It is holiday season and for many people that means shopping, celebrations, and family time. Technology has changed the way we prepare for, celebrate, and remember our holiday celebrations.
Tracking Santa – Children can track Santa’s journey with help from NORAD or Google’s Santa Tracker.
Did your children track Santa this year?
Shopping – Online shoppers were expected to spend $72.4 billion this holiday season, up $10 billion from last year. And that is not all!
- 50% of holiday sales will be influenced by digital interactions such as online browsing
- 84% of shoppers use digital tools before and during trips to a store, and those shoppers convert at a 40% higher rate than those who don’t use web-connected devices
- 7 million consumers in the U.S. will make purchases via their mobile devices this holiday season, an increase of 37.3% from last year
- More than 70% of brands are allocating more than half of their digital marketing budgets to search and social this holiday season
- 86% of retailers expect their 2014 online holiday sales to increase
With online and mobile purchase becoming the norm for many holiday shoppers, merchants should focus their efforts on creating a secure environment to process customers’ data. Using cloud computing and setups like a secure virtual private cloud can help merchants scale digital resources with the influx of shoppers while helping to keep their patrons safe during the holiday season!
Communication – We can connect with relatives and friends around the world with video, audio, text messaging, and email. My daughter is going to school in the Netherlands so we use technology to keep in touch all the time. We Skype regularly and use Facebook messaging for text messages. She met up with my brother and his family in Paris for the holidays and I was able to follow along through the pictures they posted on Facebook.
How do you keep in touch with family members around the world? These 5 apps are a great way to keep in touch with faraway friends and family
- Whats App – Messaging service that sends messages using your Internet data package or over Wi-Fi.
- Viber – Send messages or make calls from your computer or phone over Wi-Fi or a 3G data network.
- Skype – One-to-one and group video and voice calls over the Internet, plus messaging and more. Limit of 25 people on group calls.
- Facetime – One-to-one video calls over Wi-Fi or cellular networks from device to device.
- Google Hangouts – One-to-one and group video calls from computers and smartphones over the Internet. Limit of 10 people on group calls.
What did I miss? How has technology changed the way you celebrate the holidays?
