Google-Groupon Deal? Search giant Google is reported to be offering as much as $6 billion for leading e-Commerce coupon site, Groupon. According to a number of media sources, the deal’s initial payment will be worth about $5.3 billion, with the remaining $700 million to be used as an incentive for keeping Groupon’s employees. The deal, if it happens, is going to be Google’s largest acquisition yet, much bigger than its successful $3.1 billion bid for DoubleClick and the $1.65 billion price tag of the company’s YouTube deal. Launched in November 2008 and headquartered in Chicago, Illinois, Groupon is a social shopping network that delivers daily deals to users in cities across the U.S., Canada, and Europe. While the price of the rumoured acquisition seems high – Groupon only has an estimated $600 million in revenue – industry observers say that the coupon site is the clear leader in a rapidly growing new category on the Internet. Its overwhelming success in – Read the full article
A business today needs to be mobile. Your customers are using their cell phones to access business information. If you aren’t easily accessible on their mobile phones then they’re going to start overlooking you in favor of businesses that are. Here are the tools that you need in order to go mobile with your business: Reinvent your website for the mobile platform. You may have a really amazing Flash website with a lot of interactive features that looks terrific on a desktop computer. However, that’s not going to work correctly on most mobile phones. You need to also have a mobile version of your site. (Lakeshore Branding has a list of really sweet tools here.) Each different mobile platform offers a browser WebKit to help optimize sites for the web. It’s worth it to work with a professional who is knowledgeable about making your website ready for mobile devices. Do local search engine optimization. Doing SEO for your website means taking – Read the full article
If you’re thinking of starting your online business, then you’re part of a race where millions are striving for successful brand recognition on the Web. To win, you have to build an online brand that stands out in the competition – a brand that has a unique, likeable personality. Online brand building means thinking of ways you can make your Web identity more accessible to your potential customers, all while boosting your sales and building a reputation that engenders trust and credibility. Let me first raise some of the aspects of brand-building across the Internet: Quality Creatively built web identity Customer service Promotion and marketing Consistency Quality of products or services is your niche and is arguably most important. It’s better to have a single product that does well rather than having a hundred that perform really badly. Your product should be more innovative and superior than what the next guy has to offer. To make a product with distinction, – Read the full article
A Facebook Page with lots of fans can do wonders for your brand. Not only is Facebook a naturally “viral” online channel for engagement; its Fan Pages are also a pretty flexible Internet marketing platform, with space for lots of apps, optimization opportunities, multimedia content, social sharing, and trackable information. Of course, to maximize Facebook’s power, you actually have to get people to officially “like” your page. Without enough “likes”, you may be wasting effort on something that’s not reaching anyone at all. You’d be like a chef preparing 30 starters and 50 main courses for a restaurant that has less than 10 customers. The product/service/brand may be good, but no one knows enough about it. Want more Facebook fans? Need more people to like your Facebook Page? Here are 11 really effective tips: Comment and reply. If someone posts on your Wall, don’t ignore it. Respond in a timely manner. Say thank you or write a meaningful comment that – Read the full article
WordPress is one of the most popular publishing platforms and content management systems CMS) around today, and there’s certainly no shortage of premium WordPress themes on the Web for designers and developers to tinker with. Indeed, WordPress stands out because of its open-source nature, advanced templating system, and excellent plug-in architecture, all of which allow users to do pretty much anything they want to do to their WordPress sites, and customize as much of these as they like — — provided, of course, that they’re good with codes. When something called Headway Themes was launched July of last year, we here at Lakeshore Branding couldn’t help but think, “Oh, here’s another one.” By “another one”, we meant another premium WordPress theme – like WooThemes and Thesis – which, sure enough, would offer almost infinite options for designing, customizing, and fine-tuning WordPress sites, but which only advanced developers and CSS or HTML professionals would understand and be able to use. We – Read the full article
It’s been around, but up to this day, when people think of Moo (at Moo.com), there’s a good chance they might associate it with domestic livestock. That’s why we here at Lakeshore Branding thought of outlining the top reasons why we love Moo, a great card creation service that doesn’t at all have anything to do with cows. Founded in 2004, Moo is basically an online print business, specializing in the creation of high-quality business cards and related products. The service is catered to businesses and professionals, but it is equally great for designers, freelancers, bloggers, photographers, and anyone else who has to personally introduce himself or herself in some form and situation to another human being. In short, Moo is for everyone. As a creative online communications agency, Lakeshore Branding is always on the lookout for great ideas and inspiration for the Web. But no matter how much we love the Internet, we still can’t put it in our – Read the full article
As the search engine marketing industry grows, there continues to crop up various web-based apps and tools for rank monitoring. But the simplest – and perhaps most talked-about – of these is a service called AuthorityLabs, developed in Phoenix, AZ, by a developer named Chase Granberry. “Rank monitoring should be effortless,” so goes a line on the AuthorityLabs website, and it’s one echoed by small businesses, enterprises, Internet marketers, and agencies everywhere. Indeed, there’s a great deal of demand for a simple, easy-to-use, and affordable solution that allows customers to track and analyze their ranking performance on search engines (Google, Yahoo!, and Bing) without wallowing in confusion on how to use the tool, or squandering their resources just to pay for a premium service. It’s to no surprise, then, that AuthorityLabs positions itself as a service for “rank monitoring made easy”. The question is, does it deliver on its promise? Pricing: AuthorityLabs readily admits that its service is more expensive – Read the full article
It’s kind of stressful trying to figure out ways on how to rank better in search engines. Just figuring out where your website stands, in terms of relevant keywords, is like rocket science. Like, “Where does my culinary website appear on Google’s search results pages whenever someone searches for ‘easy homemade recipes’?” Sure, there are plenty of web-based apps and tools that promise to help you do just that. But sometimes, these apps and tools are still too expensive. Or too complicated. Their interface makes you want to squint, or hide under a desk. Enter AuthorityLabs. It’s a super simple search engine monitoring service, founded in Arizona by a guy named Chase Granberry. Basically what it does is give you the data or the feedback that you need in order to rank better. It doesn’t matter if you’re a small business, an enterprise, an Internet marketing company, or an interactive communications agency; AuthorityLabs is pretty scalable – and extremely easy – Read the full article
