The Skinny on Google Maps Street View
For years, Google has sent its search bots to crawl the web, indexing content and images in order to rank search results. As Google Maps has become more complex and accurate, however, Google has been...
View ArticleFractured Mobile Market Poses Challenges for Merchants, Developers
With the growth in popularity of several different mobile devices using the Android OS, the mobile environment is becoming increasingly diverse. AdMob, the mobile advertising network that tracks...
View ArticleLanguage Translation: Man Versus Machine
Anyone who has visited a foreign country knows the difficulty of buying products in a foreign language. This confusion can be overwhelming, whether haggling on the street or buying online. But, for...
View ArticleThree Free Language Translation Programs
While there is no substitute for human linguistic knowledge, there are cheaper ways to translate large amounts of text than by hiring a professional translator. A good way for merchants to circumvent...
View ArticleGoogle Docs: Word Processing, Collaboration, More
Google offers a variety of useful free tools merchants can use in place of other more costly software. One of these is Google Docs, a free word processing tool with plenty of room for file storage and...
View ArticleOverseas Expansion: Tips from a Global Exec
Once merchants are successful in domestic markets, many of them weigh the benefits of expanding their operations abroad. The many challenges accompanying overseas expansion, including language...
View ArticleVolunteer for a Free Mobile-Optimized Ecommerce Site
Editor's Note: We published the following article seeking a merchant for our forthcoming mobile optimization series. Many merchants replied, and we selected DecalGirl.com, a seller of mobile device...
View ArticleSSL Certificates: Extended Validation Worth the Cost?
Internet users interact with SSL certificates when they access a web page or transmit data over the web. These certificates help confirm the rightful owner of the site, and that payment and other...
View ArticleGoogle Apps: Free Business Tools, Plus Collaboration Services
As Google expands the number of tools and services it offers, it also seeks to package those services so they can be linked with each other and between the main user and other collaborators. This is...
View ArticleOptimizing an Ecommerce Site for Mobile Devices, Part 1: Getting Started
In September we published "Volunteer for a Free Mobile-Optimized Ecommerce Site," an offer for one merchant to volunteer for a mobile optimization case study in which we follow the process of creating...
View ArticleMobile Commerce Is Coming
The iPhone and iTouch are the fastest-growing technology platforms in history. That is according to Morgan Stanley analyst Mary Meeker, who also predicts that mobile commerce will dramatically grow in...
View ArticleNotable Ecommerce iPhone Apps
Mobile ecommerce is beginning to manifest itself in several different ways. With the dramatic increase in fast, 3G cellular subscribers in the United States, a burgeoning number of users utilize...
View ArticleFive Innovative Facebook Examples from Ecommerce Merchants
With more than 350 million active users, Facebook’s population has exceeded that of the United States. According to its statistics page, the average user spends more than 55 minutes each day on this...
View ArticleMobile Internet Devices, By the Numbers
Last week, I reported on how the number of mobile devices is exploding worldwide. But coming up with an estimate for the total number of smartphone handsets sold this year is difficult, and numbers...
View ArticleMobile Commerce: Simulators Show Your Site’s Appearance on Mobile Devices
Last week, I cited estimates for the number of Internet-capable mobile devices sold in 2009, and how this has already outpaced the number of computers sold, both portable and desktop. Here I’ll show...
View ArticleAppMakr CEO on Affordable iPhone, Android App Development
The iPhone is now among the most popular gadgets of all-time, but the cost of developing applications for the iPhone App Store has been a barrier for smaller businesses that cannot afford the steep...
View ArticleMobile Payment Systems Are Adapting, Developing
Mobile payment processing can help merchants take advantage of the one item people rarely leave home without: a cell phone or mobile device. Accepting payments by text verification has been in...
View ArticleMobile Commerce: Better to Create an App or a Mobile-optimized Site?
As an increasing number of mobile users access the web, merchants may be unsure exactly how to react. Should they build a mobile optimized site, design and submit an app to be approved by the Apple...
View ArticleMobile Commerce: Experts Offer Strategy for Smaller Merchants
Depending on the source, analysts predict U.S. ecommerce merchants will generate in 2010 between $120 billion and $200 billion sales. Mobile commerce is a small fraction of this total. But as mobile...
View ArticleSimplicity Key for Mobile-optimized Ecommerce Sites
We recently reported how mobile Internet devices outsold computers in 2009. And, while the percentage of ecommerce sales conducted on a mobile device is still small (0.8 percent is a generous...
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