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It's time to get more serious about mobile. Projections have smartphone and tablet purchases outselling computers in 2011. Google predicts more searches will be done from mobile device than desktop devices by the end of 2012. People are viewing your website from a mobile device as we speak. What do you do, where do you look and what do you need to know about how the new wave of mobile activity is affecting your website and your ability to sell online?

Today, the Google Analytics team officially launched Right Now - a real time tracking feature that shows you what's happening on your site Right Now. You can read the official announcement here.

I'm often invited into companies to consult with them about online marketing and their new website. It happens often - a firm gets a new website developed by another company and we are invited to discuss online marketing strategy. The chief marketing person might say something like, "We just developed a new website and now we need to do something with it. What do you suggest?" Having experienced this very scenario several times, we've developed 3 very powerful questions to begin to shape a comprehensive, long term online marketing plan. Ready - here they are:

Google Analytics continues to add value to it's ever-improving platform - recently announcing a new tag that will allow you to track social media "shares" from your website into Google Analytics reports. Read more here.

This is the beginning of a series of blog posts that focuses on going back to the basics of digital marketing. In this post, I want to highlight some of the web analytics do's and don'ts when it comes to metrics. There are dozens and dozens of different metrics available to us, enabling us to evaluate the performance of a website. Some of these metrics aren't nearly as valuable as we think they are while others that hold the keys to success are often ignored completely.

Going through some of the finer points in Google Analytics - Conversion University caused me to ask "why don't more people embrace the richness of web analytics data?" I think about some of our clients and many people I run in to who are struggling to be effective marketers and then I look at the power of the data you can get from Google Analytics. I just shake my head in amazement that more aren't embracing the data.

2010 was an exciting year in the world of online marketing. The Bing and Yahoo search alliance, Google Instant, new mobile devices and even a major motion picture about the rise of a social network. While it's hard to tell what the next year holds, I don't think anything is slowing down - in fact, I see momentum building even more and more.

Having led the development of hundreds of websites, landing pages, online display ads and the like, I always find the challenge between creativity and achieving conversions to be one of the most critical elements to online success. After all, finding the optimal balance between creativity and good usability is what separates “the men from the boys” when it comes to effective web design and development. We experienced a recent example of this and here’s the story.

Over the past couple of months, Google has made it clear it's taking local search seriously. In essence, they have reconfigured the search result page and algorithm so organic and local listings become integrated. Studies suggest websites that implemented best practice SEO tactics weren't largely affected by this change, as local optimization was likely already a part of the overall optimization strategy. In fact, it's been shown that sites that already had strong organic and local optimization saw their overall positions increase. Conversely, sites without a local optimization campaign that implemented grey and black-hat techniques (in other words, simply gaming the Google algorithm based on the most recent exploits) have or will soon experience an overall decrease in visibility and ultimately traffic.

Studies have shown that those who write down their goals are more likely to achieve them. Maybe it's because something written down will nag at you more - keeping it top of mind. But also likely is how establishing a goal - or end objective - gives what you do a sense of purpose. Having something clearly defined and written out holds you accountable. "Are we achieving this?" Yes or No. "If we're not achieving this yet, are we doing something to get us closer to achieving it?" Yes or No. Answering "No" twice means we're failing. Failing to achieve and failing to do better.