Looking at Google Trends for SOPA and PIPA, the majority of searches came from Spanish and Portuguese speaking countries (sopa de fideo con pollo sounds delicious) or people searching for the now famous sister of a famous new royal – until this week. This week as Google, Wikipedia, Reddit and other prominent sites protested SOPA [...]

Last year, we questioned whether Thanksgiving is the new Cyber Monday. This year comes word from benchmarking service Coremetrics that Thanksgiving Day online shopping rose by 39 percent over last year, with estimated U.S. sales of $400 million. And according to Internet Retailer, this is the first time Thanksgiving Day sales have beaten Saturday’s sales. [...]

Findings from a new report from Forrester Research and GSI Commerce are somewhat surprising, in that the study suggests that social media has very little impact on purchasing behavior. The results seem contrary to other reports with headlines such as Social Media Marketing Spend to Hit $3.1 Billion by 2014 and 5 Ways Facebook’s Open [...]

Sitting around the TV with my family on Thanksgiving this year, I noticed a trend: While the football games buzzed from the flat screen, instead of asking to change the channel or playing cards or playing with the dogs, my sisters sat on the couch with their laptops and shopped. One was looking for advance [...]

More and more shoppers are turning to social media sources before they make their holiday purchases in 2009. This step seems like a logical progression with the ever expanding online marketplace using Twitter and Facebook to communicate with their customer base, but the changes from last year to this year are more leaps and bounds [...]

According to an article recently published by Forrester Research, 68% of the top 50 Internet retailers now use video content on their sites, compared with just 18% in 2008. The same article goes on to say that while only 16% of online buyers watch product videos on retailer Web sites, 64% of those consumers who [...]

WebLinc partner Bazaarvoice recently wrote on their blog about Free People’s strategy of highlighting the site’s top reviewers. By rewarding this group of dedicated customers, Free People gives other reviewers a spotlight to aspire to, and helps shoppers find reviewers whose fashion profile most closely matches their own, creating a new source for trusted upsells. [...]

I know we haven’t been posting much lately but, busy bees that we are, we just sort of fell off the boat when it comes to regular postings. Apologies. Anyway, I just wanted to post a quick aside about the 3 Wolf Tee meme that has made it off the internet and into the mainstream [...]

In a recent post on Useit.com, Jakob Nielsen disparages social media outlet Digg as nothing more than an inflation of your bounce rate as its users show up and disappear without delving any deeper into your site. Stan Schroeder of Mashable, social-media’s stalwart defender, quickly rebutted Nielsen’s argument rightly saying that sites like Digg, StumbleUpon [...]

Measuring Landing Page Effectiveness via Google Analytics The importance of landing pages and their roles in SEO & conversion rates is well documented. It is now common practice to design landing pages based on the source & medium of the referral. Clearly then, it is equally important to find a way to measure the effectiveness [...]