Archive for March, 2010

Children’s Easter Art Competition

March 25, 2010 at 1:22 pm · Filed under Art, children's activities ·Tagged , , ,

We’re excited to partner with ToysOnline to bring you our first Children’s Easter Art competition.  Let the kids have fun colouring, painting or drawing an Easter themed picture.  We’re not looking for skill – just imagination and colour!  

We’ll pick one winner from each of our two age groups.  The winners will each receive a €30 voucher to make their own choice of prize from the wonderful selection at ToysOnline.

There are a number of ways to enter:

  • Send the entry to us at the address below
  • Photograph the entry and email it to us at info@puddleducks.ie
  • Photograph the entry and post it to our Facebook page

Huge thanks to Jody at ToysOnline for donating the prizes. Please check out the wonderful selection of creative and imaginative toys at ToysOnline here. You can also join ToysOnline on Facebook here.

Competition Rules:

  • There are two age categories  (5 years and under) and (5 to 10 years)
  • The closing date for entries is 6pm on Friday 9th April.
  • The judges decision is final.
  • If posting the address for entries is PuddleDucks, Beechwood, Ferney Road, Carrigaline, Co. Cork
  • We may display the entries on Facebook or on photo sharing sites. Acknowledgement will be made to the artists.

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Tips for increasing fans on your Facebook page

March 20, 2010 at 8:06 am · Filed under facebook ·Tagged , , ,

I posted the following on the discussion forum of the Facebook Page of O’Mahony-Donnelly E-business a few days ago. I thought it’s also worth reproducing here.

Here’s a few of my tips on how to get more fans to your Facebook page:

1. The most important. Create fun and interesting content for your fans. This way you will get “likes” and “comments” which will appear on your fans’ status updates and you will get their friends to be aware of your page and some will “fan” you. This way you can build up your fans in a viral manner.

2. Create giveaways and prize draws on your page – again creates interest and engagement and more fans will come your way.

3. Facebook Adverts – occasionally run a Facebook ad which will appear only on your fans profile pages. this will say e.g. Aedan is a fan of PuddleDucks – Click to become a fan. This works really well if you have a giveaway at the top of your fan page. Doesn’t cost too much and is worth it. Don’t run it all the time as it will be seen too much and will become boring. It’s easy to pause and un-pause the ad.

4. Post your most interesting Facebook updates to Twitter (maybe not all of them)

5. Link to your Facebook page from your website homepage

6. Have your Facebook page link on all your email signatures.

On last point, you should not try to get more fans just for the sake of collecting and increasing numbers but you should try to only get fans that will be interested in your product or service. Quality over Quantity!

Here’s our Facebook page.

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St. Patricks Day Festival Links

March 12, 2010 at 2:35 pm · Filed under Blogging ·Tagged , , , , , ,

The big day isn’t until Wednesday but there’s loads of family events going on over the weekend. Here are some links we found that might be of interest. If you are planning on attending any other fun events around the country please let us know.

Local events on MyKidsTime: www.mykidstime.ie

Dublin & Limerick Skyfest: http://www.stpatricksfestival.ie/cms/events.html
Limerick: http://www.limerickcoordination.ie/projects/limerick-st-patricks-festival-2010
Cork: http://www.corkstpatricksfestival.ie/
Galway: http://www.stpatricksgalway.com/
Bray: http://www.stpatricksfestivalbray.ie/

Irish Times: http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/features/2010/0312/1224266101925.html

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Running Real Time Web Analytics

March 12, 2010 at 1:56 am · Filed under technical ·Tagged , ,

At PuddleDucks we have been running Google Analytics (GA) for the last number of years. GA provides loads of hugely useful analytical information such as number of unique visitors, pageviews per visitor, bounce rates and sales conversion rates. It’s also great for tracking the bounce rates and conversion rates on our Google Adwords campaigns driving changes and improvements in these campaigns.

However Google Analytics provides the statistics in a historical manner.   It’s not real time. Following a recommendation on Twitter we have recently installed OpenTracker, a real time web analytics system. We signed up for a free one months trial. It’s easy to install – just add some code to the site – and off you go. It’s early days yet, we only have it running for around a week but I’m really impressed with the stats available.

You can see the real time visitor data, visitor by visitor and see exactly what paths they take through the site.  THis is all available in real time. For each visitor you get the following information

  • country, city and region
  • IP address
  • browser
  • operating system
  • screen resolution
  • time spent on site
  • number of pages viewed
  •  time spent on each page
  • total duration of all visits
  • first-time or returning visitor
  • search terms / keyword entered
  • search engine used
  • exit link

Already the data we have analysed has started to drive improvements and changes to our site. I thoroughly recommend it. 

You can check out OpenTracker here.

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Win PuddleDucks Gear on RollerCoaster.ie

March 9, 2010 at 12:53 am · Filed under Prizes ·Tagged , ,

Check out the prize draw on RollerCoaster.ie to win a pair of our ever popular Everyday Waterproof Dungarees. You just need to leave your details and the good folks at RollerCoaster will make the draw on March 23rd.

Go to RollerCoaster to enter here.

Waterproof Dungarees

PuddleDucks Everyday Dungarees

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