September 29, 2010
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Posted by
Antonella Pannizzo
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Most of us have used location based services such as Foursquare and Gowalla to check-in and earn rewards or discounts from some of our favorite retailers. However, a new mobile shopping app for iPhone allows you to not only check-in but earn points by scanning the barcode on products in the store. It’s called CheckPoints - ‘The App that pays you back’ is their motto, where you check-in everywhere you shop, earn points for scanning products and redeem points for prizes. This is how it works: Once you arrive in a store and select the location to check-in, CheckPoints will then list all the ...
September 22, 2010
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Posted by
Antonella Pannizzo
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The latest research from eMarketer shows that mobile usage has significantly increased in the past year. More and more people are using their mobile phones for everything from social networking to online shopping. According to the latest research, US mobile penetration is estimated to be 80% this year. With this increase in mobile adoption, online retail has been one of the fastest growing mobile segments. eMarketer indicates a 91% change from 2009 to 2010 in online retail for mobile. In addition, the number of unique users has almost doubled in the last year.
As research indicates, c...
September 16, 2010
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Posted by
Wanda Cadigan
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Last week Google introduced Google Instant, a form of predictive search. The basic premise of Google Instant is to help users by showing relevant results as a query is typed. Think of it as a ‘search before you type’ kind of analogy. There have been many, many blog posts subsequently written on whether Google Instant is bad or good, or somewhere in between. I won’t get into the philosophical debate as quite frankly, it’s really too early to tell the implications for users, businesses and those in the SEO community. This blog post is not about Google Instant; it is however about how Google-spo...
September 15, 2010
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Posted by
Melany Gallant
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Years ago when I realized I could do my Christmas shopping online, without stepping into a busy, crowded mall, I knew e-commerce and I had established a long-lasting relationship.
It seems many feel the same way because e-commerce growth is steady. According to comScore, consumers spent $66.9 billion online in the first half of 2010, a 9.4% jump over the first half of 2009, and Forrester Research projects that US online retail will grow to $335 billion by 2012.
Today, social commerce services and tools - such as mobile applications, geo-location shopping, QR codes, social (barcode) tagg...
September 10, 2010
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Posted by
Antonella Pannizzo
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Facebook recently launched its location-based services feature called Places. The new feature allows Facebook users to check in to ‘places’ and announce their location to their friends. Using Places you can check in at a given venue (like a restaurant), see if any of your friends are nearby and whether they have checked in to the same location as you, and then ‘tag’ those friends. Once you’ve checked in to a venue, your location is published as a status update on your Facebook contacts’ news feed and is also listed as an update on the Facebook Places page. (You can learn more on how to u...
September 9, 2010
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Posted by
Melany Gallant
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Mobile marketing presents a powerful opportunity for retailers to engage with customers in a more personalized interactive manner, to increase loyalty, generate word-of-mouth, and improve store and Web traffic.
In a recent article, Internet Retailer cites that The Nielsen Co. expects smartphone adoption to represent 50% of all phones in use by the end of next year. While the assertion is that smartphone adoption will drive m-commerce, it can be difficult for retailers to make the decision on whether to invest in creating a mobile site or a mobile app.
The decision is further hampered ...