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Where your visitors are coming from – very important if you’re targeting a specific audience.How your visitors found your website – this is very important for determining which of your efforts are paying off. It shows if visitors found your site directly, through a referral from another website (ex: Twitter, Facebook), or from search engines.Web browsers used by your visitors – knowing which web browsers your visitors use allows you to know which browsers you should be focusing on.What keywords were used by visitors in the search engines to get to your website – this is very crucial for SEO. Knowing which keywords people are searching for to get to your site determines if you are on the right track.

• USPS – the Postal Service is now running its second campaign that uses a QR code. In this case, it is offering discounts of 2 percent to companies choosing to use their mailers with the barcodes printed on them. This benefits both the companies and shows that there is still a place for snail mail in this increasingly digital and mobile world.

• Coca-Cola – the soft drink giant placed a QR code on its containers throughout the 2012 Europe Cup soccer tournament, giving scanners exclusive videos from the tournament, as well as an easy way to obtain the free SmileWorld social app.

• Proctor & Gamble – PGMobile shopping trucks were launched last month by the beauty and home products corporation, distributing free samples as they patrolled New York City. Both the samples and the truck were emblazoned with quick response codes that could be scanned by smartphone users.

According to new data out from comScore, the total number of Americans who own mobile devices now tops 234M, with 90M of which being smartphones.

Mobile Web browsers were used by 44% of subscribers — up 2.9%

New York commuters that wish to buy select toys from retailer Toys R Us this holiday season can try out the company's QR code-enabled virtual store, which is debuting on billboards located at the city's airports and 40 New Jersey transit stations. Commuters scan the QR code displayed next to the featured product, which takes them to a m-commerce enabled web porta

Mobile phone usage and internet traffic are growing at a staggering rate, causing powerful changes in consumer behaviour and in the way people socialise and work together.

Most company websites are not easy to use on mobile devices, meaning they are increasingly irrelevant to the average consumer. If you want to attract new customers, build rapport with existing clients or offer new services or other value online, then mobile is on the must-do list.

A new approach to mobile-friendly web design is to create a website which will detect and adjust to the size of the device it is viewed on. Mobile responsive website design means a single site works well on all devices, future-proofing your website as new devices become popular.

With this technology, created by Micros Retail, sales associates will be given Apple iPhones to process mobile sales and wirelessly e-mail receipts to customers, which in addition to building a relationship between associate and customer, expedites sales. Devices will also be equipped with the brand’s Gucci Style app (with customers encouraged to visit the company’s digital flagship at gucci.com), as well as other tools to enhance the in-store shopping experience such as Google translator, maps and a currency converter.

QR codes enable us to make the transition between digital and brick and mortar seamless,” said Patti Cohen, executive vice president, global marketing and communication at Donna Karan International, adding that the brand’s QR codes dovetail with the retailers’ own digital programs.

New England Organ Bank, which operates under Donate Life New England, a division of Donate Life America, has developed a new strategy that will include putting QR codes on future printed materials. By scanning the code, users will be directed to a mobile-friendly version of the donor form. Those who wish to register as organ donors can sign up quickly and efficiently with a straightforward, single-page form that makes giving the gift of life as easy as taking a breath.

64 percent of American consumers can remember seeing television ads that included social media and QR code symbols such as those for “likes” on Facebook.

33 percent of consumers in the United States have gone on to interact with the social media that was shown on television after having seen it.

This survey included 1,000 respondents. Most of those participants said that they had noticed the use of social media on television and were aware of the ways in which they could interact with those various social networks, including the “Like” symbol for Facebook (42 percent), QR codes (28 percent), the Hashtags for Twitter (18 percent), and Shazam symbols (9 percent).

1 billion consumers will own smartphones by 2016, with U.S. users owning 257 million smartphones and 126 million tablets. By 2016, 350 million employees will use smartphones, with 200 million of them bringing their own.

Mobile spending will reach $1.3 trillion by 2016, or 35 percent of the technology economy, with the app market generating $56 billion by 2015.

Apple, Google and Microsoft are expected to control 91 percent of the U.S. smartphone market and 98 percent of the U.S. tablet market by 2016.

Stories take us away from what we’re doing, and bring us somewhere else. Stories are humanities currency.The better the stories you tell, the more interesting you become.

here’s a basic structure that works perfectly for telling almost any story.1. Exposition: scene and setting2. Conflict: The problem on which the story is based3. Rising Action: The journey from conflict to resolution4. Resolution: The solution to the problem (not always something everyone will be happy about)5. Denouement: What happens after the resolution

Nielsen found that – not terribly shockingly – the way in which the smartphones were being used and whether QR codes were scanned had a great deal to do with what the person was hoping to buy and where he or she was shopping.

the most popular place for mobile shoppers to use digital coupons was in grocery stores.

41 percent said that they’d used their devices for those discounts at grocery stores, while another 41 percent said that they’d used them in department stores, and 39 percent said that they had redeemed coupons with their smartphones at clothing stores.

99% of the top 100 U.S. magazines utilized QR codes in the first quarter of 2012. QR code use in this sector is up 288% over the same period in 2011, showing that publishers are beginning to take the codes more seriously. The report notes that these magazines used at least one QR code, which could be associated with advertising, service promotions, or exclusive digital content that is a companion to the magazine itself.

Test your site’s mobile usability. Does your site look good clean on your smartphone? If it doesn’t, get it fixed.

Use responsive web designs. You can save yourself and your website visitors headaches by employing a web design that automatically adjusts to the size of screen it’s displayed on. That way, users will get a positive website experience no matter which type of device they use.

Develop a mobile app. If you lack the funds to outsource the creation of an app to a company that specializes in it, you can develop an app on your own with platforms like Conduit Mobile.

Adobe Flash is officially no longer available for Android devices. This raises a tough question for Web developers: whether to support Flash at all, and how to migrate a Flash investment for the next-generation of Web users.

Web developers have responded by moving away from Flash. Since last year, Flash usage on Web sites has declined from 27% to 23%, according to W3Techs. In comparison: Microsoft's Silverlight barely moves the needle with deployment of 0.3%, just above Java's 0.2%. JavaScript is used by over 92% of sites. HTML5 is reportedly in active use on 34% of the top 100 Web sites.

Adobe is hoping developers and users will adopt the Adobe AIR (“Adobe Integrated Runtime”) format, which extends many of the core Flash technologies in a cross-platform framework for deploying Web applications. AIR is available for Android, iOS, BlackBerry, Windows, OSX, and Linux.

A recent Forrester report, which estimated adoption of QR codes among mobile users increased from 1% in 2010 to 5% this year, noted that the technology has encountered various obstacles to broader use.

These include basic unfamiliarity of what these codes even do, the required step of downloading a 2D barcode reader -- and most importantly for marketers -- disappointing content that turns off potential users. For example, codes that embed long URLs, making them harder to scan, or that lead to content that has not been mobile-optimized and offers little value to end users.

The Yankee Group study also pointed out that QR codes are vulnerable to misuse. What happens when fraudsters place their own codes as stickers on top of legitimate QR codes to obtain personal information by redirecting users to a fake Web site?

a silicon bracelet that carries a QR (quick response) code. Emergency responders and health care providers can use a smartphone to scan the QR code, which also can be printed on a necklace or wallet card, and call up the patient's personal website, maintained by Richardson's Edmond-based company.The website “basically gives customers the ability to create a profile, and they can choose to show or hide illnesses, medication and emergency contacts

The company plans to sell the wristband or necklace for about $10, with a $5 monthly subscription to the website containing the client's medical information, Richardson said. Each customer would fill out a template on the company website, then the client can determine how much of that information will be displayed when the code is scanned, Richardson said.