Author: Lexie Lu

Augmented reality (AR) is making an appearance in everyday life. You’ve probably pulled up an app at the movies to play along with an activity or hovered your smartphone over an ad to have it come to life. Games such as Pokemon Go became trendy at lightning speed. What was once the stuff of movies and expensive headsets is now possible for anyone at any time. Experts predict the AR market to reach more than $18 billion by 2023. This growth is a result of consumer thirst for enhanced experiences and entertainment. While some consumers seek out AR headsets, much of…

Over the past two decades, retail analysts have been saying online shopping would spell the end for brick-and-mortar retailers. Declining sales and rising rents through the 2010s seemed to back this idea up. New evidence of changing consumer preferences, however, suggest that the reports of the industry’s death have been greatly exaggerated. Here’s how brick-and-mortar businesses are actually doing right now — plus how the industry is competing against online-only retailers in the long term. Brick-and-Mortar Stores: Not Extinct Yet During the initial rise of e-commerce in the late ’90s and 2000s, some analysts went so far as to predict…

Your unique selling proposition (USP), also called a unique value proposition, is what makes you stand out from competitors. You can’t just slap a general USP tag on your site and expect it to attract new clients, though. It’s important to carefully analyze the type of unique selling proposition you need and why it would work for your particular target audience. In the U.S. alone, there are approximately 30.7 million small businesses, and the economy continues to grow. This massive number gives you a lot of examples to look at when deciding what benefits your company brings to the masses.…

Panoramic photos have skyrocketed in popularity since the introduction of iOS 6. People can now take a panoramic shot with their smartphones to capture events, locations and images they couldn’t otherwise take. It probably isn’t surprising to learn these images now appear on websites, engaging users by bringing them into another world. A panoramic photo — also called a wide-angle photo — is the perfect choice for images of landscapes, large manufacturing buildings and even office space. The image’s size varies but is almost always wider than what you’d normally use for a website image. Because of this, you’ll have to treat…