Our innate desire to socialize has helped make the Internet a platform where people share information and their life experiences. The social nature of the Internet is something that institutions like governments, universities and businesses, cannot ignore. Having been a by-product of this network revolution, e-commerce businesses have much to gain from taking a decidedly social approach to businesses. First off, consumers have made online shopping an opportunity to socialize — not unlike going to the mall with friends. As we’ve…
Author: Brent Kobayashi
Around the Office: Better Page Titles, Backing It Up, Landing Pages, 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. This week at Online Friendly, Roberto reminded us that search results can often boil down to writing better page titles — the world’s top search engine agrees. Eva got a glimpse at the state of social media thanks to a new infographic that shows its influence by the numbers. Duct Tape…
Before You Open Up Shop: 5 Guidelines for a Functioning E-commerce Business
By now you’ve likely heard about how the Internet is transforming business, and at least a few e-commerce success stories. Whether you’re hoping to put your existing business on the Web or start a new online store, making the plunge into e-commerce can be rewarding. But it’s best to get your business started online properly. In this post, we’ll look at some things to consider before opening an online store. 1. Let them help themselves One of the major differences…
Around the Office: 2012 Trends and Predictions, Social Spam, 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. In the first week of 2012, we wondered whether the doomsayers were wrong about their cataclysmic predictions about the year 2012 given the general lack of fire and brimstone. We were interested in what Nettuts+ counted as their year-end web development trends and their predictions — and we had some of…
The Top 10 Digital Marketing Trends of 2011 + Some Predictions for 2012
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…
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 —…