According to eMarketer, shoppers are expected to spend 14.2% more shopping online in 2010 than in 2009. Are you part of the trend? Should you care if you aren’t? Shopping online has much more to offer than an expanded selection. You may not have thought about how much gas you spend driving to multiple stores or the impulse buys that creep into your cart. Before you dive in head first, consider these hidden benefits to shopping online versus shopping at bricks and mortar stores. Wish Lists Eliminate Guesswork: Many of us have had it with giving (and, if we’re honest, getting) bad gifts. We’re pretty confident that Uncle Alfred doesn’t want another necktie, but we inevitably buy one for him anyway. Most sites know that we’re frustrated with guessing how to buy for someone and put wish lists directly on their sites. Feel weird about telling people what you want? List Ideas, Kaboodle, and Boxed Up make it a cinch to make your own lists – Read the full article
It used to be that businesses concentrated their marketing efforts exclusively on traditional (offline) media – like print ads, TV commercials, radio, PR campaigns, events, billboards, direct mail, glossy brochures. And then the Internet happened. And then social media changed the Internet. A recent report by GrowBiz Media, a small business market research firm, and online survey company Zoomerang led to key insights on how much money small businesses are allocating for their Internet marketing efforts. Entitled “SMB Marketing Practices: Small to Midsized Business Survey Results, 2010”, the report gathers information from 751 completed surveys across the U.S., by businesses with less than 1,000 employees. Among the key takeaways: More than half of the businesses with less than $1000 marketing budget are adopting social media practices, most notably in social networks Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter (in that order). Around 39 percent of respondents are spending more than 20 percent of their marketing budgets on websites (design, development, content creation, marketing, – Read the full article
A free photo-centric social sharing app called Path was launched early this week by a familiar face in social media: former Facebook Platform Manager Dave Morin. Just don’t call it a social network, though. Path – unlike Facebook, Twitter, or LinkedIn – is being positioned as “the personal network”. According to its San Francisco-based founders, Path is the place where “you will always feel comfortable being yourself and sharing the story of your life with your closest friends and family via the photos you take every day with your mobile device.” Sounds like Facebook Photos or Flickr – but there is this twist: with Path, you can only have up to 50 members in your network. Fifty and no more. That’s right. At a time when Facebook users are sharing bits and pieces of their lives to up to 5,000 friends, and where people are tweeting all kinds of information for thousands and thousands of followers to see, Path is – Read the full article
Foursquare sounds like fun. We’ve said it before: as a location-based social networking platform, it is able to engage mobile users to explore neighborhoods, do “check-ins”, find friends, play social city games, unlock cool badges, win “Mayorships”, and earn points and rewards. And thanks to its innovative social mechanics, Foursquare is making city after city a social media playground. Let’s admit it, though. Foursquare doesn’t sound business-y. It doesn’t exactly have the feel of a traditional corporate strategy – and if you had to present this in the boardroom to your marketing director or CEO, you might be disposed to think you’re speaking in a language that they can’t understand. Here’s some good news. Foursquare – if leveraged properly – is as viable a marketing tool as any, perfect for boosting your business. Foursquare users check-in at all kinds of places – cafes, bars, shops, malls, hotels, restaurants, parks, homes, offices, recreational areas, day spa, and events, among many others. – Read the full article
Now that Google Instant has aged a bit and search professionals have had the opportunity to test its effect on SEM campaigns, the general verdict seems to be that Instant has not had a dramatic effect on SEO. Like Google Caffeine earlier this year, Instant seems to be aimed at improving user experience rather than search results. Indeed, in spite of all the SEO anxiety accompanying each change made by Google, the fact remains that their recent upgrades have focused largely on three main factors: * Greater personalization * Better targeting * Increased efficiency And while these are all things that professional SEOs are already optimizing for, now may be a good time to look beyond search results and consider how Google’s changes are affecting search behavior. With the release of Google Instant, it seems clearer than ever that Google wants to make search as easy and as intuitive as possible – and the way it’s doing that is by – Read the full article
Establishing – or enhancing – the presence of your business online will require a lot of text. Let’s see: website copy (with multiple pages), product and service descriptions, blog entries, tweets, Facebook wall posts, E-mail newsletters, pay-per-click ads, etc. So who’s going to do all that writing? Hire a web content writer. That’s the simplest solution, right? It’s also one of the most efficient. You hire the writer for a specific content creation project, maybe even an outsourced writer from offshore. It’s cost-effective, and you’re also able to free up a lot of time for yourself – time that you can spend focusing on running and growing your business, as opposed to playing the role of a copywriter or communication agency. Before you handpick a writer, though, you have to make sure that he or she is your best candidate. An interview may even be necessary. The most important thing, of course, is that the writer has what it takes – Read the full article
Tracking time and invoicing clients are important office tasks that you may often wish you don’t have to do. If only, right? But regardless of whether you’re a freelancer, a consultant, a small business, or a corporation, you just have to have some form of system to keep that income stream running smoothly – plus, of course, a staff member employed specifically for the purpose of managing that system. Enter FreshBooks, a web-based accounting, time billing, cost estimate, and invoicing application that has been dubbed “the leader in online invoicing”. It’s designed to help users save time and money in performing such accounting tasks as tracking income, managing estimates, creating and sending invoices, receiving customer payments, and generating accurate year-end financial reports. It’s definitely a great concept, but does FreshBooks perform better than if you just hired an accountant or a third party? Our answer: yes. A resounding one. We here at Lakeshore Branding have recently incorporated FreshBooks into our – Read the full article
The explosion of mobile over the last several years is well documented. However, issues with the usability (or lack thereof) of mobile devices, websites and applications seem to be getting little play in the midst of all the hype. The still-very-venerable Jakob Nielsen, though, has warned that usability of mobile devices and websites is horrifyingly similar to the bad old early days of personal computing. Reviewing usability tests of mobile devices just last summer (2009), Nielsen wrote: “Observing user suffering during our sessions reminded us of the very first usability studies we did with traditional websites in 1994.” He summarizes his findings: “the mobile user experience is miserable.” Indeed, most of us seem to expect spotty service, ridiculously scrolly pages, multiple clicks to accomplish one step in a process, and limited functionality all around. Why? And for how long are people going to put up with this? Recently the Toronto usability company Interpix Design worked with a major Canadian company, – Read the full article
