Now is an opportune time to take a step back and assess the website trends for the coming year. By identifying website trends for 2010 now, you will be able to develop a progressive plan for your website that will achieve greater results for your business this year.

So, let’s dig in and check out some of the biggest trends to expect:

10 Website Trends for 2010

Digital Keystone

Your web identity now goes way beyond your company website. Think about your blog, Twitter feed, Facebook page, Flickr images and any involvement you have in online social conversations. However, your website still acts as the keystone of your corporate digital profile. Just expect it to integrate more with your expansive digital footprint.

Practicality Reigns

The economy still stinks. And this means that companies are taking a more practical approach to websites. It’s not going to be about flashiness and novelty this year. Instead, brainstorm ways to make your website as useful to your target audience as possible.

The Power of Blogs

Blogs are still a tremendous vehicle for enhancing your online brand and for raising your visibility in the search engines. Setting up a blog is extremely easy. The value proposition is just too outrageously strong for companies to ignore it in 2010. Although some people said that blogs were dead upon the arrival of Twitter, that is simply not the case. Expect not only more blogs this year, but also better integration with corporate websites and also more video blogs.

Digital Integration

With the explosion of social media and social networking, expect a lot of social marketing integration with websites this year. Take a look at Skittles.com for a great example of this. Skittles has gone to the extreme of dropping you on their Facebook Fan Page when you head to their website, with a dashboard panel that connects you with its Twitter feed, YouTube videos, product pages, etc.

Mobile, Mobile, Mobile

The iPhone and iTouch have reached an adoption rate 8X that of AOL after its launch. More than 3 billion iPhone apps have been downloaded to date. Mobile app downloads are to reach $5 billion by 2014. More than 50 million people access the web via their mobile device. Face it, we are mobile. Get used to it. And this means ensuring that your website is viewable and optimized on mobile devices. It also means you should explore all mobile specific options for your site.

Interactivity

Expect more interactivity in 2010. Interactivity is a key advantage of the web over many offline marketing vehicles, and the technology keeps making it easier to incorporate interactivity into websites. Explore options such as forums, Q&A, surveys, polls, contests, suggestions, commenting, crowdsourcing, etc. If you do not provide options for interactivity, users will take it into their own hands — just check out Google Sidewiki, which enables users to comment on ANY website.

Video Everywhere

People love video. It’s as simple as that. YouTube serves roughly 10 billion videos on a monthly basis. Expect to see videos EVERYWHERE in 2010. They will be on home pages, on product pages, in educational content, on YouTube.com and MetaCafe.com, and in blogs. A good example of this is Wine Library TV, with more than 125,000 monthly unique visitors.

Clean, High Quality Design

Expect design to get better this year. There has been an overemphasis on DIY and free templates/tools for the small business community in the past. For anyone serious about their website, they need to take their website design seriously. This typically means hiring a professional website designer. The investment is worth it. In 2010, expect a higher level of quality of illustrations. Check out Meomi Design’s website, and it will open your mind to the possibilities of exceptional design for your site.

Personalization

Leveraging the examples of Threadless.com, Zazzle.com or Lulu.com, expect more personalization in websites in 2010. What the world is really waiting for is a simpler, easier and more scalable way to implement personalization in small business websites. The Website Marketing NOW team believes that such platforms will start to appear in 2010.

Big

There’s a trend towards big now. This means big headers, big type, big images, big calls to action. Think big, big, big. For examples, check out Matt Mullenweg’s blog, Infusionsoft and PixelResort.

INTERNET STATS!

Every month, we look around the web and bring you interesting Internet stats useful for digital marketing planning. Here is our latest set of statistics:

Websites

• There are now 184 million registered domain names (Source: Royal Pingdom, September 2009)
• 9 million new domain names were registered in Q2 2009 (Source: Royal Pingdom, September 2009)
• Rate of domain name renewals was 71% in Q1 2009, and 70% in Q2 2009 (Source: Royal Pingdom, September 2009)

Twitter

• 23,579,044 monthly unique visitors (Source: Compete, August 2009)
• This is a 1.27% increase in monthly unique visitors over July 2009
• 148,651,794 monthly site visits overall (Source: Compete, August 2009)
• Amazingly, this is a 2.99% decrease in monthly site visits overall compared to July 2009 (Note: This decrease is a bit shocking, and something we’ll be keeping our eye on. Stay tuned!)
• Twitter drives downstream visits to over 17,000 downstream websites (Source: Hitwise, September 2009)

Facebook

• 300 million+ active users (Source: Facebook, September 2009)
• Only 3 countries in the entire world have more people than Facebook (China, India and the US)
• Approximately 150 million users log on to Facebook at least once each day (Source: Facebook, September 2009)
• The fastest growing demographic is those 35 years old and older (Source: Facebook, September 2009)
• More than 6 billion minutes are spent on Facebook each day (Source: Facebook, September 2009)
• People that use Facebook on their mobile devices are almost 50% more active on Facebook than non-mobile users (Source: Facebook, September 2009)
• 5% of all time spent online is on Facebook (Source: comScore, March 2009)
• 65 million+ active Facebook users access the site through mobile devices (Source: Facebook, September 2009)

Mobile

• Mobile video reach, up 70 percent year over year, crossed the 10 million active viewer mark in 2008 and kept going – up to 15.3 million active viewers as of Q2 2009 (Source: NielsenWire, September 2009)
• The number of smartphone subscribers increased 72% quarter-over-quarter, growing from 15 million subscribers in Q2 2008 to 26 million in Q2 2009 (Source: NielsenWire, September 2009)
• Working moms are among the country’s highest spenders on cellular phone services, spending 21% more than the average cellular user on their wireless bills monthly (Source: NielsenWire, September 2009)
• Working moms are 42% more likely than the average cellular user to download content to their phone (Source: NielsenWire, September 2009)
• Smartphone users are expected to  increase four-fold by 2013 (Source: In-Stat, March 2009)
• There have been more than 1 billion iPhone app downloads from the iPhone store (Source: Apple, April 2009) (Editor’s Note: On September 28th, it was reported that there have now been more than 2 billion iPhone app downloads! Source: CNET)
• Apple is on pace to sell over 50 million iPhones by September 2011 (Source: iPhone Buzz, September 2009)
  

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Face it. It’s brutal out there. The economy is in the tank, and competition has never been fiercer.

You need an EDGE!

Get one, by reading Blast Through the Recession with Social Media, Mobile Marketing and More!, a new, exclusive Marketing Trends Report by StartupNation and Website Marketing NOW.

The 29-page report outlines the current marketing trends and highlights countless ways for you to capitalize on today’s market opportunities to help your business thrive.

In total, 6 overarching trends and 4 tactical trends are explored in the report.

Highlights:

• Understand the major marketing trends that are impacting your business today (and tomorrow!).
• Learn how to thrive even through the down economy.
• Capitalize on marketing opportunities to ensure that you are one step ahead of your competitors.

Details:

• Title: Recession, Bankruptcies, and the Explosion of Social Media (Marketing Trends Report Q3 2009)
  
• Format: PDF, available as an immediate download
• Price: $10
• Download Websites: StartupNation.com and WebsiteMarketingNOW.com

Take Action:

Think about it. For a mere $10, you can gain insights into current trends and how to kick-start your business again. Can you really afford NOT to read this report??

Your business is not going to improve unless you do something about it. So, take action. Order the new Marketing Trends Report, and start increasing your sales.

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We are happy to announce the introduction of a new monthly feature on the Website Marketing NOW blog:

INTERNET STATS!

Every month, we’ll look around the web and bring you interesting Internet stats useful for digital marketing planning.

Online usage statistics can be a great help to digital marketers, guiding us in the right strategic direction to ensure that our tactics of today take us to where we need to be in the future. To that end, here are some current and recent Internet Stats to help you with your online marketing planning:

Internet Usage

• There were 172,770,464 active Internet users in the US in June 2009 – a 10.36% increase over May 2009 (Nielsen Online, June 2009)
• There are 251,290,489 Internet users in North America overall (Source: Internet World Stats, March 2009)
• 74.4% Internet usage penetration in North America (Source: Internet World Stats, March 2009)
• 132.5% Internet usage growth 2000 – 2008 (Source: Internet World Stats, March 2009)

Websites

• 29.9 new websites were created in 2008 (Source: Royal Pingdom, July 2009)
• There were 185.5 million total websites worldwide at the beginning of 2009 (Source: Royal Pingdom, July 2009)
• In April 2009, this number increased dramatically to 231.5 million websites (an increase of 46 million new websites in just a few months (Source: Royal Pingdom, July 2009)

Twitter

• 23.3 million monthly unique visitors (Source: Compete, July 2009)
• 153 million monthly site visits overall (Source: Compete, July 2009)
• There are more than 11 million Twitter accounts (Source: Sysomos, July 2009)
• 72.5% of all Twitter users joined during the first five months of 2009 (Source: Sysomos, July 2009)

Facebook

• 250 million+ active users (Source: Facebook August 2009)
• 120 million+ users log on to Facebook at least once each day (Source: Facebook August 2009)
• The fastest growing demographic is those 35 years old and older (Source: Facebook August 2009)
• 30m active Facebook users access the site through mobile devices (Source: Facebook August 2009)

WordPress

• There are over 15 million WordPress publishers (Source: WordPress)
• 6 million of these blogs are hosted on WordPress.com plus there are 9 million active installations of the WordPress.org software. (Source: WordPress)
• 200 million people visit one or more WordPress.com blog every month and they view over a billion pages on those blogs (Source: Quantcast)
• Approximately 10K – 15K new WordPress blogs are created on a daily basis (Source: WordPress)

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The Firefox browser just reached over 1 billion downloads. As of this writing, downloads have reached more than 1,005,622,000.

Mozilla, the developers of Firefox, have setup a website to celebrate at 1,000,000,000 + You. You can keep track of the current download count at the Spread Firefox website.

It is turning out to be quite the summer for Firefox. Version 3.5 of the browser was downloaded 4 million times within 24 hours of its release and 75 million times overall this summer. According to StatCounter, the browser currently has a market share exceeding 33.7%, a huge increase from the beginning of the year. While Firefox has been busy increasing its market share, Internet Explorer has been steadily losing share.

What this means to you is that you absolutely must be testing your website in Firefox, ensuring full compatibility with every update you make to your site.

Want a say in the future direction of Firefox development? Let your voice be heard at Mozilla Labs!
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The GetElastic.com blog had an interesting post this week, pointing to the inclination of customers to prefer a free shipping offer over a dollar-based discount offer. So, for example, customers tend to purchase more when an online retailer offers free shipping of the purchase, rather than when the offer is for $10 or $50 off the regular price of the item.

GetElastic points to the following statistics:

• 61% online shoppers prefer to shop with a retailer that offers free shipping than one that doesn’t. — Forrester Research (2007)
• 43% of shoppers abandon their shopping carts because of unexpectedly high shipping charges. — PayPal, comScore (2008)
• 60% claim free shipping is a reason they are more likely to shop online. — Harris Interactive (2008)
• 90% believe free shipping offers would entice them to spend more online. — The Conference Board (2008)

This customer trend is interesting, in that it proves that any and all online retail offers should be tested. You never know what customers are going to respond to, and so the most effective way to refine and optimize your marketing offers is to test, test, test.

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Small businesses are going social, leveraging social media and social networking sites/technologies to strengthen their overall marketing mix.

Although there is certainly a lot of hype around social marketing these days, the numbers indicate that small businesses are truly taking advantage of new opportunities presented by this type of marketing. According to a study by Sage Software and AMI-Partners, more than 260,000 small businesses in North America are now engaged in social networking.

Most of the businesses use professional social networking sites such as LinkedIn, according to the study. General social networking sites such as MySpace and Facebook were also widely used.

What’s surprising is the number of small businesses that have yet to engage in blogging, which presents a company with a unique opportunity for engaging with customers in a controlled publishing environment. According to the study, 72% of small businesses have stayed away from blogging. Small businesses that are looking for a marketing edge should look to blogging as a potential tactic within their overall marketing mix, especially if their competition is not active in this area.

Tips for social marketing for small businesses:

• Decide in which forms of social marketing you will participate. Then focus. Don’t try to do everything – you’ll spread yourself too thin and will limit effectiveness.
• Create conversations with prospective clients.
• Track sales through social media.
• Offer real value to others through unique and valuable content.
• Be respectful. Don’t try to “sell” via social media, unless it’s the appropriate venue (e.g., special coupons via Twitter, etc.). Think of why your prospective clients are online, and then provide them with solutions and answers.

Is your small business leveraging social marketing to engage with your prospective clients? If not, you may be missing out on a real business-building opportunity.

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Website Marketing NOW’s article “20 Internet Martketing Trends for 2009” has proved to be explosively popular on the leading online content and community website for entrepreneurs, StartupNation.com.

The article was published in early January, and in just over a month it has achieved over 6,800 total page views. Of those, over 90% were unique page views.

Internet marketing trends for 2009 identified by Website Marketing NOW include recession marketing, the customer voice, video marketing, mobile marketing and behavioral targeting. Read the article for the full list and descriptions of the 20 Internet marketing trends.

The Website Marketing NOW team would like to thank the members of StartupNation for making the article such a success. We hope that the insights into the coming Internet marketing trends for 2009 help you capture more business and drive revenue growth this year!

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As reported on eMarketer, the Internet surpassed 1 billion users in December 2008 (Source: comScore World Metrix). What a milestone!!!

comScore calculated a billion users without counting access from Internet cafes, mobile phones or PDAs.

eMarketer, on the other hand, also calculated a billion users but in a different manner. eMarketer employs a  broader audience definition to estimate that there were 1.172 billion Internet users worldwide in 2008.

Moving forward, how quickly will Internet usage increase? How young will new users be, and at what age will students be expected to have Internet access as a “matter of course”? When will we reach the stage where Internet access around the world is as common as the phone?

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Your small business website produces mountains of data about your site visitors and prospective customers. To maximize your website results, you need to be leveraging this data to your marketing advantage.

To that end, here are three important website measurement trends. Once you understand them, it would behoove you to define a way to leverage these trends in the coming year to fuel the growth of your business.

Website Integration with Lead Capture and CRM

Look for integrated analytics solutions in the coming year. For example, solutions from companies such as Infusionsoft and GoodBarry combine customer relationship management and email marketing with web analytics.

Eyetracking

A typical web analytics program provides you with click maps (which links receive the most click-throughs). Heat maps demonstrate where your site visitors’ eyes focus on the page. Going beyond this, look for eyetracking solutions such as that from Eyetools to catch on in popularity this year. With eyetracking, you can see exactly how your users are navigating through your website, irrespective of their click behavior. This gives you tremendous insights into the value of different layout options on your web pages.

Attribution

Do you know where your website visitors and new orders are coming from? Typically, analytics packages track conversions to the last click (e.g., from a banner ad or a search result). Look for solutions in the coming year, such as that from ClearSaleing, that enable you to see the relative value of each marketing touchpoint along the way to a sale.

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