Customer interaction and payments to your website are more and more likely to be taking place from a tablet or other mobile device. A continued decline in the number of PCs being shipped and presumably bought worldwide shows that tablets are displacing them with consumers, especially in emerging markets. What the Numbers Say A recent report from Gartner Inc. shows a 10.9 percent decline in PC shipments in the second quarter of 2013. It is the fifth consecutive quarter of decline, the longest...

Whether building your brand or promoting your product or service, using images can have a huge impact on your business. To learn how, download the Small Business Trends eBook “Innovative Tips to Make Your Marketing Sizzle“, brought to you by the Brother Creative Center. Brother Creative Center is a free service allowing businesses to create visually appealing business cards, brochures and more in minutes. You’ll also want to check out the new Small Business Trends SlideShare which contains a...

It’s shortly after sunrise in Ballard, a residential neighborhood of Seattle, Washington near Puget Sound. Erik Koto, the CEO of QuestionPro, has just awakened. He hasn’t even had his morning coffee, but already there’s an alert on his mobile phone from the company’s website design team. Located in Argentina, the team says the new UI designs are ready for review. Then there’s a mobile Skype call with his company’s network admin team in India. The call is to confirm bandwidth levels as a...

You’ve heard of tablets being adapted into a POS. Flint Mobile has created an app it says will allow businesses to accept credit card payments outside the typical retail setting without even having a card reader. The Flint app lets you scan a credit card rather than swipe it using only your smartphone. Using the imaging in your smartphone camera, Flint captures the numbers only on your customer’s card and then emails them a receipt for the payment. The app also has an invoicing option. The...

Content marketing is helping small businesses generate website traffic, online visibility and ultimately, sales leads. And a business blog is key to content marketing. But if you’re like many in a small business, you may find yourself wondering, “What do I blog about today?” If you have trouble coming up with blog ideas for posts, read on. We’ve collected 16 of our favorite tools that help us here at Small Business Trends generate ideas for blog posts. Try out some of these tools the next...