Ericsson, the Sweden-based mobile company, recently conducted a survey that found 35 percent of U.S. Android and iPhone users “…interacted with such non-voice apps as Facebook on their smartphones before rising.” In other words, many smartphone users check Facebook, Twitter and very likely email, before even getting out of bed in the morning. Of course, this is just one study and 35 percent is still a minority. But it’s not hard to imagine that this is exactly the case. And perhaps that number goes even higher after the user is out of bed but not yet on the way to…more»

The Time Has Come to Increase Your Time on Site Most online marketers and website owners tend to measure the success of their online business by the amount of traffic they are able to generate (and, of course, revenue). While increasing the number of unique visitors is most definitely important (and something that everyone should be concerned with), it is arguably only half the battle. Unique visitors and visits alone should not be the only means by which you are measuring success. It is easy to understand that there is little in the way of benefit from attracting a visitor…more»

Freelancer.com has released the Freelancer Fast 50, which is the company’s findings on the fastest-growing online outsourcing jobs of the first quarter of 2011. The Freelancer.com Fast 50 charts the top 50 rising job categories in the online labor market quarter by quarter, providing a rolling, up-to-the-minute account of online freelance job trends. The top three trends for the quarter included the following: • Panda Pounds Writers: The most noticeable digital labor shift this quarter was not seen in what went up, but what went down. Freelancer.com has cited a massive decline in content writing jobs all across the board…more»

Display advertising has the potential to reemerge as an essential promotional technique for online advertisers thanks to remarketing. Google, on its Inside Adwords blog, makes the case today for remarketing on display advertising by showcasing a few advertisers that grew an average of 113% every quarter after launch using the technique: – Yankee Candle Company used remarketing to re-engage shoppers and increased conversion rates by 600% while cutting cost-per-conversion in half. – Lenovo PC manufacturers increased sales by 20% and lowered their overall expense-to-revenue ratio by 14% in a campaign that included remarketing and display across multiple networks. – etrailer.com, an…more»

Few Web professionals should be surprised by the 2011 forecast in SEMPO’s recently released State of Search Marketing Report. If the words “social” and “mobile” are at the top of your business plan, pay close attention to the following. If they are not, drop what you’re doing and pay even closer attention. With over 900 companies and agencies participating in the global online survey, the report estimates that the North American search marketing industry will grow by 16 percent in 2011 to a value of $19.3 billion, up from $16.6 billion in 2010. Just under half of the respondents said…more»

Is Google on the Ropes? Google’s stock is in a tailspin. Since Friday, it’s down about 10 percent, around $522 per share as of this writing. That’s what happens when you miss projections, even though earnings are again on the rise. Earnings of $8.08 missed the mark by two cents and, as reported by Adweek, expenses went through the roof — to the tune of 34 percent. What is Google paying through the nose for? In large part, employees. Out of fear. Apparently Google offered two employees a combined $150 million in stock grants to keep them from defecting to…more»

Are you interested in processing payments through your mobile device? Who isn’t! I can think of about a dozen instances where that might come in handy right now.  Sage Payment Solutions just released its Sage Mobile Payments product today and for the SMB’s among us it is most definitely worth having a look. The offering, which is bundled with a Sage merchant account (of course), gives SMB’s the ability to accept credit and debit cards on over 400 types of mobile phones and computing devices like tablets. Pretty interesting, particuarly for sales people on the move. The mobile payment solution…more»

Starbucks, one of the most iconic corporations in the U.S., has rolled out a mobile payments program that will enable customers to make purchases with their smartphones. Never mind that the same near-field communications (NFC) technology has already been in use in other parts of the world for several years, this will have a significant impact on the emerging mobile payments industry in the U.S. The program will be available at every Starbucks location across the nation, and customers can download the free Starbucks Card Mobile App for use on select BlackBerry, iPhone and iPod devices. Users then will be…more»

The December 2010 Alexa-Netcraft SSL Index was released recently and it seems the battle for dominance in the SSL (secure socket layers) market is heating up and getting pretty nasty. According to the report (compiled monthly by CatapultWorks) which provides an indication of SSL certification usage across the most trafficked websites by cross-referencing the Netcraft SSL Survey with the Alexa Top Sites list), GeoTrust maintained its leadership position and trumped low-cost competitors such as Go Daddy for the seventh straight month, securing 35,540 unique domains among the Internet’s 1 million most visited websites. Go Daddy registered 27,578 unique domains for…more»

As 2010 draws to a close, it’s time to turn our attention to another year. Another decade, actually, that will bring new challenges and new opportunities. Here are five important trends you can expect to see in 2011 and a few ideas to get you started on the right foot. Happy New Year. Security. Consumers are worried about online security, and for good reason. Increasingly, security is an issue not just on our own websites but wherever our brands can be found on the Web. As we increase visibility across properties – mobile, Facebook and Twitter, online forums, location-based apps…more»