According to Entrepreneur.com, one of the most demanding trends for 2010 has to be Local Business. The small mom-and-pop stores are making their comeback in this economic crisis. As the article shows, that for every $100 spent at a local business, $68 comes back to the community. On the otherhand, $43 would recurculate from national business chains.

The Shop Local mentality is the backbone of this new trend. Not only is the trend for the local farmers markets, but for local goods and services. The community has been pulling together and would even prefer to buy local, even if...

Tags: business chains, business online, economic crisis, entrepreneur, local farmers markets, national business, new trend, presence, seo services, small business, traffic

Have you thought about your website? Is your site reaching your intended customers? Is your website suited for the different needs of your company? Sometimes, in a mad dash, companies slop up a website or get a 10 dollar an hour company to make their site and wonder why they did not get the sales they hoped for. Your website is like having a well respected and well trained sales man or woman on your team. They will talk to your customer, they will solve problems for your customer, and they will provide service to your customer. You start to...

Tags: audience, branding, business standards, business web site, commerce stores, content technology, copywriting, design features, presence, style theme, web design

Where to begin with fonts... Fonts have been a discussion between the graphic artist and the web developer for years. The end-user usually doesn't know if the website has Helvetica, Arial, Broadway fonts. Most may hear those names and not even know there is much of a difference.

System fonts are lovely to a developer. There are a list of predefined fonts that all PC and Macs will have installed with the operating system. System fonts require no additional coding by the web developer. It is as simple as calling the name of the font family on the stylesheets. There are...

Tags: broadway, cms system, cross browser, font face tag, font family, graphic artist, images, operating system, statistics, stylesheets, system font, system fonts, web browser, web developer

Tis the season for holiday shopping. Christmas is only 55 days away, that's a month and 3 weeks till the big day. Online retail sales are expected to rise in the next coming month. According to the National Retail Federation, holiday shopping will increase 64%. This is 45.8% higher than last year. In comparison to the brick-and-mortar retail shop, they are only expect to increase 3% more.

The study consisted of gathering 51 major online retailers last month and asked them to project their online sales for the holidays.

The study also showed that 40% of the companies surveyed planned to...

Tags: brick and mortar, christmas, comscore, free shipping, halloween, holiday marketing, holiday rush, holiday sales, holiday season, holiday shopping, holidays, major online retailers, marketing campaigns, national retail federation, purchase time, retail sales, retail shop, web purchase, web retailers

It’s that time of year. Some may be putting on costumes and getting ready for the holidays, while others are getting ready for their 4th quarter. Christmas time is very important to many businesses. Owning a website is just as important to most businesses as the 4th quarter holiday sales. So let's dive into some hot trends to look forward to as we approach this Christmas season and into 2011. This is our 2011 Web Predictions!

1. You’re Famous
   

   With sites like YouTube and twitter, we are finding more and more overnight celebrities emerging. The most popular that...

Tags: 4th quarter, apple tv, christmas season, christmas time, commerce stores, devel, dodson, holiday sales, intruder, mobile payment, mobile payments, netflix, payment gateways, payment processing, paypal, smart phones, streaming tv, time of year, webtrends, youtube

An older technology, but still very much alive today is the use of JavaScript and AJAX. In the past the use of these technologies were very basic and primitive. As the demand for them have grown and new technologies such as mobile, iPads, net books,.. the demand will not fade. Developers of JavaScript and AJAX have really pushed the envelope as well. In the beginning the design was very basic. Animations were kept to a minimum. As developers and designers are becoming more experienced with the technologies, they are pushing it farther and create much more creative pieces...

Tags: ajax, animation, animations, creative pieces, designers, developers, enjoyable experience, form validation, google, imagination, javascript engine, processing time, sloppy code, user experience, visual tool

You might have noticed, while on Twitter or Facebook, shortened URLs posted by your friends. Usually seen as a bit.ly link or such. Now wouldn't it be nice to have a shortened link for your wordpress blog.

Previous versions of Wordpress required a plug-in or custom code to make your own shortened link that is hosted on your site. Or you would have to copy your link, go to bit.ly, and manually create a shortened link.

The idea of using your own domain in the shortened URL helps alot with branding your site. If you haven't noticed, one Great feature of the...

Tags: new feature, twitter, url shortener, wordpress, wordpress 3.0, wordpress blog

You may have heard about SEO and how SEO is important. SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization. In a nut shell, SEO will help to get your website noticed in Google. As Google's algorithm changes, SEO changes with it.

Did you know that every little detail about your website helps to get you indexed in Google Search?
Google looks at the quality of the content on your website to what you name your web pages to how you lay out the HTML. It is important that if you do decide to do your own SEO that you understand some basic...

Tags: search engine optimization, search engines, search google, seo services, starter guide

So if you haven't heard, Google has announce a new image format for the web. This new format is called WebP. It is Google's attempt to create a faster loading image that is similar to the current JPEG image format.

WebP has many similarities to the current JPEG format. Google's development team found a way to compress the image quality to such a compact size that it actually speeds up load time over the web. This is a 39% reduction from its JPEG counterpart.

Check out and compare the difference between JPEG and the new WebP formats at

Tags: apple, chromium, image quality, jpeg image format, load time, microsoft, new image, open source technologies, opera, patches, webp

Just in case you have been sleeping under a rock, businesses have taken to Facebook and Twitter like a duck to water. It is only a matter of time before Twitter begins to offer some type of advertising.

I know what your thinking, "Sure that is all well and good, but we have work to do and cannot be bothered with such trendy time wasters!" Well, I understand you if that is your stance on using social media for your business. However, if you have no time for social media you can assign that task to a team member, or...

Tags: credit cards, kiwi9, matter of time, media portfolio, presence, target audience, web design chicago