Getting Off the Ground with SumoMe.com Apps for WordPress
Discovering how to fix up an old SumoMe setup prior to a reboot
One of my clients chose to add SumoMe to their marketing basket of tools. It was initially setup with a couple popups and other items by a friend a while back.
Last week, Google came out with some pronouncements that made largeish popups a bad thing for Mobile SEO.
My client was getting some benefit out of the tool, but not nearly as much as the potential of the service provided. We are separately rebuilding the site with a new Theme so I dove in to sort through what was there today and figure out what needed to be there tomorrow!
Thing is the support and training materials for SumoMe feels like they are going through a transition… What I share below is partly my notes as I slog through figuring this out and partly my discovery of how to get the system to work… It’s incomplete, but might be helpful for others.
I also captured things here, as I feel like I will find something useful to help others. Writing about it here, gave me space to learn as I needed to and turn off the time clock for my client, saving them money while I get up to speed myself.
Not Finding a Content Analytics Tools Video to get started
I found the Help and Getting Started guides for SumoMe to be extremely minimal. More like a short description of tools that were repetitive or jargon based, Descriptions had unuseful things like mentioning the names of the menu buttons in the menu, something I could read in those menu items.
I wanted to figure out how to set these things up, not have something read a label I could already read!
More Specifically…
I wanted to get Content Analytics App setup. I needed to see what was happening before I changed anything or launched a CTA or something in the wrong location. Content Analytics promised that I might be able to see how far a reader my read down a page so that I could then insure that a CTA or List Builder might be placed, placed where it would be seen.
That led me to this summary video first. It was not the best as it was more of a general over view of ‘what it was’ as opposed to how to use it. There were some helpful clicking around segments that demonstrated a few things, but most of these I had found on my own already. With SumoMe I felt like I had just purchased a cool new car with no idea how to drive the thing!
So ignore the ‘How to Use’ YouTube Title below and consider this more of an ‘Overview’
Ask for some SumoMe Help via twitter!
I was kind of going around in circles. Definitely not getting up to speed fast.
So I reached out to @SumoMe on Twitter.
@SumoMe struggling to find a more visual guide or video that shows me how to get Content Analytics & Heatmaps running…
— Brett Bumeter ll.m. (@brettbum) January 23, 2017
Can you point me towards a blog article, video anything? 🙂 (already visited your youtube channel & https://t.co/b58akNIVfl )
— Brett Bumeter ll.m. (@brettbum) January 23, 2017
and again…
This video hints at a setup video & promises a link in description, but doesn't work! https://t.co/dtKrgXERVy
— Brett Bumeter ll.m. (@brettbum) January 23, 2017
Now, I am not interested in beating my head against a wall. So at this stage, I am going to step back and flip over onto some other work, and wait to hear back from the people that should know what they are doing.
I get the initial impression that they USED to have more youtube videos but do not anymore. That might be because they have upgraded their system and the old videos were dated or something.
Launch tools from the external Website not the backend – even Content Analytics
Confusion – Go with the SumoMe Button on the live site not in the backend
I walked through a few more SumoMe YouTube videos. Some from the actual SumoMe channel, which was mostly just marketing snippet videos.
Still, one of those ended after a minute and auto-played some other video. I just happened to witness a guy doing a tutorial that was way too fast (cause I’m trying to get started and he was randomly covering something after it was already steup).
It can be helpful to dive into the deep end of the SumoMe pool though.
Watching him navigate, I picked up on something I had missed before. I was trying to set things up in the admin area in WordPress. But to launch Content Analytics or Heat maps too, it seemed that this needed to be done while on a specific page!
I think I learned afterwards that this is not always required, but when I tried to execute this from the back end, nothing happened.
Heat Maps of the backend Admin area vs Heat Maps of individual Pages and Posts!
One of the confounding problems I got past related to how and where I turned heatmaps on.
My Mistake
I turned heatmaps on to run on all pages across the entire site. I set this up by going into the SumoMe Dashboard, clicking My Apps, clicking Heat maps then setting some stuff up by bumbling around.
BUT
When I tried to look at the actual heat map results I got zilch!
I was clicking on the Heatmaps button again then clicking on the ‘View Active Campaigns for this Page’ button.
turns out that was a big button of nothing!
That was the dashboard page in the backend and I didn’t give two hoots about the heat maps in there. I thought this button would take me to a page where I could see a list of the heatmap reports and then review them one at a time.
SumoMe how to see Heat Map report ~ not this way
Nothing to see here!
Initially, I thought maybe the service was not tracking results. No reports were because no results tracked… That was not correct.
I eventually figured out that I had to go to external pages, one at a time, then click on the SumoMe floating buttons (default in upper right hand corner) and click Heat maps there.
Suddenly I had heat maps!!!
Heat maps Example from SumoMe on Comments section of single blog article
Suddenly, I was making progress!
I could also see that a very large section of the blog articles (the rest of the layout) were being completely ignored.
This was invaluable information for my current web redesign efforts!
When is the Right Time to Ask a Video Question?
Right about this time, I felt like I was learning enough to ask better questions. I had figured out a few things and how they worked in the SumoMe.com apps.
It didn’t feel easy or natural yet.
Plus, while I was close to asking the questions, I didn’t think I was in a place where I could do so concisely and still get out of it what I needed to use this tool and be successful. So I created a video of what I was doing (poorly) and what I had figured out and the areas or actions that were still creating confusion for me. Video’s can be great for tutorials. Videos can also be even better to ask questions and give product development folks deep insight into how people are using their tools, where stumbling blocks might be and this can help them refine a better mouse trap!