Facebook gives you a way to track “likes” and “Shares” from content on your site.  It’s called “Insights”.  To use it, just go to:

www.facebook.com/insights

The first think you have to do is “claim” your domain, which means to tie your domain to your facebook account.  Facebook gives you a meta tag to add to your home page.

If you have problems claiming your domain try “DeLinting” your site by going here:

http://developers.facebook.com/tools/lint/

Note you must be logged into facebook to do this.  Type in your domain name, and click the “Lint” button.  That may help you get going.

These days, many businesses are taking payments online.  Retailers are selling online, using a shopping cart type application.  But other businesses, such as consultants, are also finding that having an online payment option is a bonus for their clients.  I do this, using a simple payment form.  I also created a simple form, you can see here.  This is a simple overview for getting started taking payments online:

Turnkey released a new patch here:

http://forum.turnkeywebtools.com/showthread.php?10710-IMPORTANT-Security-Patch-for-SunShop-4.-Please-Read!

This is something to be applied immediately, to all shops.  I’ve done it several times and it’s pretty easy, with no side effects.  Also, it’s a good time to add a .htaccess file to your /admin area for add security.

Turnkey Web Tools has announced that they are working on a new version of Sunshop, their shopping cart product.

Here is the release link.

It’s another ‘from the ground up’ rebuild, which means the upgrade path will be rocky at best.  Here are some thoughts:

1.  No release date or feature list has been announced, so assume at least 5-6 months before it’s here.

2.  When you rebuild software, ALL the functionality has to be re-tested.  That means there is the potential for bugs in features that currently work fine.  So the initial release of the new version will likely have a lot of bugs (hopefully little).

3.  In that vein, don’t chomp at the bit to upgrade – let the first wave of users be the guina pigs.  After a few weeks / month, they will release an “update”, to fix all the bugs found by the first wave of users.

4.   If you are a 4.x user, consider if you really *need* to upgrade.  If the software is doing what you need, you can keep using it until you decide it’s time to revamp the store.

Here’s a study by Jakob Nielson:

http://www.useit.com/alertbox/mobile-usability.html

This study is over a year old, but I think there are a few takeaways.  One is that the success rate of people with “touch” phones is 75%, which is pretty high.  Given that smartphones seem to be going more toward the touch screens, this bodes well for regular websites.  The other is that mobile users are highly “search” reliant – so search engine optimization efforts will continue to matter quite a bit.