According to comScore, Bing and Microsoft’s other websites had a respectable 2.7 billion U.S. search requests in February 2012, but Google still remained on top with 11.7 billion search requests. Yahoo ranked third with 2.4 billion requests. Ask Network came up two percent in February to reach 535 million search requests, and AOL, Inc. had 266 million.

What do these statistics mean for your business? Basically, search marketing, or search engine optimization (SEO), is more important than ever. With the right SEO team, you can increase lead generation and bring in more traffic to your site. Ultimately, it is possible to take advantage of Bing’s surge and the increasingly competitive search engine market to increase sales for your business. Let Google and Bing duke it out, and reap the benefits by hiring a great SEO team.

Graphic courtesy of Statista.com.

Sources:

Callaham, J. (2012, January 12). Microsoft’s Bing now second in US search, ahead of Yahoo. Retrieved from http://www.neowin.net/news/microsofts-bing-now-second-in-us-search-ahead-of-yahoo

(2012, March 9). comScore Releases February 2012 U.S. Search Engine Rankings. Retrieved from http://www.comscore.com/Press_Events/Press_Releases/2012/3/comScore_Releases_February_2012_U.S._Search_Engine_Rankings

Silverman, M. (2012, March 26). Despite Bing’s Rise, Google Still Dominates Search. Mashable tech. Retrieved from http://mashable.com/2012/03/26/search-stats-infographic/

US Search Market Since 2008. 2012. Statista, Inc. 10 Apr. 2012 http://www.statista.com/.

Why is Search Engine Marketing so Important? Retrieved from http://www.aslinternet.com/products/why-is-search-engine-marketing-important.php

In addition, online tech blogs like The Verge are reporting that more Americans have smart phones than traditional feature phones, and research from the Canalys group backs this up by estimating that 487.7 million smart phones were shipped in 2011—an increase of over 60 percent from 2010. Adding fuel to the fire, Canalys doesn’t expect the increase in smart phones to continue as rapidly next year, but suggest that’s only because manufacturers will focus on higher-end models and greater profitability, instead of pushing a larger number of low-end products.

Along with smart phones, the tablet vs. personal computer debate has been evolving rapidly throughout the past few years, with no signs of slowing. According to market research firm IDC, we’re witnessing the first overall personal computer sales decline since the recession’s end, with total PC shipments, including desktop, laptop and mini-notebook computers, reaching 80.6 million, a decline of 2.6 million since 2010.

“Good-enough computing’ has become a firm reality, exemplified first by Mini Notebooks and now media tablets,” said IDC senior research analyst Jay Chou. “Macroeconomic forces can explain some of the ebb and flow of the PC business, but the real question PC vendors have to think hard about is how to enable a compelling user experience that can justify spending on the added horsepower.”

While it’s not likely the personal computer will replaced in its entirety anytime soon, the numbers say it all: personal computers are becoming less of a necessity, and more of an old stand-by in our increasingly mobile world.

Google announced last week that there would be another fundamental change to their search algorithm to help index new content as fast as possible. This update, called “Freshness,” will affect about 35% of all search queries. It will mostly target highly talked about news items (such as celebrity breakups and the world economy, for instance) but may also impact search queries that are broad-matched keywords such as “football.”

With the increasingly high number of people utilizing social media, blogging and news related sites, Google has taken the indexing of results in real-time by the horns.  The change has already been showing in the results. Following is an example of the results in real-time for the search query “Barack Obama.”

As you can see, there is a time stamp of 17 minutes next to the most recent news item. For those businesses that have news feeds and blogs, this could have the potential to be a large outlet for pushing keyword-related content. Google still says “content is king” amongst keyword rankings, so the more quality content a business can generate, the better chance they’ll have of ranking well in search results.

Another reason Google’s “Freshness” change is important is because of the instant results most people are accustomed to seeing on social media sites. Google used to index news items relatively fast, but not fast enough for most web surfers. This change should help bring more timely results to the user and better quality content overall.

What does it all mean to you? If you haven’t done so yet, claim your page on Facebook, send it to all of your customers, and get the ball rolling by writing quality content about your industry—that will help keep you on top in the SEO game.

The Death of Flash

Adobe Flash was once a widely used tool thanks in no small part to its easily implemented interactivity, but its best days may be behind it. HTML5 and CSS3 are quickly becoming its replacement. For those not affiliated with Adobe, this is largely an exciting and welcome change because it will allow for more cleanly produced designs and the reduction of load times.

There are many reasons for the move from Flash. One factor is the implementation of CSS3 transitions and animations. These make it easier to create moving backgrounds, growing buttons, fading objects, and many other flourishes. Additionally, many JavaScript libraries are also growing in use, and allow for a more rich and interactive user experience. A prime example is that of jQuery. The jQuery slogan of “Write less, do more” is particularly apt, since it allows designers to more easily add interactivity, user feedback, etc. while the technical writing is simple and clean. One current trend in web design that takes advantage of this language is the single page website. These sites dynamically move content as a method of producing a clean and centralized design. Since that jQuery it is not a proprietary language, it will cleanly integrate with the other elements of the website—something that can’t be said of Flash.

Aside from competing technologies, the decline of Flash can also be attributed to the growth of the mobile market, in which Flash is weakly supported, if it is supported at all.

Typography is Beautiful

Good designers love typefaces, and the more ability designers have to manipulate their usage, the better. For many years, web design was stuck in a place where only a few fonts were known to be cross-platform, which restricted their usage. No more. Web design is now at a place where it has a plethora of options available, so the desired font can be used while still adhering to web standards! A few new technologies have made this possible.

Cufón is one, well-used method to ensure font stability by converting text into a vector (or line-based vs. pixel-based) format. One of our favorites is the @font-face method, in which actual fonts are downloaded with the website, giving complete access to every character and element. The concerns here are that downloading multiple fonts and weights can become pretty heavy, and different browsers require different file types to be read correctly. To address this, tools like Typekit and Google Fonts API allow for the adding of custom fonts, while not having access to the font files yourself. This works by choosing the desired fonts, then adding a line of code to pull that information from the respective source. All in all, this meets the requirement for cross-platform compatibility, and allows the artist to dedicate more time to creative endeavors instead of fiddling with technical limitations.

Adding Color and Textures

Another 2012 trend is the move toward more simple color schemes and textures. Let’s start with color. Forget about color and shades like black, white and grey. Instead, go for something really engaging. More and more web sites are experimenting with primary colors such as green, yellow or red, but it is best to limit palettes to two or three colors. Web designers can play with different shades of each color and create inspiring combinations to help communicate a feel or reinforce an identity.

In addition to a simplified color palette, textures are now being used to add depth and interest. Textures do not necessarily have to be bold. In fact, sometimes subtle is better. Textures can create additional layers of interest while allowing viewers to focus on the areas of most importance. Many viewers will never consciously notice that the background of your site has been made to look like weathered paper, or that there is “noise” (little flakes of color or black and white), or that the borders look like wood. But that’s really the point. Textures are about creating effects that add depth and dimension without being overpowering.

Mobile is Hot

Whether we like it or not, mobile devices are everywhere. This fast growing market adds a lot of excitement to dynamic web design, but also presents new challenges.

One concern in mobile design is the vast difference in screen sizes, and making content fit well on all sizes and resolutions. One answer to this problem is that of a gridded format, which can be resized and reordered to fit any screen size. Grid layouts are becoming more common, and allow for a very well structured site with clear organization and hierarchy. Another challenge derived from mobile devices is that of the touch interface. The mouse is non-existent, meaning all interactivity must be accessible through tap, or sometimes just the swipe of a finger.

The Future

It’s inevitable that more changes related to web design are on the horizon, and likely always will be. But regardless of what changes, designers can’t forget the importance of usability and creating meaning from the design. Good design will add value through its ideas. It’s up to the talented and resourceful designer to determine what technologies can help bring these ideas to reality.

It’s tempting to think having a website with all of your information displayed will be enough to entice the user to fill out a form or pick up the phone, but this isn’t always the case. So how are you tracking whether or not there are certain elements of your website that can be improved? There are new methods of A/B testing that can make this tracking easy.

What is A/B Testing?

For our purposes, A/B testing is a way to track how people are getting through your website and what improvements need to be made. It allows businesses to test a different design and format of a webpage to see whether or not it is more effective than the current page. The testing should be random to ensure that a wide range of users get either page “A” or page “B.”

Google Analytics and Google Optimizer

To conduct some simple A/B testing, Google Optimizer and Google Analytics is a great place to start. Both of these tools are free to any user and offer a lot of insight into possible bottlenecks and problems that users are having with your website. Google Analytics allows you to measure click-through rates to other pages of your website once a user gets to the homepage. Google Analytics also allows you track how many interior pages users are seeing and also seeing the average amount of time someone spends on the page or whether they click to the page and exit. If the rate of exit is high on one page, that is a good indicator that there are some improvements that can be made. By narrowing down the problem pages in your website, you can start to think about improvements in usability and performance.

Businesses often re-work their websites to gain better user experience and higher conversion rates, but how can they actually measure the effectiveness of new layouts and designs? Google Optimizer allows you to do that. You can keep the original page you were using and also create a new page to see which one performs better. By putting a small script in the <head> tag of your website, Google Optimizer will randomly give the visitor either page “A” or page “B.” It will then track the clicks, conversions and bounce rates of those pages and show you which pages are performing better from a user’s standpoint. This can be very helpful to improve conversions and see what further improvements can be made.

The Importance of A/B Testing for Business

Businesses are always trying to improve the number of products or services they sell. And with so many businesses relying on their website to generate leads, it’s vitally important to do A/B testing. A website often creates the first impressions a new visitor receives a business. If the look and usability of the website is poor, visitors may be apprehensive about taking action.

Without A/B testing, your website may not be living up to its full potential and may be hurting your bottom line. This is especially true if you are running an e-commerce website where online sales are critical. If a user is frustrated or cannot find the information they are looking for within a short amount of time, they will leave your page and possibly never return. That is why it is crucial for your business to track bounce rates and the average amount of time a visitor spends on a page. If a visitor only spends an average of one second, and that page has a bounce rate of 80%, it is a good idea to look at the layout and elements on the page to see how you can simplify the user experience without losing the quality of content.

Heat Maps and User Behavior

If there is one website that has taken heat map technology and refined their entire flow of content because of it, it’s Google. With most people reading from left to right, it makes sense that visitors will almost always scan your website in the same fashion. The average amount of time a visitor spends on a webpage is about three seconds. If you can’t gain the visitor’s attention within three seconds, they may leave. A great tool to help gauge where people are clicking (and what people are most interested in on your website) is a freeware program called “Clickheat.”

Clickheat generates a heat map of any webpage on your website to show you where visitors are clicking the most. This can be a good indicator of where to put important calls-to-action or news on your website. More information about Clickheat can be found at http://www.labsmedia.com/clickheat/index.html.

More Resources for A/B Testing

• 101 A/B Testing Tips
  A comprehensive resource of tips, tricks and ideas.

• ABtests.com
  A place to share and read A/B test results.

• Effective A/B Testing
  By Ben Tilly.

• Practical Guide to Controlled Experiments on the Web (PDF)
  From Microsoft Research.

• Introduction to A/B Testing
  From the 20bits blog.

The <audio> and <video> tags operate the exact same way, and I don’t want to accidentally encourage anybody to place background music (or the sounds of farm animals) on there website! So from here on out we’ll talk solely about the <video> tag!

From a code standpoint, embedding video couldn’t be easier. Open a <video> tag, place the actual video source inside, and the browser does the rest!

All modern browsers support HTML5 video, but (there’s always a but) they support difference video formats. The latest versions of Mozilla Firefox, Google Chrome, and Opera support Google’s WebM open video format. Both Microsoft Internet Explorer and Apple Safari don’t support WebM and instead use H.264 for video playback.

The creators of the HTML5 spec were thinking ahead though, inside that <video> tag you can list fallbacks for different browsers! So we can list a WebM source, a H.264 source, and can even insert an old Flash player as the final fallback for all the kiddies using older versions of Internet Explorer.

Where the <video> tag gets fun is interaction and styling we are able to do with it. Because it’s a HTML element, we can add styling via CSS, create our own buttons and interactions via JavaScript, and even use other HTML5 drawing elements such as SVG and canvas.

The new <video> and <audio> tags help rid our dependence on the Adobe Flash plugin, AND will save time, which will in turn save you money! Thank you HTML5!

Social Networking has become a large part of search engine optimization (“seo”). And while we’ve heard that it is important, it can be hard to understand how everything ties together. So let’s start with your website, which can be thought of as the epicenter of information about your company. When discussing link building, we are normally talking about how we can improve search results to attract visitors to your website. The real question is, how do you get relevant visitors and traffic?

The Google Farmer Update

With the new Google “farmer/panda” update, methods traditionally used to improve search have changed a bit in favor of social media. Google’s update hit many traditional link-building websites hard, including article and e-zine-intensive sites. Many of these sites have been called “content farms” because they have thousands of pages of content that are not of good quality and/or don’t have content relevant to search queries. Overnight, some of these websites lost up to 90% of their traffic. But even so, article building and press releases are still a good way to get links to your website—you simply have to be selective in where your articles and releases are submitted. And social networking (Facebook, Twitter, etc.), in particular, plays a significant role in this update because these sites usually have the most up-to-date content.

Social Networking for Business

We often get asked, “How can Facebook help our business? I thought it was just a website to connect with old friends.” Of course you can do those things with Facebook, but it can also act as means to spread information about your business faster than any traditional media could ever dream. If you’ve spent time on Facebook, think about how often you see people pressing the “like” button and reposting other people’s posts. When you “like” something on your friend’s Facebook profile, it sends a status update to all of your friends. And if 10 of your friends end up pressing the “like” button, then it gets sent to all of their friends. And on and on it goes.

The above situation is called the “power of ten” effect. Basically, if you post something on your Facebook page and all of your friends see it, 10% of those friends will repost it, and so on. Let’s say you started with 100 friends. That means if you post the original, 10 of your friends posted it again, and then 10 of their friends re-post, then ultimately over 10,000 people saw it on their status update ticker. That is the power of just one form of social networking.

Twitter acts in a different way by relaying relevant information from “tweets” into driving traffic to your website through back-links and relevant keywords. Let’s say you are a bakery and decided to showcase a new page on your website about cake decorating classes. The title of that page could be something like, “New Cake Decorating Classes in Lancaster.” If you took the same keywords and put it in a Twitter post called, “Check out our new cake decorating classes in Lancaster http://www.domain.com”, that would act as a relevant back-link. When Twitter is crawled by Google, you may see that your website now pops-up under the search “Cake decorating classes in Lancaster.”

Not Right for Everyone

It’s easy to get excited about social media and its impact on search and lead generation. But social networking is not right for every business. A business that has a very specialized audience may not benefit from social media as much as a business who has a larger audience (for instance, a business that sells aerospace products compared to a business that sells cell phones). It is good to assess your business structure before deciding whether or not social networking is right for you. Even if it has the benefit of potentially giving you a boost in rankings over the short term, it may be more beneficial in the long-term to work on article writing and press releases instead.

Social networking websites won’t be the silver bullet for all of your Internet marketing needs, but it may help gain more credibility, allow you to connect with your customers and act as an information hub to spread the word about your products or services. With so many new sites popping up in the social hemisphere, it may be time to get on the bandwagon and find out what the buzz is about.

1. Let your goods or services become commoditized and fight it out in the arena of lowest price wins.
2. Shore up your marketing efforts and give consumers a reason to pay more for what you’re selling.

If you chose “A,” good luck to you and the roughly 1 billion Chinese who are fighting it out for the same table scraps. If you chose “B,” then you need to be focusing on your brand. But what does that even mean?

A lot has been published about brand building, brand equity, brand standards and even creating a brand for multiple brands. But the core premise is simple in concept, if perhaps a bit trickier in execution. Following are a few of the basics.

What a brand is:

• An attribute or attributes that make your product, service or company unique.
• A set a beliefs or practices by which your company lives.
• An understanding of who you are.
• A promise to your customers.

What a brand is not:

• A new logo, jingle, phrase or list of design requirements.
• A customer service practice.
• A price.

A brand, therefore, is that unique set of attributes that makes you different from your competition. It’s a set of promises about your company, product or service that ultimately allows you greater control over market price and market share. A brand is, essentially, a promise to your customers that is derived from your overarching mission. This promise should be used to guide strategies that can then be turned into specific tactics.

What does this mean for a business trying to do more than simply stay afloat in a market filled with too many products and too few buyers? It means you’ve got to live up to your brand promise, and that brand promise had better meet or exceed what a potential buyer expects. If it doesn’t, you can bet the business next door will be trying their darndest to eat your lunch. After all, they don’t want table scraps either.

If you do not yet have a website, focusing your efforts on the core site first is always recommended. Once a core site is in place, you can typically:

• Re-use static content from your website, so nothing else is needed.
• Have an extra style sheet created for mobile devices to read, removing animation, re-ordering text, re-aligning images, etc. to allow content to work better on these devices.

In terms of functionality, the possibilities of off-line data storage, drag and drop interfaces, easy video embedding and geo-location are almost endless. Many modern mobile devices have GPS chips in them, and the browsers are location aware. So one day, you could be in a restaurant and surfing their site. The restaurant’s website asks to see your locations via GPS, and it knows you are in the store. It then displays a message recommending that you get “today’s special now,” and offers a 10% coupon.

Much like a traditional website, the possibilities for mobile website applications are virtually limitless. But by creating a mobile version of your site, you’ll ensure mobile device users have a good experience with your brand regardless of what they might be using to find you.