To us, this isn’t a surprise — we’ve been advising clients to avoid Flash for most of this year. Even before this announcement, Flash sites didn’t work on Apple’s handheld devices. A few months ago, Microsoft announced that Flash wouldn’t work on future Microsoft tablets. And many Android devices that supported Flash didn’t have enough processing power to handle the sites well.

Flash will live on in certain PC-only Web sites and as a standalone program.  Though, the era of Flash on Web sites is over.

• When I start my business, people will start using my Web site without me having to do anything.
• There are some easy special things I can do to my Web site to attract a lot of new customers.
• I want to start the next Facebook, Twitter, Craigslist or eBay.

Do I need a mobile version of my Web site?

In many cases, no. Most Web sites work just fine on mobile devices with no alteration. Mobile devices using Apple iOS or Android use browsers based on Webkit, which also powers Google’s Chrome and Apple’s Safari browser. There are exceptions: sites that use Flash will not work properly on many handheld devices.

When do I need a special Mobile version of your site?

In short, when you expect a sizable percentage of traffic from mobile visitors. Some examples would be restaurants, news sites and movie theaters. Businesses that expect visitors to purchase items from their site using a mobile device will need to do more — they will need to create a mobile shopping experience. But it is important to be realistic –few businesses at this time should expect a large number of mobile purchases.

Do I need an app?

Most smart phones allow users to install applications or apps for short.  Apps make access to your business easier for your customers, but installing a program on their device may take extra time and space on their phone. To determine whether you need an app, pretend you are a customer — would you want to install this app on your phone? It may help to interview potential customers.

- Is your Web host ready? We recently reviewed a client’s Web hosting documentation and discovered this gem: “If for whatever reason your sites increased traffic causes problems for the server it may be necessary for the support department to ‘throttle’ your site … or possible (sic) even disable it.” Yikes. I wouldn’t want that to happen on the day of my national debut. Make sure your Web hosting is an environment which will be ready to handle all of that traffic. Check in with your Web hosting company and be sure you are on a Web hosting plan that can accommodate your needs.
- Have you tested? There are various tools available for simulating large numbers of simultaneous users — they are called Web site load testing tools. None of these are perfect, but they should give you a general idea of what you can handle. Make sure this testing any actions necessary to improve things are completed before the big day.
- Have an estimate. Although your business has never had national exposure before, you have had more limited attention. Try to make some educated guesses based on your previous experience. A local ad campaign, which reaches 2,000 people, netted 10 orders in 1 day. A national campaign, which reaches 200,000 people might net 1,000 in one day. It isn’t important that these numbers are 100% accurate — even if they aren’t, they will give you an estimate to plan for.

Good luck on your big day!

It is important to know the facts about mobile browser usage in the real world. Perception does’t match the reality of today’s mobile environment:

- Even though almost all questions we get about mobile browsers involve the iPhone, most smart phones sold today aren’t actually iPhones. According to tech firm, Canalys, the top operating system on smart phones in Quarter 3 of last year was actually Google’s Android operating system with 44% market share. Apple’s iPhone is almost tied for 2nd place with RIM’s Blackberry, both at rough 25%. Microsoft’s Windows Mobile was far behind at 3% (though, they released a new version in quarter 4 which probably increased market share).

- Even though almost every one is asking about them, mobile phones make up a very small amount of web traffic on corporate Web sites. 2-3% of traffic is normal. While it is growing, that small number makes mobile not a huge concern for most business owners. There are exceptions: news, sports and information get more traffic from phones. But lawyers, doctors, product retailers and most other sites will stay in the 2-3% range for a while longer.

- Most Web sites automatically work on mobile phones without changes. That’s because Google’s Android and Apple’s iPhone Web Browsers use “webkit,” which is the basis for Apple’s Safari Web Browser and Google’s Chrome Web Browser. For the most part, things that work on those browsers work on the phones too. There is one major exception: Adobe’s Flash — which is used for animations and videos — doesn’t work on the iPhone and some Android phones. The Android issue will be resolved over time as phones get upgraded or replaced, the iPhone issue is the result of a squabble between Apple and Adobe and doesn’t look set to change anytime soon. So for videos and animations to work on the iPhone, they have to be recoded.

We hope that helps. What other mobile questions do you have?

Outsourcing might be a cheaper route, but not if those savings are eaten up by timeline and cost overruns to fix mistakes made by overseas workers due to a lower skill levels or miscommunication.

At Curvine, most of our work is done in our office or with local designers & programmers who we can meet face to face. We have experimented with using folks from out of the country on specific projects. While the hourly rate is lower, the work takes longer both in terms of time to completion and billable hours. There are language barriers and quality of work issues which have to be solved. It isn’t that you can’t solve these problems (in fact, we have had one longterm HTML producer who has been the exception to this rule), it is just that it isn’t automatic and some or most of the cost savings is lost to these issues.

When do you think outsourcing to a foreign country is right? When is it not right?

Keywords are the building blocks of every search engine. If you cannot find a relevant search from what you have typed in the Google Search Bar, try eliminating the articles conjunctions and verbs. Focus on the main words that make up your search. Paraphrasing may also help. Instead of typing “who wrote Huck Finn”, try “Huck Finn author”.

Using the word “OR” such as Harry Potter or Edward Cullens will make Google look for pages with either or both words in it. Using the word “AND” will result in web pages having both words accordingly. Proper wording will yield better results. In some cases maybe you have misspelled the word. Although a search engine will try its best to look for your inquiry, writing correct words will again yield better results and will not waste time and effort.

Punctuation also helps too. Enclosing your search in quotation marks will make the engine look for searches with the exact phrase you have enclosed in it. Putting a “:” such as in the case of Stephen King : Amazon will make Google look for Stephen King only in the Amazon website. In this example putting a ”:” lets you search a query in a specific website. Putting a “-” sign before a word means that you want to exclude the term from your search. Lastly, putting an “*” after a word will make it act as a placeholder and you are allowing Google to place there whatever words it matches with it.

When it comes to using your search engine more effectively: wording and punctuation are key. Search engines are very powerful tools. When used correctly you are assured to find only the most relevant information that you seek.

Jay Gardella is a technical researcher and innovator living in the mid-west. Gardella works as a representative for Clear Wireless and in his spare time he loves spending time with his friends and family.

First of all, let’s address what the point of social media marketing is: it’s a way of connecting with your user using the tools they use to connect to their friends. For example, when a user “likes” your page on Facebook, they will see your messages in their “feed”  between messages from other businesses they “like” and other people they are friends with. These icons help users find your social media pages on other sites. Adding these icons only helps those businesses that have compelling content on those pages. So just creating a Twitter account without using it doesn’t help — you actually have to post something on a regular basis.

This all sounds great, what could go wrong? Sometimes these icons can get relatively large and bright. When that occurs, it might distract your users from doing whatever they came to your site to do. For example, if a user wants to purchase a widget from you, and they are bombarded with a huge Facebook icon that steals their attention, they may not buy.

So what’s the answer — should businesses add social media icons? Yes, they should as long as they have content on the social media sites for users to see and as long as the icons aren’t too distracting. See ibm.com (bottom right) for a great example on how to make the icons be less distracting.

You need to increase your conversion rate. The conversion rate is the percentage of people who come to your site to buy. According to an old post on Conversion Chronicles, the average is 2.3%, but it varies from 1% to 7% depending on the type of product and the type of traffic. How do you make that number rise? Here are 10 ideas:

1. Compare prices: for products that are not unique, most people will make price a significant portion of their decision making criteria. Compare your pricing against other Web sites — is your price competitive? If your product is more expensive, but includes something else — is it clear that something else is included?

2. Up your credibility: Consider participating in programs and sites that make your Web site look more credible. Would a BBB logo on your cart pages be helpful? You want to help make people feel safe comfortable shopping in your store.

3. Make your add to cart and checkout buttons standout. Work with your graphic designer to make these action buttons stand out, but still fit in with the rest of the Web site.  There’s a line between standing out enough that someone can easily find it and standing out so much that it is distracting that has to be walked.

4. Watch your shipping charges: Many people add items to a cart but ultimately don’t buy because they are surprised by shipping charges that are higher than they expect. Consider minimizing these charges or making them clear from the beginning.

5. Keep checkout short: Resist the temptation to make people fill out a lot of questions during checkout. Can a checkbox be added to copy billing address to shipping? Can the question about where they heard about you from be removed? Consider every second a user spends on checkout an opportunity for them to NOT purchase.

6. Pictures: Make sure every product has a picture or more if possible. A picture is worth a thousand words, and it is clear that product pages with clear and large photos are going to be purchased more often than just text and small pictures.

7. Look at site searches: Find out what your users are searching for on your site. Are they finding what they are looking for? For example, if a user searches for ‘baskets’ and doesn’t find any on your site, that’s likely a missed opportunity for a sale.

8. Offer Paypal. We always recommend to our clients that they accept credit cards without Paypal. But if you already do this, it is nice to allow users to have Paypal as an option. It shouldn’t be the only option, but for users who like Paypal, it can speed up the checkout process considerably.

9. Experiment: Use Google Web site optimizer to help learn more about your users. Set up an experiment to vary the copy for a popular product or to change the color of your shopping cart.

10. What would Amazon do? Amazon.com is the leading online retailer. After you’ve done all of these other steps, its a good idea to review their site for additional tips.

It is important to note that there are inherent biases in any of the companies that release market share data. Statcounter relies on small Web sites who want to see additional information on who is using their Web site. For example, some companies may undercount corporate users or home users, or include worldwide results. We don’t make decisions on what to test on based on any specific company’s data.

Source: StatCounter Global Stats – Browser Version Market Share