'Net Features : at&t

Digital Showcase: 17 Companies to Know

Administrator — Fri, 07 Jun 2013 18:30:00 GMT

Opportunities abound for emerging and established enterprises looking to make or maintain their virtual mark. Industry trade shows like SES, eTail, Conversion Conference, IRCE and many others, offer unparalleled opportunities to educate yourself on emerging trends, technologies and talk, in general, but they are also a fantastic mechanism to drive brand awareness and rub elbows with those who have the ability to help you grow your business, whether it be through partnerships or press.

Website Magazine attended IRCE this week in our hometown of Chicago and brought back 17 companies (or news items) that caught our virtual eye in this digital showcase.

Needle

One of the more interesting companies was that of Needle, a live chat/sales “guided shopping” platform for big retailers that leverages vendors' brand advocates. Needle helps retailers recruit and train those advocates who receive rewards and payouts based on the quality of their participation. Needle counts Overstock.com, Norwegian Cruise Line and Coach and others as clients currently.

Feedvisor

Website Magazine covered Feedvisor in late May and it was well received at the time by our readers, and the same can be said for its presence at IRCE. The algorithmic repricing solution for Amazon, which is currently in use by brands such as American Greetings, will be very appealing to Internet retailers of all budgets interested in optimizing their advertising spend at the popular marketplace.

WisePricer

Maximizing ad spend has been a hot topic this year and numerous companies have built solutions to help Web retailers do exactly that. WisePricer’s is a unique solution Website Magazine encountered that enables retailers to track, monitor and gain insights about their competitors in order to determine an optimal pricing strategy.

Listrak

Email marketing service Listrak was busy at IRCE showcasing its e-commerce-based platform for Internet retailers.

Listrak's solutions run deep and include those for acquisition and engagement, post-purchase and re-engagement, life cycle management and segmentation.

Doogma

Interactive product personalization platform Doogma is certainly a service that will appeal to startup merchants looking to add interactivity into the purchase process, enabling buyers to visualize products before they buy based on their design preference matched with the Web retailers offering.

SAP

Days after Salesforce purchased ExactTarget, SAP announced that they have acquired Hybris Software, a popular provider of e-commerce technology for both B2B and B2C segments, featuring management of content, orders and data from the platform, as well as powerful search and merchandising features.

AT&T and IBM

AT&T and IBM teamed up to offer the e-commerce suite that will provide a convenient service in a single, subscription-based package with features including predictable monthly pricing and integrated software licensing.

This payment format differentiates this product from others by eliminating the up-front licensing fees typical to e-commerce solutions. Also key to mid-size retailers, and their bottom lines, is the scalability of the website and application hosting to meet their changing promotional and seasonal needs.

RetailMeNot.com

RetailMeNot.com is enjoying fantastic growth, as according to a recent review of comScore’s monthly unique visitor data, RetailMeNot.com ranked as the 25th most visited retail website. Categories in the review included coupon, retail and travel websites.

BrightTag

At IRCE 2013, BrightTag showcased its products including BrightTag Tag Management and BrightTag FUSE, its omni-channel data integration platform. BrightTag’s team of marketing and analytics experts were onsite to offer event attendees consultative advice on how to drive their business with better data.They also announced three tips for driving online results: embrace your customer's multi-device world, take data quality seriously and think real-time with your data strategy.

Simple Helix

Web hosting tends to be one of those topics that no one ever thinks about until they need it. A new breed of hosting companies is emerging fortunately that are committed/dedicated to serving the e-commerce market, and more specifically users of specific platforms – like the popular Magento solution. Simple Helix is one such provider that is quickly making its market in the

Signifyd

Internet retailers are very concerned about payment fraud but some fascinating companies are emerging, such as Signifyd, to minimize the problem and impact. Signifyd uses real-time, big data, relationship graph analysis that reveals and scores information from various sources (e.g. social, geo, address, phone, names, airports, cards) to simplify the often complex but important decision about whether transactions should be reviewed by an agent.

eBay

If you’re in e-commerce, you’re likely dealing with eBay or using one of its service in some capacity. Ebay was present showcasing numerous offerings including the Magento platform, Paypal and GSI-Commerce.

STELLAService

Sam Collin of the rapidly growing customer service measurements and ratings provider STELLAService spoke about a recent deal with none other than Google in which the search engine monolith will be paying STELLAService to license its customer service ratings to include alongside product listings in Google Shopping. For those unfamiliar with STELLAService, it’s a company that tests and then rates the customer service performance of a variety of online retailers and businesses by stress testing more than 300 different elements of a customer’s online experience, and then seeing how companies from various industries stack up against one another.

ModCloth

ModCloth is continuing to push its unique social media strategy as it slowly takes over the world of online apparel retail. By leveraging all of the key social networks that aren’t just Facebook and Twitter, including Tumblr, Pinterest and Instagram, the company is able to share their unique and fashionable products and interact with consumers through a variety of online touch points. But the real crux of ModCloth’s built-in social media strategy is the company’s ability to integrate user feedback and images into their business, sometimes going so far as to use pictures of customers modeling their products or allowing customers to write copy for a product by asking them questions like, “How would you describe this?”

Bongo International

This e-commerce platform helps brands expand their business to the global market. The platform deals with global logistics, duty and sales tax obstacles, as well as screens all international customers to prevent fraudulent orders. In fact, Bongo International boasts a 0.0 percent fraud rate since the company first launched in 2007, and also ships orders to almost anywhere in the world within five days. Merchants can choose from three different solutions, which typically work with all shopping platforms.

GoDataFeed

This e-commerce marketing software helps merchants increase their traffic and visibility on more than 70 comparison shopping sites and affiliate networks. The platform can be leveraged to automate datafeed submissions and optimize product listings. In fact, GoFeedData provides merchants with feed optimization tips, as well as offers an instant validation tool that tells users if their data needs to be adjusted before going live on shopping channels. Plus, GoDataFeed provides analytics, which track merchants’ best performing shopping sites and products, and measures a campaigns overall success.

Ecwid

E-commerce widget provider Ecwid has teamed up with popular website builder WIX to offer an e-commerce extension within the WIX App Market. While the app has only been live for about two weeks, it has already seen approximately 1,000 sign-ups in that period. The free app not only allows users to add a secure shopping cart to their WIX site, but to their Facebook Page and mobile site as well.

:: Did we miss your company or its news? Let us know below. ::

Small Businesses Technology Trends in 2013

Amberly Dressler — Wed, 01 May 2013 18:05:00 GMT

Digital marketing – websites, social media and online advertisements - is the way of the future and this outlook is not only limited to big business. Small businesses are significantly increasing their online investments, according to the 2013 AT&T Small Business Technology Poll.

In fact, 66 percent of small businesses plan to invest as much or more in digital marketing than they did last year. According to the poll, a vast majority of small businesses will also expand their online and digital presence through their company website and through email marketing in 2013.

Perhaps most notably, however, is that more than 80 percent of the 1,000 small businesses that were polled nationwide, will also use word-of-mouth marketing to increase awareness and visibility. And while word-of-mouth still runs supreme with this business segment,small businesses are not ignoring the shift that has taken place in consumer consumption habits thanks to mobile. Seventy-one percent are “somewhat” or “very likely” going to increase budgets for marketing via mobile devices.

“U.S. small businesses see incredible value and opportunity in digital marketing and are clearly increasing their presence as a way to gain access to new customers,” said Cathy Martine, AT&T Executive Vice President of Small Business Solutions. “With a variety of digital tools such as email, websites and social media, coupled with the ability to both deliver and access them from mobile devices, small businesses are building new connections without borders.”

The poll also addressed the use of social media among the 1,000 small businesses nationwide, the results include:

• As a way to remain competitive with easy and affordable ways to create awareness, 36 percent of small businesses polled say they use LinkedIn for various reasons, including engaging with others in their industry and extending awareness of their business. This represents a 16 percent increase over last year.

• While LinkedIn saw an increase, Facebook participation among small businesses polled decreased from 44 percent to 41 percent over the past year.

• Use of location-based social media also decreased. For example, Foursquare decreased from 9 percent to 6 percent year over year.

AT&T WebPhone Gets Its Moment

Amberly Dressler — Wed, 27 Feb 2013 16:30:00 GMT

Integrating communications services with Web browsers to allow consumers to easily shift between devices and locations is why Ericsson, Mozilla and AT&T teamed up to showcase a Web Real-Time Communication (WebRTC) proof of concept, called AT&T Web Phone, at Mobile World Congress 2013.

The joint demonstration builds on Ericsson's Web Communication Gateway, the Mozilla Social API and WebRTC support in Firefox and the AT&T API Platform to enable the Mozilla Firefox browser to sync with a user's existing phone number and provide calling services without any plugins to download.

"We are excited to enable Web to mobile voice calls, video calls and file sharing without the need for a plugin,” said Todd Simpson, Mozilla Chief of Innovation. “This gives developers and operators a lot of opportunity to offer compelling services while maintaining direct customer relationships, so users can have an awesome, consistent communications experience."

The technology builds on WebRTC, an open Web framework that the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) is standardizing. This demonstration is meant to show how the Web browser can perform many functions usually confined to a mobile device, such as voice and video calls and SMS and MMS texting.

"AT&T opens our network to developers through our API platform, allowing them to create applications with AT&T services like SMS, MMS and call management seamlessly and easily integrated,” said Carlton Hill, Vice President Developers Services, AT&T. “Together with Mozilla and Ericsson, we've developed a concept that illuminates for developers and consumers the technologies made possible by our APIs."

Additionally, in a joint press release, the companies state that the proposition will allow fast innovation to new and different applications and services - whether on a mobile device or desktop computer, through the global network of developers who work on the open Firefox platform.

AT&T, Bazaarvoice Offer Ratings and Reviews on Facebook

Administrator — Tue, 28 Dec 2010 09:35:00 GMT

AT&T has joined forces with Bazaarvoice to enable its customers to read, share and submit product reviews directly on the company's Facebook fan page. AT&T, which has offered product ratings and reviews on its own site since 2008, is the first in the telecommunications industry to bring customer ratings and reviews onto Facebook to help consumers with their purchase decisions and connect more closely with its brand through their peers.

The Bazaarvoice ratings and reviews system allows AT&T customers to share their feedback on devices and accessories. Featured within a ratings tab on AT&T’s Facebook brand page, visitors can review a wide variety of different products by using a five-star scale to measure overall satisfaction.

Users can also view recent reviews that were posted directly onto Facebook or the brand site, and they can browse reviews of featured, top or popular products. Additionally, visitors can take advantage of the “buy it now” functionality, which links directly to the specific product page on att.com to complete their purchase and drive the Facebook-to-website conversion cycle.

Bazaarvoice’s social commerce solutions have served more than 165 billion pieces of customer-generated content on more than 1,000 brand websites such as Best Buy, Costco, Dell and Macy’s. The company connects organizations with influencers through a network that reaches hundreds of millions of consumers around the globe.