Butchart Gardens in the Fall, EvR (Victoria, B.C.)
In the October 2024 issue:
- From the Editor: Welcome to the October ALMANAC
- Growth Corner: Measuring What Matters
- Maintenance Matters: Update your plugins and themes
- Tool Shed: See Your Website Through Google’s Eyes
- Future Seeds: Planting seeds with Ai
FROM THE EDITOR
Welcome to October’s
AMGmedia ALMANAC
When we were young, our grandmother would get a yellow book called the “Farmer’s Almanac” filled with mysterious and wondrous information. Every year it would predict the weather across the country, show tables of the phases of the moon and where to find stars in the sky, tips and reminders for growing crops and in the garden, and completed with related wisdom that every self-sufficient farmer would need to know. Similarly today, our digital lives also follow seasons, require planning and maintenance, and benefit from timely monthly reflection on perfecting our online presence.
This month’s Hunter’s Moon (October 17th) traditionally helped farmers work into the evening hours – similarly, we’ll help you prepare your digital presence for the extended holiday shopping season ahead. While reading this issue, keep a notepad handy for the various maintenance tasks and preparation steps that apply to your website.
Key October Dates:
- Hunter’s Moon: October 17th
- Holiday Prep Deadline: October 31st
- Google Algorithm Watch: Mid-month updates typical
- Holiday Shopping Research Begins: Traffic increases 40-60%
In this issue, we’ll review pre-holiday website maintenance tasks, spotlight essential analytics tools, and share proven traffic management strategies from our community. Our Tool Shed features Google Search Console secrets, while Future Seeds explores emerging AI tools for customer service. Look for practical tips throughout, including our Digital Folklore section’s time-tested wisdom for handling holiday traffic spikes.
I’d like to note that some of this content has been co-written with Claude AI. Writing together with an AI service requires an ongoing dialog with finely crafted questions and prompts to direct the conversation and elicit the desired results. Ai images were generated using Midjourney. I’ll be including anecdotes from my learnings with practical examples that you may want to try in your digital work as well.
As always, I look forward to your comments, questions and feedback.
Regards,
Ernest
Midjourney Ai prompt: “childrens book illustration style, Closeup view of a heroic young female priestess viewing the sky with a telescope.”
GROWTH CORNER
Measuring what matters
Google Analytics are the fundamental cornerstone to understanding the effective performance of your website. Like checking soil conditions before winter, confirming your website’s analytics is crucial for a healthy digital harvest. If your website has not yet transitioned from the old (now depreciated) Universal Analytics to the new Google Analytics 4 (GA4), with the holiday season approaching, now is the perfect time to ensure your measurement tools are properly planted.
Setting up GA4 might seem daunting, but it’s quite manageable. Start by verifying your tracking code is installed correctly, then set up basic conversion tracking for important actions on your site – like newsletter signups, contact form submissions, or product purchases. Think of these as marking your garden rows: you’ll know exactly where to look for growth. For easier viewing of your reports, we recommend setting up a custom dashboard in Google Looker Studio (formerly Data Studio). This turns complex analytics data into clear, actionable insights – like having a well-organized garden journal.
If you’d like help understanding your current analytics setup or creating a simplified custom dashboard in Looker Studio, reach out to me. I’ll be happy to review your tracking implementation and show you how to monitor your website’s growth as we head into the busy season.
Midjourney Ai prompt: “Blending of editorial photography and illustration, a gardener cleaning his gardening tools, an illustration in the style of botanical prints from an old book, historical colors on a white background, detailed.”
MAINTENANCE MATTERS
Update your plugins and themes
Is your website on WordPress? Just as farmers check their tools before harvest season, October is an essential time to ensure your WordPress website’s tools – your plugins and themes – are sharp and ready for action. You may have noticed little red circles with a number in your WordPress dashboard. This is like the first frost warning of the season – a gentle reminder that it’s time for maintenance.
Make checking for updates part of your monthly routine. Think of plugin updates like maintaining garden tools: regular care prevents rust (security vulnerabilities) and keeps everything running smoothly. To update your plugins, follow the prompts in your dashboard or reach out to us and we’ll be happy to help.
Your site theme updates are equally important, as they often contain critical security patches and compatibility improvements that keep your digital garden thriving during the busy season ahead. You will also see those marked in the “updates” section of your dashboard.
If you need help with these updates on your website, please reach out to me directly. Sometimes these maintenance tasks can feel overwhelming, but I’ll be happy to show how you can do these on your own in the future.
Midjourney Ai prompt: “painting of a beautiful garden with autumn fall colors, with grassy green hills in the background by gustav klimt, hints of gold foil. The museum quality painting evokes the feeling of summer changing to autumn. in the style of impressionist painter”
TOOL SHED
See your website through Google’s eyes
Every gardener needs a reliable soil testing kit, and for your website, that essential tool is Google Search Console (GSC). This tool will show you how Google understands your website, how often your website comes up in a search result, which position your site has on the search results page, and what keywords people were searching when they were presented with your site. Best of all, like many of Google’s tools, it’s free.
Think of Google Search Console as your website’s health checkup tool. It shows exactly where your site appears in search results, identifies mobile usability issues that could frustrate holiday shoppers, and measures Core Web Vitals – those essential metrics that influence your search ranking. October is the perfect time to review these metrics, ensuring your digital storefront is easily discoverable during the busy season ahead.
Haven’t set up Google Search Console yet? Or not sure if you’re checking the right reports? Let me know and I’ll help you verify your site ownership and show you the key monthly reports to monitor. Together we can identify and fix any issues before the holiday traffic arrives.
Midjourney Ai prompt: “Blending of editorial photography and illustration, top down view of a seeds and bulbs used in planning a garden, an illustration in the style of botanical prints from an old book, historical colors on a solid white #ffffff background, detailed.”
FUTURE SEEDS
Planting seeds with Ai
Just as winter gardens benefit from protective covers, your website can use AI tools to shelter your team from repetitive customer service tasks during the busy holiday season. Today’s AI assistants, like ChatGPT and Google’s Bard, can be valuable helpers for drafting email responses, creating FAQ content, and managing basic customer inquiries – freeing your team to handle more complex customer needs.
Start small by identifying repetitive questions in your customer service emails. These are perfect candidates for AI assistance: draft response templates using AI tools, then customize them with your brand voice and specific details. Think of it like preparing garden row markers – a little preparation now saves time during the busy season. There are both free and paid versions of the ai service available and each service will behave a bit differently. So start by testing to see which platform is the best for you and what you need.
Remember though, AI is like a helpful garden assistant – great for routine tasks but requiring human oversight. I’ve been experimenting with various AI tools in my own work (including co-writing this newsletter!) and would be happy to share practical tips for implementing AI in your customer service workflow while maintaining that crucial human touch.
Midjourney Ai prompt: “a 16th century woodcut of a medieval man wandering through a field near a tree, in the middle of winter with snow, illuminated manuscript, defined lines, black and white, medieval engraving”
DIGITAL FOLKLORE
The season ahead
Whether your website is an online shop, or serves other website visitors, you will observe seasonal traffic changes. Just like watching for the next snowfall, you will want to make sure you’re prepared for what is coming ahead. For online shops, for example, old retail wisdom tells us that holiday shoppers start their research long before they make purchases. In the digital age, this translates to an early October surge in website visits, with conversion rates typically rising from mid-November onward. Like early farmers watching for frost signs, will want to watch these early traffic patterns and make plans to meet the oncoming demand.
History has taught us that websites that prepare early fare better during holiday peaks. The folklore of digital commerce suggests three timeless rules: First, simplify your site navigation before adding holiday offerings – like clearing paths before winter snow. Second, test your mobile experience thoroughly – more than 70% of holiday browsing happens on phones while people are waiting in physical stores. Third, keep your key landing pages stable during peak season – just as you wouldn’t renovate a store during December.
These practices have served digital businesses well since the early days of e-commerce. If you’d like help implementing any of these time-tested approaches on your website, let me know. There’s still time to prepare your digital storefront for the busy season ahead.
“The lesson I have thoroughly learnt, and wish to pass on to others, is to know the enduring happiness that the love of a garden gives. There is no greater refreshment to the spirit than the growing of things.”
— Gertrude Jekyll (1843-1932) revolutionized garden design by treating it as both an art and a science, much like how we approach digital spaces today.
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