SEO Werkt!

This was a groundbreaking holiday season for e-commerce. Cyber Monday lived up to its hype – the biggest ever – and online sales held strong throughout the season. While sales figures took the majority of the headlines, this season gave birth to a new trend: “couch commerce” — people using tablets as their preferred device for shopping.

My team at Compuware measured 2011 holiday site performance, and we found that the volume of consumer traffic generated by iPads dwarfed that of iPhones for major retailer websites in the weeks leading up to the big Cyber Monday push. This confirms earlier Forrester data from analyst Sucharita Mulpuru, which noted that retailers surveyed say 21 percent of their mobile traffic now comes from tablets, with several companies anecdotally reporting figures above 50 percent.

The tablet is ergonomically a great device with which to casually shop while seated. Our data revealed that people started using their iPads to shop within hours after Thanksgiving dinner. The tablet is clearly adding to the growth in online retailing, but there’s a catch.

While consumers enjoy shopping with their tablets, retailers now have another device requiring optimization. Why is device optimization (a website version built for a device’s specific characteristics) so important? The short answer: non-optimized sites can diminish or even ruin the user experience, which equates to less traffic and fewer sales.

So were retailers fully prepared for couch commerce in 2011? Not really. We analyzed 30 U.S. retailer sites and found that none of the sites were optimized for the iPad, and only 14 had a dedicated iPad app. While some may argue device-specific optimization isn’t critical, sites that are slow and don’t meet end-users’ performance expectations result in lost customers and revenue.

The lack of Flash capability in iPads has been well publicized, but many retailers still have Flash-based content. Tablets also have less CPU power and RAM than their desktop or laptop counterparts. Combine these with the inconsistencies of mobile carrier connections, and you have an entirely different environment for optimizing your website.

The navigation differences between a mouse and your finger are also significant. Unless a site is touch-enabled, some links requiring a mouse click may not work. Many times this won’t be a problem but can be frustrating for users when it does occur, especially when shopping cart links don’t execute properly.

When a site is tablet-optimized, the quality of the user experience amplifies the device’s glide-across-the-screen elegance. If not optimized, it can be cumbersome and make the user want for a “real browser.” For example, tapping a single, small text link on a web page designed for a large monitor can get tedious. The graphics below show how eBay’s full site appears on an iPad compared to its new tablet-optimized site.]

eBay full website

eBay tablet-optimized website

There can also be page load time slowdowns if a page’s composition isn’t attuned to the device. Shoppers will abandon slow-loading or buggy sites within seconds. As Robert Hamilton from the Google Mobile team said about the link between increased usage and a fast user experience: “(This) reinforces something we at Google have known for a long time: fast is better than slow.”

Just five years ago retailers only needed to deliver a stable, fast-performing website for a single user experience (Internet Explorer on the PC). Today, tablets must now be added to the growing list of mobile devices mandating optimization. This includes multiple smartphone OSs and dedicated apps for a variety of platforms. That’s a lot of complexity, but the investment will be worth it.

According to Forrester Research, tablets already account for 20 percent of e-commerce sales, despite the fact that only 9 percent of shoppers own tablets. Given the holiday 2011 growth in couch commerce, expect IT departments to expand their tablet-specific budgets beyond their current levels and in 2012 begin to mirror what happened after the smartphone took off: more sites optimized for the device and more dedicated apps created to directly match stores to a device, resulting in happier shoppers, and most importantly, more revenue.

Steve Tack is the Chief Technology Officer of APM Solutions for Compuware Corp.

Filed under: mobile, VentureBeat

My girlfriend: We’re late. We need to get a cab to the [Thanksgiving] dinner.

Me: I just talked to the cab company and they’re going to take forever. I’m trying Uber.

Her: There’s no Uber in DC.

Me [checks app]: Oh, look, there is! The car will be here in 10 minutes. 

And that’s how I discovered that Uber is launching in Washington, DC. Today, it’s announcing to the capital that it’s ready for business, having spent the last month recruiting drivers, testing routes and everything else that goes into opening up in a new area. I recently talked to Rachel Holt, who’s leading Uber DC, to get some more details about how the company has worked out this expansion.

The first step is to figure out what the local market is looking for. DC is looking like a good target.

Yes, politicians have their own taxpayer-supported livery services, but DC also has the highest concentration of people with secondary degrees. Between the better-paid government employees, contractors, law offices, lobbyists, universities, and the emerging tech scene, “there are a lot of people who want a better experience,” Holt explains.

But unlike most cities (such as San Francisco), DC doesn’t artificially restrict the number of cabs, so getting them isn’t as big of a problem. However, the cars also tend to be run down, and service isn’t always great. And the thing about DC is that it’s a city of people who wear suits (also unlike SF). Uber’s black sedan-limos are providing cars to match.

DC also has some local issues that Uber can take advantage of. Cabs charge you extra for each additional stop, for example. The district is also stuck between two states and numerous counties, and many cab companies only serve some of them. If you’re downtown in the afternoon, you might have trouble getting a cab out to your home in the suburbs. Uber can ignore those constraints.

The company’s local team is also busy juicing demand by doing things like event sponsorships, and outreach to local businesses. An out-of-the-way restaurant, for example, might want to tell its patrons about Uber so they can rest assured about getting home when they’re done enjoying the wine list.

Of course, Uber’s real magic is software. It has also been refining how it expands to each new city. ”Every minute and every day we’re collecting more and more data on where people are opening our app to figure out where biggest areas of demand are,” Holt says. That’s why we’ve needed a little runway ahead of a public launch.”

Charts and heat map visualizations show how the app is being used, that the company then uses to match peak demand areas at specific times. It looks at specific pieces of data like app opens, people who get cars, and people who can’t, and the number of minutes that it takes for cars to arrive.

The other factor is operations. Uber has been recruiting local people, including independent operators and small companies, to be on call for the service. It has already won many of them over, judging by the ones I’ve talked to in SF, and the one who drove us on Thanksgiving. Its pay structure is a flat fee that includes a generous tip. The software can calculate optimal coverage areas to reduce driving. And the software also cuts out dispatch operators, who sometimes play favorites with drivers at other cab companies.

While Uber is a luxury service, it’s also a good example of how a software startup can break into new physical-world markets and solve long-standing problems. It forces incumbents to try to improve, and shows other startups how they can go after similar types of problems. It’s this visceral impact that helped convince Shervin Pishevar, son of an immigrant cab driver in DC, to co-lead the company’s new $32 million round of funding last week.

The company is planning on expanding by two cities a month around the world. It also just launched in Paris, and is already available in San Francisco, Seattle, Chicago, New York, and Boston.

My girlfriend: We’re late. We need to get a cab to the [Thanksgiving] dinner.

Me: I just talked to the cab company and they’re going to take forever. I’m trying Uber.

Her: There’s no Uber in DC.

Me [checks app]: Oh, look, there is! The car will be here in 10 minutes. 

And that’s how I discovered that Uber is launching in Washington, DC. Today, it’s announcing to the capital that it’s ready for business, having spent the last month recruiting drivers, testing routes and everything else that goes into opening up in a new area. I recently talked to Rachel Holt, who’s leading Uber DC, to get some more details about how the company has worked out this expansion.

The first step is to figure out what the local market is looking for. DC is looking like a good target.

Yes, politicians have their own taxpayer-supported livery services, but DC also has the highest concentration of people with secondary degrees. Between the better-paid government employees, contractors, law offices, lobbyists, universities, and the emerging tech scene, “there are a lot of people who want a better experience,” Holt explains.

But unlike most cities (such as San Francisco), DC doesn’t artificially restrict the number of cabs, so getting them isn’t as big of a problem. However, the cars also tend to be run down, and service isn’t always great. And the thing about DC is that it’s a city of people who wear suits (also unlike SF). Uber’s black sedan-limos are providing cars to match.

DC also has some local issues that Uber can take advantage of. Cabs charge you extra for each additional stop, for example. The district is also stuck between two states and numerous counties, and many cab companies only serve some of them. If you’re downtown in the afternoon, you might have trouble getting a cab out to your home in the suburbs. Uber can ignore those constraints.

The company’s local team is also busy juicing demand by doing things like event sponsorships, and outreach to local businesses. An out-of-the-way restaurant, for example, might want to tell its patrons about Uber so they can rest assured about getting home when they’re done enjoying the wine list.

Of course, Uber’s real magic is software. It has also been refining how it expands to each new city. ”Every minute and every day we’re collecting more and more data on where people are opening our app to figure out where biggest areas of demand are,” Holt says. That’s why we’ve needed a little runway ahead of a public launch.”

Charts and heat map visualizations show how the app is being used, that the company then uses to match peak demand areas at specific times. It looks at specific pieces of data like app opens, people who get cars, and people who can’t, and the number of minutes that it takes for cars to arrive.

The other factor is operations. Uber has been recruiting local people, including independent operators and small companies, to be on call for the service. It has already won many of them over, judging by the ones I’ve talked to in SF, and the one who drove us on Thanksgiving. Its pay structure is a flat fee that includes a generous tip. The software can calculate optimal coverage areas to reduce driving. And the software also cuts out dispatch operators, who sometimes play favorites with drivers at other cab companies.

While Uber is a luxury service, it’s also a good example of how a software startup can break into new physical-world markets and solve long-standing problems. It forces incumbents to try to improve, and shows other startups how they can go after similar types of problems. It’s this visceral impact that helped convince Shervin Pishevar, son of an immigrant cab driver in DC, to co-lead the company’s new $32 million round of funding last week.

The company is planning on expanding by two cities a month around the world. It also just launched in Paris, and is already available in San Francisco, Seattle, Chicago, New York, and Boston.

Editor’s note: James Altucher is an investor, programmer, author, and entrepreneur. He is Managing Director of Formula Capital and has written 6 books on investing. His latest book is I Was Blind But Now I See. You can follow him@jaltucher.

When I got separated from my ex-wife in November, 2008 I put an ad on Craigslist pretending to be a psychic and spent the day answering all the emails I got in return. I had various tricks to prove I was a psychic. For instance, if a woman wrote me and asked: prove you’re a psychic I would write back: when you were younger you had beautiful long hair. Then it was cut and you were horribly sad, all that beautiful hair lost. They would all respond, HOW DID YOU KNOW?

Then I had Thanksgiving dinner in the Red Flame diner on 44th Street by myself and had a Turkey sandwich.

It was the financial crisis, I was all alone, I spent the nights in cheap hotels, and the world was falling apart. I shut down a business I had been starting. It was a year and a half after I sold stockpickr.com and I felt I was ready to begin the next one. I started a business crowdsourcing ads. My partners were the guys who did Freakonomics. It was going well. Why did I shut the new business down? No reason at all. It’s probably still a good idea. I was just mired in my own negativity.

Meanwhile Andrew Mason spent that month, the worst month in financial history since the Great Depression, starting Groupon and became a billionaire.

Through the years I missed investing in Google. I missed investing in Foursquare. I missed, I lost, I suffered, I cried. I could’ve started other businesses instead of the ones I did. I could’ve accepted job offers instead of lying in my hammock crying about failures. We all have stuff to complain about. What a waste! It’s hard not to spend most of the day angry or scared or anxious. Particularly when running a startup.

I want to be productive, healthy, and happy. Better to avoid having 80% of my thoughts (or more on some days!) be “not useful”. In my worst days I easily could’ve spent a good chunk of my day wasting it by thinking thoughts that aren’t useful. That’s just as much a waste of time as playing dumb games or watching the Kardashians on reality TV.

Pretend your brain is a giant Gmail inbox. You can use filters to immediately label thoughts to get them out of your priority inbox and not have them bog down your productivity (or happiness). As soon as you see one of the below types of thoughts pop up, label it, filter it, and file it (thoughts have a way of racing past us). Many times, this has been the only way I’ve been able to pick myself up and get moving again.

Here are nine filters you can use to get rid of such negative thoughts:

1)      Pessimistic thoughts:  For instance, judging myself too harshly. Or assuming I’m no good at something so I shouldn’t even try. Or assuming I’m destined to be an unhealthy old man. These are all negative thoughts. If you can’t try something, then you won’t try something. You think Larry Page wanders around his bedroom late at night thinking, “man, I can’t do this!”

How do I know I can label them as “negative thoughts”? As opposed to negative reality? Because they have no basis in fact. I don’t know how I will be as an old man. And if I judge someone too harshly before I even know them—what’s the point? It’s one thing if they reach into my pocket and try to take my wallet. Then I can judge them: “This person steals things.” But until then, why judge? And yet I do. What a waste!

Or, before I give a talk, thinking that I’m going to do horribly despite the fact that I’ve prepared well and it’s a friendly crowd. All the evidence suggests that my negative thought is not based in reality and yet I’ll still think it. Not useful.

2)      Vice – My vice thoughts start when I wake up. Who made me angry the day before? Do I look good in the mirror? Or when I look at the above picture of Larry Page (referred to as “human being #1” in my house) I get envious. Or am I constantly thinking of the waffles I’m going to eat at breakfast in the city later? That might be a fun thought (just like constantly thinking about sex) but it’s not necessarily one that will bring me closer to happiness or success. I can enjoy the waffle when I eat it. I don’t have to think of it every second of the  day.

3) Perfectionism/Shame– I want to make more money. I want my kids to love me. I want a big house. I want, I want, I want. We spend our first few years of life being programmed by commercialism into thinking that some things are important: getting a college degree, owning a home, having as many people as possible love you (fame), getting attached to certain things (like the Dr. McCoy doll I have sitting right next to my computer that nobody better mess with), getting a private plane, having sex with as many people as possible. These thoughts of what a perfect life would be like are harmful.

What if you don’t get the college degree, or own the home, or get the yacht in the Mediterranean?

Perfectionism is a form of bondage. We want things to be “just right” or else we are unhappy. We become ashamed. Why, when I had $10mm, did I want $100mm? I had enough to live forever. And yet, some feeling inside of me thought I was imperfect, unloved, not good enough, unless I had that $100mm. And then, of course, I lost it all. And I really did feel shame. For years! Perfectionist thoughts are not only not useful, they are damaging.

4) Jealousy. – there’s that Sting song, “if you love someone, set them free.” A lot of people love others but don’t want the other to be free. They say, “I love you” but the love is tainted with need, with desire, with jealousy. How do you catch yourself when you feel this less pure form of love. Jealousy is like this also. Why did this friend sell his business for $80 million and I’m still working 29 hours a day. Or why did this other friend cash out when he was just a low-level employee of Facebook? It’s hard. But it’s still a type of thought that will bring you down, force you to live a lesser life than the person you were meant to be. When you think you have the purest motives, take a second to check yourself – what are your ulterior motives. What would happen if you don’t get what you want?

You might think that jealousy can be a motivating thought: If he can do it, why can’t I? But it’s not. It takes away from the thoughts of creativity, ingenuitiy, innovation, invention.

5) Painful – We just had the Thanksgiving holidays. This gives rise to a lot of pleasurable thoughts. But also painful ones. Often we’re put together with family and friends that bring back memories. Historical is often hysterical.

We remember the past, we remember the things that were done to us. Everyone shouts hysterically, confusing it with historically. I went to a Thanksgiving once where one sister threw coffee on another sister. What started out as pleasurable thoughts (“MMm, Thanksgiving!”) quickly turned painful. This Thanksgiving I spent the entire day on a plane. It was my best Thanksgiving ever!

It’s too much to say: I’m not going to think these painful thoughts. We’re not Jesus. But for me, just being aware that I’m about to go into a situation where painful thoughts might occur, helps me to label them and filter them when they come up. Or even stay away from the situation altogether (hence the plane ride on Thanksgiving).

6) Fear. Everything changes. I’m going to get older. I’m going to fail at some of the things I start. Heck, I have proof of that. Maybe some day my wife Claudia will hate me (I hope not.) Maybe some day my kids will. (One of them yesterday said to me, “I hate you”, and it made me afraid for a second that her words weren’t the senseless provoking of a nine year old but I suddenly pictured  her as a twenty-nine year old saying it.)

But these fears of the  future are just as useless as the painful thoughts of the past. They have nothing to do with how we can be happy and productive right now. Today. So they deserve to be labeled and put in the mental spam box. Some people live life as if today is your last day. Better to do the opposite, live each day as if it’s the first. A fresh start. Time for newness and confidence.

7) Obsessive. Perhaps the biggest time and life waster.  One time I was so obsessed with another woman that I’d go to sleep with my phone right next to me wishing she’d call. I’d wake up disappointed she didn’t call and wondering what she was doing all night. I’d wait until I thought she was awake and then I would call and ask her to breakfast. If she couldn’t, I’d go to her area and wait around until she was available. I’d keep circling the block to see the light was on in her window. My entire day revolved around her. Of course she got sick of me. In which case I became more obsessive. What does this have to do with being an entrepreneur? It has everything to do with it. That valuable energy I was wasting could’ve been spent developing Groupon or heck, even Lycos.

Or sometimes when someone is angry with me, I can’t just give it up. I have to prove myself right. I have to make sure he or she knows how wrong he is. I play the argument over and over again. I can’t understand how they can think I’m wrong. Or what I did to deserve such harsh treatment. I’m RIGHT! So get with the program.

Sadness.  I don’t want to suggest that it’s “bad” to feel sad. If someone close to you dies, you’ll feel sad. But often people stretch out the sadness until it becomes an addiction, an excuse to be pessimistic.” I’m “never going to be happy” because…X, Y, and Z.”

Our mind likes to be sad. It likes the barriers to happiness. Happiness is too wide open and scary. Sadness keeps us confined inside our boundaries. Those boundaries become the walls that pessimism lives inside of. It’s easy to be pessimistic because then we fool ourselves into thinking we don’t need to do too much. What if in 2004, some kid at Harvard didn’t say, “I’m going to make a little website that everyone on the planet is going to put all of their personal details on.” What if he said, instead, “Ahh, I don’t feel like it. Some girl who looks like the girl with the dragon tattoo just broke up with me and can I really compete against myspace.com anyway? Don’t be an idiot, Mark.” And he just went under his covers and cried. No good!

9) Unimprovement. We know exactly when we are thinking of things that are not good for us. Am I going to eat chocolate until 1 in the morning while watching the Real Housewives of Atlanta? Most likely this is not good for me (although “Real Houswives of Beverly Hills” is a completely different issue).

The mind is like a giant Gmail box. Emails are constantly coming in. Most of them are junk emails and are instantly filtered into the spam box. But many other emails come in that we don’t know what to do with.

In Gmail you can create filters. For instance, when someone sends me a receipt for my latest book “I Was Blind But Now I See” I am able to label the email “Bad Behavior” because when my next self-published book comes out (working title, “Bad Behavior”) I can easily filter every email with that label and send it to them.

It’s the same in our mind. If we use the above nine labels above, and then filter anything (or most things) with those labels into the “not useful” box as per this post, then here’s what happens:

A)     Our brain gets quicker at noticing when we are thinking not-useful thoughts.

B)     Your negativity is like a rock constantly being doused with water. Eventually the rock withers to nothing, although it takes time. It’s persistent practice.

C)      We have more time for the useful thoughts – the thoughts that lead to productivity, minimalism, happiness, freedom.

D)     We can identify which labels are occurring the most and develop problem-solving techniques to directly deal with them. Not every “not useful” thought should be treated the same.

Don’t believe me. Don’t pay any attention to this advice. Like everybody else, I’ve got 6,000 things to do today. And I know if any of the nine things above drag me down, I won’t get things done. I’m already feeling anxious about it. And I’m not helped by the 12 cups of coffee I’ve already consumed. In fact, I could be slipping into an obsessive panic.

Not useful.

–

Read “The Power of Negative Thinking”

And Follow ME on Twitter

Top image via Shutterstock/Villers Steyn

As we gather around our Thanksgiving dinner tables and think about all we have to be thankful for in our personal lives, let’s take an extra moment to reflect on all we should be thankful for as inbound marketers. We’ve covered some major marketing news stories on this blog during 2011. Not surprisingly, they’ve included a lot of helpful new updates and features that make our jobs as marketers a lot easier. Here’s a list of some of the top news, launches, changes, and updates that tickled our fancy and serve as a reminder of what we all have to be thankful for as inbound marketers. Let’s take a look!

Why We’re Thankful for Facebook

Facebook Launches Revamped Insights Tool for Business Pages

Marketers know they need to use social media, but have struggled to find a way to put ROI around social media effort. Finally, Facebook launched a revamped Insights tool that comes fully loaded with metrics that are truly insightful (hence the name) and can help you super-charge your Facebook marketing. Facebook Insights, thank you for helping us show our bosses pretty charts with lots of numbers indicating why we need to keep our social media presence going strong!

Facebook Now Allows Profile Pages to Become Business Pages

Marketers were told to be on Facebook, and they listened! Except some people set up profiles (that did pretty well!) instead of business pages. Oops. For all those who were too afraid to make the switch from profile to business page out of fear for losing their following, Facebook finally made it easy to make the transition. Facebook, thank you for giving people a chance to redeem themselves without suffering a giant social media setback!

Facebook Enhances News Feed and Introduces Ticker

Facebook’s new ticker feature includes status updates from pages users are following, meaning your business page can generate even more reach by appearing as an update! As of recently, these tickers also come with sponsored stories. Facebook, even though many of us kicked and screamed (and may still be doing so), thank you for getting more eyes on our social media content, allowing us to extend our reach and generate more fans.

Why We’re Thankful for Google

Google+ Finally Launches Business Pages

There she is, the story so many marketers waited for. The appearance and functionality of business pages resembled a Google+ personal page but also allowed businesses to leverage the social network to connect with their audience, spread their messages, promote their content, and generate leads. (Don’t forget: this is the same year that Google launched Google+ as well). Google, thank you for listening to the thousands of businesses that requested business pages, and giving us another place to publish the content we work so hard to create!

Everything Marketers Need to Know About Google’s Panda Updates

Some businesses suffered big time from Google’s Panda updates, but we all learned that being helpful in our marketing is truly important and that we must be generating fresh and optimized content constantly. Google, thank you for leveling the playing field with these updates; it allows marketers with the best content to have a shot at the top, even if they don’t have the most money.

Google Adds Google+ Posts and ‘Add to Circles’ Buttons to Search Results

Now, even if searchers do not have a Google+ account, they will still see Google+ results for their searches. I guess that’s pretty beneficial if you want your Google+ business pages to be shared beyond Google users, huh? Google, thank you for rewarding people who are using your new social network and helping us build our reach even to those who haven’t jumped on the bandwagon yet.

Why We’re Thankful for LinkedIn

LinkedIn Launches Company Status Updates

This update enables companies to broadcast messages to its company followers. Companies can share text and links to other content as well as multimedia content like videos and images. LinkedIn, thank you for giving us the sharing capabilities we have on Facebook on a site that is extremely targeted to B2B marketing. It allows us to speak to a more targeted audience, which means more qualified leads.

LinkedIn Launches “LinkedIn Today”

LinkedIn Today is a news aggregation and curation service. Based off the industry you have selected on your personal page, LinkedIn will provide top headlines for stories in that designated field. LinkedIn, thank you for making it easier for us to stay up-to-date on what’s happening in our industry!

LinkedIn Releases Official Share Button

The release of this button allows LinkedIn users to easily share content they find interesting and relevant with their network. LinkedIn, thank you for making it easy for users to share content straight to their profile. It makes them much more prone to share and gets content in front of more eyes.

Why We’re Thankful for Twitter

Twitter Launches New Follow Button for Websites

The new button makes it easy for website visitors to start following the Twitter accounts that are most interesting to them. Twitter, thank you for giving marketers an easy way to generate new followers and, ultimately, increase social media reach.

Twitter Introduces Free Twitter Web Analytics Tool

Twitter finally introduced its own analytics tool, aimed at helping website owners understand how much traffic they generated from Twitter as well as the effectiveness of Twitter integrations on their websites. Twitter, I’ll echo my sentiments to Facebook. Thank you for giving marketers the ability to justify time spent on social media!

Twitter Rolls Out Improved Search Functionality With Photos & Videos

This provides businesses with the unique opportunity to see how often their content is being shared by putting it on a public forum, and seeing if it ends up on the top results. If so, your reach is extended even further, as users may click on it just because it’s on their screen. Twitter, thank you for not forgetting that content takes many forms other than text. Photos and videos are an important part of many marketers’ inbound marketing strategies!

What else should marketers should be thankful for this Thanksgiving? Share some of your favorite inbound marketing updates that make you thankful!

Image credit: jelene

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When you need a place to collect and organize all of your family’s old recipes in digital form, and then take those recipes with you to the grocery store or to your parents’ house to help with Thanksgiving dinner, which application do you use to get the job done? This week we want to know which apps you have loaded up on your smartphone or tablet to collect, organize, share, or just store your favorite recipes for safe keeping. More »

The holidays are a time for good food, gathering with loved ones, frantic trips to overcrowded malls and paid time-off from work — well almost. A majority of the U.S. workforce will be checking their work email over holidays this year, according to a new study.

More than two-thirds (68 percent) of employed adults in the U.S. check their work email on traditional holidays such as Thanksgiving and Christmas, and 27 percent of those who check email do so several times a day, according to data compiled by email and social intelligence startup Xobni. The online survey, conducted by Harris Interactive, polled 2,810 adults in November 2011 on their holiday email behaviors.

Okay, so we check our email. Guilty as a charged. Plus, more and more of us are always toting around email-capable smartphones so that makes sense. But perhaps more telling of our always-on, work-related holiday email patterns is this little nugget: 79 percent of those folks who check email on their holiday vacays said they received a work-related email from a coworker or client. That’s right, your coworkers are sending you action items when they should be sitting down for Thanksgiving dinner.

Of course, you may not mind the work diversion — and you wouldn’t be alone. Nineteen percent of those who received work emails on holidays said they were “thankful for the distraction” or “relieved.”

If this all sounds familiar that’s because Xobni conducted the same study in 2010 with similar results. The same percentage of people (79 percent) expect to receive work-related emails on holidays this year, but the number of people who expect to check their work emails has dropped from 59 percent in 2010 to 55 percent in 2011. But Xobni also found fewer folks will loathe the never-ending stream of messages in their inbox, as just 37 percent (as opposed to 41 percent in 2010) of workers said they felt “annoyed, frustrated or resentful” about holiday emails.

It even turns out that our holiday work preferences and patterns vary by our age and gender. Men, for instance, are still more likely than women to check their work email, but the percentage gap is closing.

You can have a look at the infographic below (click to enlarge) for some of Xobni’s other demographic findings.

[Image via Flickr/geishaboy500]

Filed under: social, VentureBeat

Dear Lifehacker, More »

Facebook will no longer be able to change your privacy settings without your consent, Thanksgiving dinner gets more expensive as food prices rise, and Apple’s new patent application hints at new iOS features. More »