Mobile Marketing Mistakes Can Cost You - #infographic

Mobile marketing is essential to any digital marketing strategy. According to Formstack, smartphone conversion rates have gone up by 64 percent, compared to desktop conversion rates. Of course they have! More and more people are using their mobile devices to make purchases, catch up on news and otherwise stay connected with the world.



However, as important as it is to have a mobile marketing strategy, it is even more important to avoid the most common mobile marketing mistakes. Effective mobile marketing can significantly boost a small business’ online presence. Bad mobile marketing can, however, ruin it.



In this infographic, Formstack takes a look at the 5 most common mobile marketing mistakes, and what you can do about them. With quick, and easy, fixes for the most common mistakes available, there is no reason your mobile marketing strategy should lag behind the competition’s.

by Irfan Ahmad via Digital Information World

Share Images with a Pinterest Call-to-action

In this article, I’ll demonstrate how to add a Pinterest call-to-action on top of an image when a user is actively interacting with it.

Firstly, let’s look at why you would even want to do that.

Sharing Is Caring

What constitutes good content often depends a lot on the particular needs and interests of end users. Good content might be attractive, effective, simple, functional, informative, inspiring … and so on.

We are used to adding social network buttons or links to share a page (ideally via fat-free buttons). Facebook, Twitter and Google+ are often the primary must-haves.

We may also want users to be able to share parts of our page. Page content is often made of chunks, and each of these chunks can be provided with its own preferred social network sharing feature.

For instance, a quote can be targeted to fit Twitter’s 140-character limit, and a picture can be aimed for Pinterest.

Let’s look at how you set up your images to be shared on Pinterest.

Anatomy of a Pin URL

A Pinterest Pin URL is made of four components:

• the Pinterest part of the URL: http://ift.tt/1kj44ES


• the url parameter: the address of the page to link to, URL-encoded


• the media parameter: the address of the picture to share, URL-encoded


• the description parameter: the descriptive text shown on Pinterest, URL-encoded, 500 characters max, but 200 characters seems to be the best choice.

Some HTML data elements can be added if you add Pinterest’s own JavaScript, especially data-pin-do and data-pin-config, but it won’t be needed in this case, as this is a fat-free approach where we rely on the strict minimum amount of code.

The Hard-coded Way

The code we want to get looks like this:

[html]

[/html]

Each sharaeble picture (marked with the data-pin attribute pinIt) is prefixed with an anchor to the Pinterest sharing page with the right attributes in its URL, embedding a div to display the logo.

Three CSS classes are used here: pinterest-anchor, which absolutely sets the Pinterest logo position on the top-left corner of the picture; pinterest-hidden, which sets the visibility status of the logo, and pinterest-logo, the logo itself, 40x40 pixels, encoded in base64 in the CSS.

[html].pinterest-anchor { margin-left:10px; margin-top:10px; position:absolute; z-index:42; width:40px; height:40px; } .pinterest-hidden { display:none; } .pinterest-anchor:hover { display:block !important; } .pinterest-logo { background: url("data:image/png;base64,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") no-repeat center center; background-size: 40px 40px; height: 100%; width: 100%; }[/html]

The animating part – showing and hiding the logo on hovering the picture – is handled in JavaScript, using jQuery notation:

[html]$("img[data-pin='pinIt']").each(function() { $(this).hover(function() { $(this).prev().css("display", "block") }, function() { $(this).prev().css("display", "none") }); });[/html]

Continue reading %Share Images with a Pinterest Call-to-action%

by Alexis Ulrich via SitePoint

Windows Phone 8 Succinctly: The User Interface

Using Font Awesome with WordPress

Web Icons

Users today are focused just as much on the visual design of a website as they are about the content they need from it.

Traditionally designers and developers have used individual images/sprite-sheets for their icons; these graphics were a series of pixel perfect images that would be used in specific parts of the site (such as the search bar, navigational elements, loading icons and other elements).

Displaying icons with images/sprites worked well for a long time (and many websites will still use them). However, with the focus on responsive design more important than ever, the challenge has been providing stunning iconography that looks great regardless of your device.

What Are Font Icons?

Font icons are a way in which we can display fully responsive, customizable icons on our website without the use of additional images or sprite-sheets.

Font Icons are exactly what they sound like, a font made of icons.

Continue reading %Using Font Awesome with WordPress%

by Simon Codrington via SitePoint

Do You Really Need an App for That?

First everybody wanted a website. Then along came Flash and so people wanted a Flash site. Then there was Facebook and that became the must-have thing to be a part of. Now everybody wants a mobile app. But do they really need one?

After all, creating a mobile app is not without its challenges.

I delve deeper into this topic in a Learnable screencast at the end of this article by taking a look at case studies where the decision to go native perhaps wasn't the best.

The Problems with Going Native

[caption id="attachment_100007" align="alignright" width="241"] With so many apps in the app store,

exposure is no reason to build an app.[/caption]

When smartphone app stores first launched there was a land rush to fulfill consumer demand for native applications. In those early days there were some incredible opportunities. But those days are gone.

With well over 1 million apps in both the iTunes and Android stores, supply has exceeded demand.

Worse still, getting found is difficult in stores lacking sophisticated search functionality. Where once being on the App Store provided unprecedented exposure, and there are still some ways to improve your app marketplace ranking, today it is likely your app will be rarely seen.

Even if a user does see your app and downloads it, that does not guarantee they will keep it. With limited storage space users only keep so many apps on their device. They’re ruthless when it comes to deleting apps. Users tend to only keep apps that they are using on a regular basis.

The biggest problem with native applications is their cost. Unlike learning HTML and CSS, there is a high barrier to entry when it comes to developing native mobile apps. This means that hiring application developers is expensive compared to their web counterparts.

But the real cost comes in supporting many platforms and devices. Unlike the web you cannot build once and be sure that it will work everywhere. You cannot even use the same language to code across more than one platform.

It is not only expensive to build your application in the first place but also to maintain it over time. Every new device released could force you to update your app. Changes in the screen size, resolution and OS can lead to alterations in your application.

Despite that, there are occasions when the costs are worth it because the use case justifies it.

Continue reading %Do You Really Need an App for That?%

by Paul Boag via SitePoint

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