We made it through another week and another month. Tomorrow is Halloween, it’s a full moon, and we “Fall Back” to Daylight Savings Time. The memes say it might reset us and free us from the dumpster fire that is 2020, but I have my doubts.
In this week’s news you can use, The Dallas Cowboys Pro Shop is being sued beacuse its website isn’t’ fully accessible, new and resale homes statistics weren’t all sunshine and roses in September, and Bing has rolled out of Beta, a website analytics tool called Clarity. Also, here’s a hot tip for your Google Search Ads that our Search Conversion Manager has been a big fan of for a while now.
What’s going on with shop.dallascowboys.com and why does it matter to you? Well, there’s this thing called accessibility, that we have written about in the past, and it basically means that you should utilize tools that make your website as accessible as possible to those who are hearing and vision impaired. And it looks like the Cowboy’s aren’t doing it so they’re being sued. You should care because you too could be sued for lacking accessibility, but also because studies have shown that the more inclusive you are in your marketing and branding efforts, the more successful you will be as a business.
All that awesome momentum for housing slowed a bit in September for both new and resale home sales. All of it appears related to the fact that while mortgage rates are at historic lows, home sale prices have risen too drastically for that to really matter anymore. “Affordability dropped by about $775 in August, despite mortgage rates hitting a new monthly low of 2.92%.” Womp Womp. This matches data that we saw showing a slow down in web traffic and conversions in September. In 2019 traffic and conversions began their decline in October and continued through Christmas day, only to surge at the end of the month. We will continue to monitor these trends to see what happens as we close out 2020 and get through the election.
Finally, Bing has released from Beta, Microsoft Clarity. It’s supposed to be easy to use and should help improve website experiences through the info that is discerned. It provides heatmaps, session playback, an insights dashboard and more. I’m personally excited to play with it to see just how easy it is to use and if it provides any good nuggets of information for our clients.
That’s all from me for this week. The election is Tuesday. Make sure you vote! Stay safe and have a wonderful Halloween / full moon / Fall Back weekend.
