials and checked their opening hours. This is augmented reality and, according to those in the know, our not-so-far-off future.

Augmented or virtual reality blurs the line between what is real and what is computer-generated by enhancing what we hear, see, feel and smell by adding graphics and sounds to the real world. It utilises data from the Internet about places (and in future people too) to merge the physical world with the Internet. According to HowStuffWorks.com using image-recognition software in augmented reality will soon allow us to point our cellphones at people, whether you know them or not, to see their Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and other social network profiles.

The possibilities of augmented reality are immense. Watch these videos where Pattie Maes and Pranav Mistry from SixthSense explain how they foresee the future of augmented reality.

Simpler versions of augmented reality are already available on smart phones like the iPhone and Nokia N97. For instance, an app called Layar is available in the Netherlands and uses your cellphone’s camera and GPS capabilities to gather information about your surrounding area. When you point your phone at a street, Layar shows information about restaurants and other places of interest in close proximity by overlaying this information (augmented reality) on the camera image (reality) on the phone’s screen. Definitely handy for travelling!

There are several augmented reality applications for phones that run on the operating system Android. A few of these apps include:

Twitter 360 for the iPhone 3GS
This application makes use of Twitter’s new Geotagging feature and allows users to “visualise” their Twitter friends located near them by using the iPhone’s camera.

Le Bar Guide
An extensive guide of the best bars around the world this application includes reviews and ratings of the clubs plus an integrated taxi number service.

Pocket Universe: Virtual Sky Astronomy
Keen to learn about the night sky? Download Pocket Universe and learn about the starts, planets and constellations.

On the one hand this technology is fascinating and exciting and on the other scary. Is human interaction going to become something of the past? I certainly hope not.

Well-known online properties participated in World Aids Day today to help create awareness for HIV and AIDS. This year the drive to raise awareness about AIDS was taken to a whole new level. Google, Mashable.com, Facebook and Twitter are a few of the brands that participated in the 2009 World Aids Day. Google did their bit by adding a ribbon beneath their search bar with a link to learn how you can help.Mashable.com, as a media partner to the World Aids Day, featured a prominent red banner on their home page linking to the (RED) Facebook fan page.The (RED) Facebook fan page urged people to help them turn Facebook red by changing their profile pictures to one of the pictures supplied by them.Twitter changed their login page and urged users to follow @JoinRED. If you tagged your tweets with #red duringWorld Aids Day, the tweet appeared in red font in your followers’ streams.According to Joinred.com 3 800 people die from AIDS every day – have you done your bit to help? Go to the Join Red take action page and see how you can make a difference.