Robert Blaise

Mobile Commerce, Twitter to Save E-Comm Sales?

comScore says mobile commerce and social marketing may be the savior of the future for online sales.While e-commerce growth was flat for the first quarter, the sector likely bottomed out, with online sales increases likely to hover around 5 percent for the second half of the year, comScore Chairman Gian Fulgoni said during a Webinar going over the research firm’s Q1 findings. Though e-commerce had seen double-digit growth for the past several years, Fulgoni said the worst may be over, as he cited mobile commerce and social network and video site marketing at sites such as Twitter and Hulu as opportunities for bolstering sales in the near future. “The good news here is that I think it’s bottomed out, in the second quarter we saw 13 percent growth, that dropped to six in the third quarter of 08, in Q4 it was minus three, now flat in the first quarter, so we’re not seeing a continued downward trend,” said the comScore (NASDAQ: SCOR) chief. He was less optimistic, however, on future growth for this year, saying it’s not likely online sales will see the double-digit increases the sector enjoyed over the past few years, and reluctantly predicted about five percent spikes.

Local Mobile Advertising Gains Traction

Local mobile advertising will be the next hot trend, with local mobile search leading the way, according to BIA’s The Kelsey Group.

Local mobile ad revenue will grow to $3.1 billion in 2013, up from $160 million last year, while mobile search will reach $2.3 billion, according to the firm’s forecasts. Local searches made up 27.8 percent of all searches in 2008, but are expected to hit 35.1 percent in 2013, according to the report, “Going Mobile: The Mobile Local Media Opportunity.”

“As mobile data consumption rises, we expect local marketing to be a big winner. There is a strong correlation between local search and the mobile use case, which will cause a good portion of the ongoing mobile application boom to focus on local,” Michael Boland, the The Kelsey Group’s program director for mobile local media (MLM), said in a statement.

Only the local interactive segment will show growth throughout the forecast period. All other local media will experience marginal to rapid declines in the next 18 to 36 months. A small number of traditional media will rebound with a revived economy beginning in 2011, though most traditional media will continue to decline, albeit at a slower pace, according to the report.

Inventory Management on a Shoestring

Inventory management is not just for enterprises anymore. With the advent of e-commerce and globalization, small companies are engaging in many of the same business processes as large firms and even competing on the same turf at times. To do their jobs right, they need some of the same capabilities as their larger cousins — but they need them for a small-biz price.  Simple, efficient and highly scalable at Visuwire.com our back-office management system delivers mission-critical functionality that spans multiple sales channels. Our customers are shipping many hundreds of items every month and in most cases, we are the only technology provider they deploy. To find out how Visuwire can help you automate your back office visit  www.visuwire.com for a no obligation  quote on your project.

5 Easy steps to creating an effective blog

Blogs have made a grand entrance into the marketing dominion. Why? They can be a successful marketing tool if done rights. Blogs have core components that increase their success such as content, distribution, and frequency, but you need more than that to get people to read it. Popular blogs have one thing in common; an individual voice. A voice will not only gain readers, but it keeps them. Here are five stepsthat you can follow that will enable you to create an effective blog:

1.    Create a Blog Personality- Be free, honest and open with your blog and allow it to develop it’s own personality your reader can easily tell if you are being disingenuous.
2.    Keep it simple- This has been our approach to design for quite some time. Short concise post are far more effective than long winded paragraphs that are without substance.
3.    Consistency is key- Yeah, this is a major struggle for most people as time simply does not permit in most cases. My advise develop a schedule then stick with it, 3 times and week is a decent goal every other day is ideal.
4.    Good Titles draw attention- Just like a book in a library the title of your blog will enable you to stand out from others.
5.    Comments are good- Interaction with your reader is one of the many reasons why you blog so why not allow them to post comments that are moderated of course.

Find out how Googles New Seach Options Affect SEO

Google’s search options were designed to allow users to refine their searches. That means users will use these to weed out irrelevant results and better find what they’re looking for.

It also means that there is a whole new set of guidelines that search engine marketers will need to think about…or does it? Perhaps it’s just the same guidelines, only emphasized to the user more now, thereby making it more important than ever for marketers and web site owners to consider them.