This week’s Digital Life segment of Straits Times screamed mobile web, with the ongoing Mobile World Conference.

What would the web be without mobile and what would mobile be without the web?

Keep that question in mind, and think about how your WordPress site is developing. Here is where I’ll lead you to the path of enlightenment, with help from Srikanth on dailyblogtips.com, some WordPress mobile plugins we recommend:

1. WordPress Mobile Edition – A very simple and muck-free interface. Mobile browsers are automatically detected, this list can be changed on the settings page. See the mobile theme in action       here: http://mobile.carringtontheme.com .

2. WordPress Mobile Pack – Various features packed into one; mobile recognition, device adaptation and its ready-to-use widget. With the mobile recognition and device adaptation feature, viewing is a breeze as it automatically resizes images, split the articles or post into multiple pages. The administrator can also manage the website with its mobile admin panel. The mobile ad widget allows mobile ads or mobile Adsense to be displayed on the mobile version of the web pages.

3. MobilePress – If you are into themes like the way I am (take a look at my browsers and email, it’s all patterned), you would like this. Themes are customizable for different mobile devices or browsers. It also allows the WordPress theme developers to develop their own mobile themes for WordPress blogs.

4. Mobile Admin – This allows you to access admin user interface on mobile devices in a user-friendly manner particularly for iPhone and iPod Touch devices, but it still caters to most of the other mobile browsers at basic level. Admin features include editing posts with auto-save feature, tagging support, comment moderation, and more.

5. Mobilize – This will redirect any mobile phone that is assessing your site, to the Mippin server. Mippin will then rearrange your web page and its contents to suit the cell phone type; images will be resized to fit the mobile screen, videos converted to 3gp format.

6. WPhone Admin Plugin – This plugin has two mobile admin interfaces, one is for use on the iPhone/iPod Touch and other devices which supports full JavaScript and features CSS AJAX and sliding menus. The second is the Lite version; for phones that do not support JavaScript. The switch is automatic, based on the browser used.

Try these and share with us which is your preferred option!

Let’s say you build a website or blog and you don’t possess the greenest of thumbs to build a glorious garden of visitors to your creation. You look around for references, you hope to grow your social e-presence like TechCrunch or Gizmodo (aim for the stars and you’ll land on the moon). You read a post and inevitably see this :

Now, we hear that Facebook’s userbase is a whopping 300 million versus Twitter’s userbase of 13 million. Not utilizing these numbers would just be ignoring the pot(s) of gold sitting in front of you. Then the question is, how do you know the percentage of users clicking on the content link that you personally (and painstakingly) share with them? Is your audience more inclined to clicking on the Facebook link or the Twitter link? I mean with the vast difference in userbase, wouldn’t the answer obvious?

ShareThis, one of the most used social sharing widget, has kindly given us an answer :

According to Labnol.org, they believe that Twitter users tend to click on the shared link more because with availability of URL shorteners (bit.ly, goo.gl, fb.me), not much of a description is given with the lack of title in a link. Curiosity lures the cats, and more users click to find out about the content. This makes sense, I myself do that often, I scroll through my Twitterfeed and end up with multiple tabs in my browser.

Whether I continue to read these articles though, is another thing altogether. I view the title, and sometimes just end up closing it anyway (sometimes our tired eyes just need this selective viewing process, right?)

Which ties in with the results from the next table :

What happens after the landing page?

Facebook users do end up exploring your site in greater detail, in numbers, a visitor from Twitter will check 1.66 pages on your site (average) while a Facebook user will spend more time checking out 2.76 pages.

Interesting.

So the next time you choose to “Share This”, think about which is more important to you; luring the visitors to your site, or having your visitors discover the richness of your content?

While I was browsing through my Twitter feed over the weekend, I was delighted to find that WordPress 2.9 Carmen is now officially available and removed of its previous beta status. If you’re curious to know about its tag “Carmen”, it is actually named in honor of Carmen McRae, a jazz vocalist whose music was added to Last.fm WP release station.

As with other major releases, you can upgrade your version by accessing your Dashboard and going to Tools > Upgrade, or alternatively downloading from WordPress.org.

A video to give you better insight to 2.9 Carmen:

The cooler features to note with 2.9 :

1. Global Undo/”Trash” feature, this is a huge relief for me as I ponder my questionable posts and hit delete, only to realize I want it back. No need for shooting myself in the foot when I want to retrieve it, now that I can get it back from the trash. (Very useful for the indecisive.

2. Built-in Image Editor will be baked into WordPress 2.9 and would not require a plugin. You can crop, edit, rotate, flip and scale your images. (This I really like, you can’t hold my attention with just words. I like to naively believe that a “picture painting a thousand words” is a universally applicable preference.)

3. Batch plugin Update and compatibility checking, which means you can update your plugins at one go, rather than to do multiple clicks for each one. Other than that, WordPress utilizes its compatibility data to ensure your plugins are suitable with new releases of WordPress. Definitely more useful and less time consuming for Administrators.

4. Easier Video Embeds feature, where you just paste the URL of the video and it will magically be embedded in your post. (Supports YouTube, Daily Motion, Blip.tv, Flickr, Hulu, Viddler, Qik, Revision3, Scribd, Google Video, Photobucket, PollDaddy, WordPress.tv and more to come.)

These are most useful in my user-end books but there are more enhancements to view here.

Do take a look, and give us some feedback when you’ve tried out the features!

Creating a website is not just about compelling content, you also have to decide on strategic ad placement. What is most important to promote? How can you ensure it falls within a viewer’s immediate line of sight?

Considering the popularity of laptops as desktop computers, we know that browsers are not always full screen, with other things like toolbars and docks taking up space. Visitors do not always bother with scrolling down a page if it is not enticing enough. For me, this is an idea of a surfing consumer on a hot lazy day, sometimes what I feel when I troll through the Internet :

You get the idea.

On the other hand, imagine yourself as an online merchant, who is trying to sell a particular Product X. First thing’s first, you might choose to provide your company’s information on the home page, only placing the image of Product X in the middle of the page. Seems reasonable to you, you might not want to overwhelm your visitor from the get-go. But if your product is too far down the page (and i mean just a mere 100 pixels down), others may not see it when they first view your site.

Then the question is, how do you know how the majority of your visitors view your site?

This is when Google Browser Size comes to your rescue. Google Browser Size is “based on a sample of data from visitors to google.com. Special code collects data on the height and width of the browser for a sample of users. For a given point in the browser, the tool will tell you what percentage of users can see it.” For web designers, you can utilize this to minimize scrolling and ensure that your Product X is always prominent to the audience.

You can have a look at how your website’s propagating your information by keying in your company’s URL here. This is how it looks:

I really like how this works. It is simple to use and understand, any average Joe (or Jane) will be able to look at it and get an idea of the effectiveness of your website. Try using this tool, and contemplate with your web designer on how you can further improve your business’s advertising strategy. Knowing which section captures attention on the majority of your audience’s browsers will definitely prove useful in this discussion.

If you’re interested in learning more, read about Google Browser Size on the Google Code Blog.

I’ve just read that at the recent Facebook Developer Garage (Thanks TechCrunch!), Facebook briefly disclosed information on the new Open Graph API.

Ironically, there was not much ‘open-ness’ yet about its full functionality, perhaps a certain coyness was intended to invoke suspense. But the outlining idea was sufficient to create anticipation; its potential is well worth noting.

The Open Graph API will enable any website to wire-in and replicate features of a Facebook Page using the various APIs. Essentially, it’s like Facebook Connect, but way more. Without a dedicated Facebook Page, users can still be Fans of the page via the site and “it will show up on that user’s profile and in search results, and that page will be able to publish stories to the stream of its fans”.

To take on a clairvoyant’s view of things (since details are unspecific at this time), envision your future website with a page that incorporates a style similar to the Facebook Wall. It will tap into your Facebook account from your site to update your status and publish comments. The highlight of it would then be customizing it, selecting features that better suit your site.

This now allows Facebook to inch even closer to monopolizing their hold on the the social Web but let’s bring it a little closer to home. How will it involve you?

Enterprises need to recognize and embrace the value of social interaction on the web with open, loving arms. Thinking of social media tools like Facebook or Twitter as ‘child’s play’, frivolous time-wasters, will only impede the progress of your business.

Entrenching Facebook as the social utility of choice presents a goldmine of opportunities. Companies with corporate websites should seek to be more socially enabled, and ensure that they have an IT development team, whether in-house or outsourced, to customize and add on components utilizing Facebook Open Graph API. Your IT developers should continuously monitor the evolution of the social Web, provisioning your business in way so that it can tap into the social graph of their members, multiplying their reach. Other enterprises like startup companies, can also quickly grow their user base tremendously, in a more effective and efficient manner.

Regardless of the services or products you have to offer, take the chance now to seriously evaluate the power of the Social Web. Keep an eye out for Facebook’s Open Graph API when its full functionality is unveiled and released in the months to come.

Setting up an online store actually puts your business in good contention with brick and mortar shops. You are open 24/7, customers can shop from home, expanded customer base, unlimited geographical reach. Sales should just keep coming in, or does it?

If you administer an E-commerce site and want a continuous trail of returning customers and revenue to ensue, you should note these 15 big No-Nos :

• 1. Limited product information
• Detailed information will provide a multi-dimensional experience for the consumer. Failure to engage users will just encourage them to seek for other ecommerce sites.
• 2. Hiding contact information
• Consumers need a credible website in order for them to entrust credit sensitive information willingly. Contact information needs to be easily viewed so consumers know who exactly they are purchasing from.
• 3. A cumbersome checkout process
• A lengthy procedure would just bring about a higher probability of consumers leaving your site without completing their purchase. consumers are enticed by hassle free transactions.
• 4. Requiring an account to order
• This ties in with the third point, offer customers an option of registering at the end of an order process. This makes placing future orders easier as well.
• 5. An inefficient site search engine
• You might offer a large variety of products but the consumer needs to be able to sieve out information according to their needs. Your site search engine results should group products by different categories or features.
• 6. A lacking customer support system
• It is all about customizing to a user’s needs. If an e-commerce site fails to deliver a system that caters to individual needs, their clientele would be limited.
• 7. Tiny product images
• An e-commerce site needs to match up to the physical experience of being in a store. When a consumer is unable to visualize the product, it is likely they will dismiss it altogether.
• 8. Single product image
• Multiple images offering different angles would provide more intricate details of your product. Consumers like to know exactly what they are purchasing.
• 9. Poor shopping cart design
• Users need to be able to add multiple products while simultaneously revising the quantities and options. If navigating around this is difficult, consumers would hesitate to proceed to the checkout process.
• 10. Restricted payment options
• Different folks, different strokes. Do not limit your site to MasterCard or Visa, offer alternatives like PayPal. This will optimize the number of orders you get.
• 11. Not including related products
• Consumers in the buying process might still be doing their product research. They might start out looking for a specific product, but end up reviewing others. Look to increase your sales quota by suggesting related products on the description page.
• 12. Higgledy-piggledy navigation
• Confusing navigation is just plain unnerving. Categorial and navigational aspects need to be carefully planned before providing a product catalog.
• 13. Not including shipping rates
• Consumers would want to factor in all costs before making a purchase, immediacy is the key. Excluding this is almost equivalent to leaving the price unavailable.
• 14. Vague store policies
• Being upfront from the get-go would save you many headaches when consumers start facing difficulties in the later stages.
• 15. Not putting focus on the products
• The design of your website might distract you from your primary goal. You aim to sell, showcasing your products is important but do not get carried away with unnecessary frills.

If I just threw a wrench into the works (or shall we say 15 monkey wrenches into your e-commerce creation), placed you further from your goals, maybe you should wash your hands off this, leave it up to us instead.

We can help you with your e-commerce website problems, contact us!

Check out this survey reporting that 93% of Websites want to add Web 2.0 Functionality In 2008.

More than half of online businesses plan to add Web 2.0 capabilities to their sites in the next six months to enhance their sites’ user experiences. And, over 93% plan to do the same within the next 12 months.

We’re seeing the same kind of demands from our client requests too. Many clients want to be able deploy sites which make use of the capabilities found in Web 2.0 sites.

Our team at PointStar is well equipped to tackle such demands. From AJAX Rich UIs to Video Streaming, we have the right team (design and technical) to handle it!

In a recent recent article on Marketing-Interactive.com, Editor Debbie Cai wrote about “The Singapore Social Media Dichotomy“. In this article, she explores who’s actually putting their dollars into Social Media and concludes that despite all the buzz, businesses aren’t investing enough in engaging the medium. She cites Melvin Yuan,

“Companies also don’t and dare not venture into areas they don’t understand and cannot measure…to participate in communities and conversations where business and consumer decisions are made, you have to have a strategy…”

And concludes that,

“The crux of the matter is both entrepreneurs and marketers need to recognise that there is a demand, both from consumers and from corporations, for innovative social media options that either simplify, enrich or enhance our lives. … Social media, despite the rate at which it is changing and the risk that whatever site you are investing in today may not be around tomorrow, has changed the way we conduct our marketing whether we like it or not. I’d rather be bucking the trend than picking the crumbs from the table, wouldn’t you?”

Yes, indeed Social Media and Web 2.0 features/concepts are all here to stay! What are your Web 2.0 plans?Note: Our Biz Dev, Justin was also cited in this article under the banner of the other social enterprise (E27).