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IBM estimates 15% of site visits to retail sites in November are from smartphones and tablets

November 28, 2011 by Marc Leave a Comment

I mentioned this earlier as part of a long post, but it is very worthy of standing alone. IBM Coremetrics estimates that 15% of consumer retail site visits are using mobile devices in November 2011. This is a very recent, November 4th 2011, article and includes a trending graph showing the amazing growth of retail visits from mobile devices.

Please use the link above to read the entire, very worthwhile, article. But if you are rushed here are a couple of its nuggets:

Online Shopping Growth: Total online sales in November will experience impressive growth of 12-15 percent over the same period in 2010.
Mobile Traffic and Sales: Record numbers of consumers will shift their shopping from the PC to their mobile device this holiday season. In October nearly 11 percent of people used a mobile device to visit a retailer’s site, up from 4.2 percent in October 2010. Additionally, mobile sales continue to increase, reaching a high of 9.6 percent in October 2011, up from 3.4 percent in October 2010.

ps – Keep in mind that a major share of these visitors do not have Flash enabled smartphones and tablets..

Filed Under: Internet Marketing, News Tagged With: Flash, Internet Marketing, Websites

The end of Flash? It is for Flash Mobile on smartphones and tablets.

November 28, 2011 by Marc Leave a Comment

Earlier this month Adobe announced in an email to developers that it was ending Flash Mobile. Kevin Lynch, Adobe CTO, explained the strategy as follows:

We believe that HTML5 is a significant catalyst for growth for Adobe. And it’s a multi-year vector of innovation for most of our products. HTML5 is great for Adobe and great for the industry.

The key phrase I just used, and I people to make sure we all recognize this, is that most of our products – absolutely HTML5 is going to result in the substrate of the web undergoing a major overhaul – but it’s much bigger than just web pages. It’s the foundation of how content is going to be delivered in the years ahead.

Web, video, publishing, gaming are all going to increasingly rely on HTML5 across PCs, phones, TVs, and tablets. That is the foundation that we’re building toward and that’s the foundation we’re going to take a leadership position in.

A couple of days later Flash developer Mike Chambers expanded on the reasons for ending Flash Mobile and the future of Flash in general. He noted that:

Finally, given the growth of HTML5 on both mobile and desktop browsers, we decided to more evenly balance our resources dedicate between Flash and HTML5.

Halting development on the Flash Player for mobile devices frees up resources for HTML5 development (tooling, frameworks, browsers).

So the future at Adobe calls for less Flash and more HTML5. Contemplating Adobe’s increasing investment in HTML5 development tools and at the same time terminating Flash for mobile devices and what it means regarding Flash overall brings to mind the following quote from Winston Churchill; “Now this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.” Can it be that in a few months or a couple of years that as Flash Mobile went, so will Flash? To learn more regarding the problems and performance of flash on mobile devices read this analysis by GigaOm on why Flash Mobile did not work out.

Give it some thought when you make an investment in your website. With site visits by mobile devices quickly climbing towards 15% to 20% of the total site visits, according to IBM, it is a very important marketing consideration. For your website and marketing it seems that “to Flash or not to Flash” is the question. With Adobe putting its money on HTML5 for its future shouldn’t you?

It seems time to revisit some of the basic issues. Do you remember April 2010 and Steve Jobs’ thoughts on Flash? particularly concerning security, reliability and performance?

Symantec recently highlighted Flash for having one of the worst security records in 2009. We also know first hand that Flash is the number one reason Macs crash. We have been working with Adobe to fix these problems, but they have persisted for several years now. We don’t want to reduce the reliability and security of our iPhones, iPods and iPads by adding Flash.

In addition, Flash has not performed well on mobile devices. We have routinely asked Adobe to show us Flash performing well on a mobile device, any mobile device, for a few years now. We have never seen it. Adobe publicly said that Flash would ship on a smartphone in early 2009, then the second half of 2009, then the first half of 2010, and now they say the second half of 2010. We think it will eventually ship, but we’re glad we didn’t hold our breath. Who knows how it will perform?

In retrospect Steve Jobs had reasoned answers, before hardly any of us had even thought of the question.

Filed Under: BluDomain, Business Planning, Internet Marketing, SEO Tagged With: Flash, Internet Marketing, mobile devices, search engine optimization, search optimization, SEO, smartphones, tablets, website marketing

A great way to present and showcase videos with a lightbox effect in WordPress

November 25, 2011 by Marc Leave a Comment

There are many attractive options for easily showcasing images in WordPress, but often there is a need to showcase a video. This is particularly true for videographers wanting to present their work in the most attractive format possible but is also needed for many other business. Wether a Realtor showing a listing’s video walk-through or a wedding photographer’s photo montage or any other type of business or service, you need to be able to impress, focus and keep the viewer’s attention on the video to improve your sales.It is well recognized, video works for sharing your work, but most want to elevate our presentation above the ubiquitous YouTube player.

In the past, it has often not been easy to set up for video and there are not a lot of options. But, after trying a number of plugins and options I have found an easy, reliable and low-cost method for presenting video in a lightbox type overlay giving it an almost theater type presentation. Usable on both Vimeo and YouTube hosted videos, and it works for iPad and other non-flash enabled devices.

Below is an example of how a video displays in the lightbox using a video tour of luxury home listing -

Here is how you can set it up for your WordPress based website.

1) First you will need to install and activate the Floatbox Plus plugin from the WordPress plugin repository.

2) Next you need to download and install the Floatbox script. Obtain the script here (you need to pay a $20 license fee after you get it setup). To install the script you need to unzip it and then using your FTP client place the floatbox folder in the floatbox-plus folder so the path would look like this …wp-content/plugins/floatbox-plus/floatbox

3) Configure the Floatbox Plus plugin to your site and how you want the videos to display in the floatbox.

4) Insert your desired video into your page or post and save.

Here is a quick tutorial video covering some of the detailes for the steps above (placedwith standard playback just to show how much better videos look in floatbox). -

If you have any questions or problems please give me a call or use the email form at the right.

Filed Under: Internet Marketing, WordPress Tagged With: Internet Marketing, lightbox, showcase, video, WordPress

New website for custom woodworker and cabinet maker Don Ragland of Austin Texas

August 18, 2011 by Marc Leave a Comment

I enjoy creating websites for small business. These websites provide the business owner a competitive advantage and fairly quickly result in increased business. One of my most recent is a website for Austin, Texas based custom cabinet and furniture maker Don Ragland. Don is a successful craftsman and woodworker creating custom cabinets and furniture in Austin for over 20 years. His marketing was basically the yellow pages. But with dramatic reduction in use of yellow pages (search engines and smart phones have almost replaced yellow pages) and increase in cost of advertising Don had come to realize that he needed a good optimized website in order to be found and reach today’s prospective clients.

Because of the great business results a relative of Don’s has with one of my custom websites, Don asked me to create an effective website for marketing his upscale woodworking. Over a just two week period working with Don, and for much less cost than even a small yellow pages ad, you can now visit the website we created.

Online now for less than a week, we have already gotten the brand new site and domain name in the search indexes. All that is just the beginning of the SEO and search engine marketing that comes with the website.

If you would like to know about the cost and return on investment of my small business websites like Don’s, please call, send an email or leave a comment.

Filed Under: Client Websites, Internet Marketing, Search Engines Tagged With: Internet Marketing, search engine optimization, search marketing, SEO, SMO, website marketing, Websites

Target your website’s SEO to your target customers

August 2, 2011 by Marc Leave a Comment

Most SEO articles just deal with SEO and don’t focus on the real reason that should be driving any SEO effort .. your target customer. All your SEO efforts should initially be directed by an understanding of your target market and its different customer search personas. Then using that “ground work” to effectively attract the customers you want through well conceived SEO optimized content.

This is a great article “5 Steps to Building a Search Persona” by Erez Barak which works through how to develop a search persona that you can use for SEO efforts to increase your online sales. The article provides excellent how-to steps and examples. Put it in practice and it will help you increase traffic and sales.

If you have any questions or want assistance leave a comment or send an email. I am happy to help.

Filed Under: Internet Marketing, SEO Tagged With: Internet Marketing, keywords, marketing, search marketing, search optimization, SEO

5 Great Custom Google Analytics Reports for your website – FREE

July 28, 2011 by Marc

My Dad often said “what gets measured gets done”. And these five custom reports seem to “channel” that wisdom helping you understand your website traffic and set and meet goals. All particularly important if you are an online marketer or derive other revenue from your website. And the standard Google Analytics reports often don’t provide some of the data detail you need.

I will be brief, just do the following now. Get the details, why these are most useful, how to use the reports and install the reports in your Google Analytics account by going to this Search Engine Watch article by Greg Habermann “My Top 5 Most Used Custom Reports in Google Analytics“.

These are excellent well crafted reports for analyzing your site traffic and making well-reasoned changes to your site to increase your results and meet your goal.

This is one of my favorite articles of this month and if you have any questions please send me an email or leave a comment.

Filed Under: Business Planning, Internet Marketing, Tools and Tips Tagged With: Google, Google Analytics, Internet Marketing, search marketing, website marketing

Search optimizing a basic BluDomain Flash website How-To

July 26, 2011 by Marc Leave a Comment

This is a quick two part video tutorial review of how to setup the SEO elements of a BluDomain Flash site and splash page for the maximum SEO possible. I work on many different standard BluDomain based websites weekly and it is unusual when all the SEO related elements are already completed and optimized as I show you below. BluDomain does not have the robust possibilities of using WordPress for the splash page and blog, but you should take every opportunity presented to craft your site to present your search marketing keywords.

Part 1 – Maximizing the standard BluDomain splash page’s SEO

Part 2 – Maximizing the typical BluDomain Flash website template’s SEO

More on the death of meta keywords and why you should skip using them

If you have any questions, would like to know more about the additional SEO options included in using WordPress or would like an SEO analysis and quote for enhancing the search marketing and SEO of your current BluDomain website … please send me an email or leave a comment below.

Filed Under: BluDomain, SEO Tagged With: BluDomain, Internet Marketing, search engine optimization, Search Engines, search marketing, SEM, SEO

The wholeness of Google+ has the spirit of the moment.

July 13, 2011 by Marc 1 Comment

Or said another way, Google+’s gestalt is the zeitgeist! I think that small business marketers using the web will find competitive advantage through early adoption of Google+. Seems, over the last few months, for there to be a malaise regarding Facebook and since the June 28th’s “release” of Google+ a lot of excitement and evangelism. The “wholeness” approach to Google’s making the web a social network versus using a site as a social network, like Facebook, is new. Although small it is growing exponentially, Google+ is estimated to have now, as of this week, reached 9 million users (according to Search Engine Watch). And perhaps even more telling as to the general spirit swelling around Google+ are the pwns animated gifs like these -

So what can you do now to begin learning and gaining in Google+? Two quick suggestions:

If you haven’t already, sign up for a personal profile Google+ at the Google+ home page. There is also a good Google+ FAQ on that page. I am finding, right now in the limited Beta, that after 10pm PDT is most likely to be successful in signing up.
Add a Google+1 button to your business website. If you have a WordPress based website it is as easy as installing a plugin. I like this one - http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wp-plus-one/. If you haven’t adopted WordPress for your website platform, or want to do it “old school” here is the Google+ code link – http://www.google.com/webmasters/+1/button/

Filed Under: Search Engines, Social Networks Tagged With: Facebook, Google, Internet Marketing, SMO, social media, Social Networks, trends

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