Now that the year that’s nearly over, it’s a great time for reflection. Being on the edge of digital marketing, we wanted to share some of this sector’s trends that we thought were the most prevalent in 2011. Drawing upon the conversations we’ve had and overhead, the individual projects we’ve undertaken, and the news reports and blogs we’ve read, we’ve put together a list of some of the major trends we’ve seen emerging. We’ve also dusted off our crystal ball and managed to come up with…
News
Happy Holidays from Online Friendly and Kobayashi Online
At this joyous time of year, we’d like to wish you happy holidays. It has been a true honor working with our clients over the year, and sharing tips to make the most of your online presence. We wish you abundance, happiness, and peace to you, your family, and your business for the coming year. We’re also excited to see what opportunities are in store for you in 2012. We’d love to help you to see them to fruition. As…
Why e-commerce? 3 Reasons Why an Online Store Makes Sense
E-commerce can be a great standalone business, or an addition to your existing sales. There are numerous examples of companies that have successfully used online retail to their advantage. The Thorpes of Gosforth Fireside Shop, an English store that supplies everything to do with fireplaces, is a great example of a traditional company using the Internet for develop their online business. As a BBC report explains, this store has been able to use its unique selection of products to drive…
Around the office: Modern SEO, Comic Sans Remixes, WordPress 3.3, more
Around the Office is a weekly group blog that shows what the OnlineFriendly.biz team and Kobayashi Online have found interesting, funny, poignant, or otherwise notable over the past week. Roberto wants online traffic seekers to know about some modern day Search Engine Optimization practices, because, after all, SEO isn’t just about backlinks, keywords, and tags anymore. The 1st Web Designer blog makes some SEO recommendations such as optimizing your local searchability; smoothly integrating your SEO and social media marketing; and…
Around the Office: Colour Gradients, Coca-Cola Changes Colour, more
Around the Office is a weekly group blog that shows what the OnlineFriendly.biz team and Kobayashi Online have found interesting, funny, poignant, or otherwise notable over the past week. Daveed has been using a new online tool from Colorzilla that creates colour gradients using CSS. Select any number of colours, adjust their position, and the Ultimate CSS Gradient Generator give you a preview of how it will look, as well as the code to apply it to your website. Brent…
Around the Office: Japan’s Colours, Web Activity Maps, Hiring Immigrants, more
Around the Office is a weekly group blog that shows what the OnlineFriendly.biz team and Kobayashi Online have found interesting, funny, poignant, or otherwise notable over the past week. If you’re interested in Internet traffic, Wayne wants you to check out some very cool visualization tools from Akamai that show how the Internet is doing at any given moment. Akamai is one of the largest content delivery networks — basically they help speed up the serving of online content —…
News Release: Kobayashi Online Develops New Online Immigrant Resource
User Experience-Focused Web Design Makes Hireimmigrants.ca a One-Stop Help Center for Employers November 30, 2011 — TORONTO, ONTARIO — Toronto-based digital marketing agency Kobayashi Online has redesigned Hireimmigrants.ca to provide a user experience that guides employers through the process and benefits of recruiting, retaining and promoting skilled immigrants. Hireimmigrants.ca is an initiative of ALLIES (Assisting Local Leaders with Immigrant Employment Strategies), whose mission is to support local efforts in Canadian cities to successfully adapt and implement programs that further the suitable employment of skilled immigrants.…
Design, Layout, Functionality: the Basic Elements of Web Experience
A great webpage is more than just the product of good code. Think back to the last time you navigated a website and found the information, product or service you were looking for. [Updated January 2018] If this was a positive experience, chances are that a lot of thought went into creating a site that looks good and provides you with what you want in the simplest way. This type of site uses design, layout, and functionality to create an…
Kobayashi Online Supports Cut-A-Thon and Toy Drive
Kobayashi Online is proud to be a supporting sponsor of Donato Salon + Spa’s Cut-A-Thon and Toy Drive for SickKids this weekend. Kobayashi Online handles many aspects of Donato’s Web presence, having created their eCommerce website and integrated blog, as well as a custom email gift certificate solution. A successful charity campaign needs to have a strong online element, and for this latest campaign, Kobayashi Online added a Cut-A-Thon pop up ad to both the donato.ca and donatoacademy.com websites. The…
Around the Office: Urban Type, Meta Data, Grooveshark’s Blues, more
Around the Office is a weekly group blog that shows what the OnlineFriendly.biz team and Kobayashi Online have found interesting, funny, poignant, or otherwise notable over the past week. Want your content to be found online? Wayne wants you to know about an HTML standard that can be understood by the major search engines. Google, Microsoft, and Yahoo! have all agreed on schema.org as a universal way of providing meta data (or microdata) elements within HTML. This means you can…