'Net Features : wm-software

Tealium on the Move; Digital Marketers Turn to Tag Management

Michael Garrity — Thu, 02 May 2013 18:08:00 GMT

Enterprise tag management company Tealium has recently established turnkey integration with 500 different digital marketing vendor tags, giving them the industry’s largest ecosystem of technology vendors.

For Tealium’s customers, this means they’ll be able to deploy “nearly any major digital marketing solution” on their websites faster and easier than ever. This can include everything from analytics to search marketing solutions and beyond, which can be embedded right into a customer’s digital platform through a snippet of software code known as a tag.

The real benefit of these tags, however, is that they let marketers streamline complexity and increase agility by implementing these tag-based solutions on their own, without ongoing IT resource requirements. Before the emergence of tags, marketers mostly had rely on their companies’ IT staffs to integrate JavaScript code into their channels, but with Tealium, they’re given point-and-click, drag-and-drop simplicity that allows them to insert the code all on their own, thus moving the whole process along much faster and smoother.

Tealium’s huge vendor marketplace now offers customers “nearly every type of solution,” including analytics, affiliate marketing, optimization, display advertising, email, search marketing, marketing automation, retargeting, mobile and more.

Unleash the Power of In-Image Commerce with Stipple Shopping

Michael Garrity — Mon, 22 Apr 2013 17:25:00 GMT

With image-based content becoming one of the staple’s of a good Web marketing strategy these days, publishers and merchants, alike, have been looking for new ways to monetize their pictures.

The popular image tagging service Stipple has launched a new service that takes image monetization to the next level by allowing customers to make purchases from directly within an image with the Stipple Shopping enhancement. Now, customers can comparison shop and purchase products in-image, which saves consumers from having to discontinue their purchases or conduct laborious tasks like opening another window or re-directing.

By making it possible for shoppers to explore, compare and purchase products on social media sites and elsewhere across the Web, Stipple Shopping allows merchants to offer up a holistic experience that brings “key components of online shopping” into images and in-stream on sites like Twitter, Facebook and other leading online publishers.

Most importantly, though, is that Stipple Shopping will give consumers the chance to explore multiple product views, colors, demo videos and more. Plus, they can look at similar and suggested products and conduct purchase transactions all from within a tagged image.

Brands can leverage Stipple’s technology to share “an array of interactive content” in their relevant images. This can include real-time pricing and product information, videos and photos, among many other things. Merchants can also regularly update information by adding new videos that will be updated online everywhere the photo exists.

Stipple Shopping even allows brands to retain full control of the payment process to help make shoppers feel more secure when making purchases.

Sell More & Reduce Stress with Offerchat Saved Responses

Pete Prestipino — Mon, 22 Apr 2013 16:42:00 GMT

Providing customer service in a digital world presents a whole host of challenges.

While it's useful to know as much as you can about typical live chat users (see infographic below), it remains essential to have the best tools at your digital disposal.

While many enterprises are turning to automated help desk solutions (check out Website Magazine's 2013 Help Desk Comparison Chart) to lessen some of the burden for these important personnel, more can be done.

Live chat solution provider Offerchat for example has released a new feature that gives customer service agents an option to convert a response to a saved response. As you might imagine, that reduces repetitive replies and could ultimately reduce the stresss that comes with delivering quality high-quality customer support and improve the handling of pre-sales inquiries.

Below you will find an infographic from Offerchat about the demographics and behavior of typical live chat users.

More Live Chat Related Articles from Website Magazine:

- Top 15 Apps E-Commerce Merchants Can't Do Without
- 5 'Net Tactics to Master Live Chat
- 2013 Help Desk Comparison Chart

Tag Management for Non-Techie Digital Marketers

Michael Garrity — Thu, 18 Apr 2013 10:44:00 GMT

Real-time tag management system provider Ensighten wants to bring the ability to efficiently and accurately set up and manage dozens of tags across a website to even the least technically inclined marketers, which is why the company just launched its new Visual Tagger solution.

Despite the many benefits touted by tag management systems, some digital marketers and site optimization professionals have struggled to execute testing and targeting campaigns when they are required to tag pages with testing code and don’t have the technical background to do it. However, with the release of Visual Tagger, users can deploy Adobe Test & Target and Webtrends Optimize campaigns without updating any code.

All they have to do now is visit a Web page, launch the Visual Tagger through a browser bookmarklet and then define “as many test campaigns as they would like,” which includes identifying the testing locations, setting targeting criteria, passing along essential information, review all tags deployed, debugging any issues and more.

This will help “non-technical users” create a website data layer that improves the consistency and accuracy of visitor, browser and page data collection, while enhancing marketing optimization thanks to more refined data. It will also simplify event tracking, as marketers and analysts merely need to visually identify page elements to track and the events they want to pay attention to, and Visual Tagger’s built-in Adobe SiteCatalyst and Webtrends Analytics integration can easily map the analytics code for those events.

Visual Tagger is currently available for all Ensighten Manage customers at no additional cost.

Managing the Sales Process Digitally

Michael Garrity — Wed, 17 Apr 2013 15:55:00 GMT

Being a sales rep can be difficult, especially in today’s increasingly competitive business landscape. Luckily, companies continue to come out with useful business automation solutions that can take care of specific aspects of the sales process and provide sales teams with new insights that can be leveraged for improved results.

That’s why CampaignerCRM has just released a new product sales process management solution, known as CampaignerSPM, which can help formalize and track the steps that sales representatives are expected to follow in the sales cycle. It also provides advanced reporting and other integrated features that offer up some dazzling insights and identify key industry trends that can bring in more leads and successful sales.

Basically, CampaignerSPM gives companies and their sales teams real-time stats and information about the success of their sales campaigns, and then allows them to create repeatable, predictable and, most importantly, scalable sales processes that give sales representatives unique benchmarks by which they can navigate through the processes and measure their achievements. This includes different selling cycle phases, the activities in each phase and the tools needed to complete those activities. Moreover, multiple processes can be used for different products, services, markets and customers.

Campaigner says that this type of visibility into each phase of the sales cycle should provide sales managers with the information needed to make “better decisions” and more effectively manage their resources.

“A sales process allows organizations of all sizes to produce more revenue and get better results,” said the General Manager of Campaigner, EJ McGowan. “Campaigner SPM allows users to customize an automated process based on their best practices that ensures they are targeting the right prospects, qualifying leads and presenting the right features and benefits at the right time in the sales process.”

Among the features included in the CampaignerSPM solution are a customizable and user-friendly platform for easy adoption of CRM, the ability to “clone” best practices for a more consistent sales process, options for sending email campaigns directly from the CRM and a customer communication portal.

CampaignerSPM is available right now with a 25,000 email-per-user limit, unlimited contracts and no seat limitations. All of this costs $59.99 per month for each user.

WorldPay Integration Extends Intershop's Payment Processing Options

Michael Garrity — Mon, 15 Apr 2013 19:00:00 GMT

Payment processing solution provider WorldPay and e-commerce solution provider Intershop have joined forces to offer a robust e-commerce platform with more extensive payment processing capabilities, global customer reach and greater risk functionality. In other words, they may have just found the solution that many online merchants have been looking for.

Both WorldPay’s payment gateway and its RiskGuardian risk management service are now going to be integrated into the Intershop 7 e-commerce platform, meaning they’ll be available for all Intershop customers. This integration is supposed to help merchants maximize their transaction success and implement “cross-border strategies” that give their customers access to locally preferred payment methods through WorldPay’s over 200 alternative payment types.

According to the Global Online Shopper Report from WorldPay, 61 percent of online shoppers have “greater confidence” in a website if it offers a choice of payment methods.

“Following WorldPay’s integration with Intershop’s platform, merchants can now benefit from a comprehensive e-commerce solution that delivers unrivalled payment processing, risk and alternative payment capabilities,” said the Chief Commercial Officer of WorldPay’s E-Commerce Division, Shane Happach. “This integration places emphasis on the importance of the availability of preferred payment types to enable merchants to operate e-commerce globally through a single interface.”

In addition to adding a wide array of payment processing options and risk management services to the Intershop platform, this partnership also allows Intershop merchants to optimize their revenue streams by capturing payments from various touch points, such as online, mobile and MOTO channels.

Mozilla's New TowTruck Collaboration Service in Focus

Pete Prestipino — Mon, 15 Apr 2013 18:05:00 GMT

Mozilla Labs has just announced a noteworthy new project called TowTruck which will add a real-time collaboration service (or functionality) to any website.

TowTruck is open-source and implmented in Javascript (and with just one line of it) so there's no software or plugins to install. The service enables users to communicate (message), co-author (ideal for collaborating on forms and code), co-browse and guide each other - and all in real time via Web RTC.

One of the cooler collaboration features in TowTruck is cursor-mirroring which allows users to see a friend or colleagues cursor on the screen.

Workface Answers Digital Doorbell for NAR

Amberly Dressler — Mon, 01 Apr 2013 14:27:00 GMT

A broad digital footprint and fast reaction time dramatically improves the customer engagement process and provides more Web-based customer opportunities, which is why Workface, a prospect relationship management (PRM) software platform was chosen to optimize the National Association of Realtors’ Web presence, as part of the NAR’s Reach accelerator program.

Workface’s role in the NAR’s digital initiatives is to introduce the personality and personal engagement skills of highly qualified agents to improve the company’s reaction time to online customers.

“Today the real estate buying and selling process begins on the Web,” said Constance Freedman, NAR Vice President of Strategic Investments and REach Managing Director. “Workface represents exactly the type of companies that the REach program was designed to support: a company with high growth, cutting edge technology that connects homebuyers and agents, and one that delivers strategic benefits to the real estate industry.”

A recent NAR study shows that 90 percent of homebuyers searched online during their home-buying process.

“In situations where brokerages want to deliver high-touch, authentic live chat experiences on the Internet, Workface is simply the best solution on the market,” said Workface CEO Lief Larson. “We have a big vision that in the not-so-distant future homebuyers will have a live agent available at every online property listing — essentially the ultimate digital doorbell.”

The way Workface’s PRM works is by sitting in front of a customer relationship management (CRM) application and is used for meeting and greeting customers on the Internet and for assisting them in the early stages of the buying process, according to the company. Additionally, Workface helps companies introduce their customer-facing agents at the digital moment of interest, and greet customers on the web in a more humanized fashion. It can also be leveraged in advertising, social media and search efforts.

New Navigation Options Come to CoreCommerce

Allison Howen — Thu, 28 Mar 2013 18:00:00 GMT

A new software update from e-commerce platform CoreCommerce includes a combination of new features and integrations to help meet the growing needs of current customers.

Among the updates are two new types of navigation options, a drop down and mega menu, which can be accessed in the merchant’s admin area. The menu options allow them to customize how their navigation appears on their storefronts, which assists them in creating a more user-friendly environment. The mega menu option, for example, gives users the ability to use and organize images, code and text in addition to links, which can make it easier for consumers to find exactly what they are searching for on the site.

Moreover, CoreCommerce released updates to payment processors PayPal and Braintree. The new PayPal feature allows merchants who have multiple currencies enabled to choose which currency to send to PayPal, while the Braintree Blue and Orange integrations have been upgraded to give merchants the choice to process payments with authorize and capture or authorize only within their store’s admin area.

“Our community of fantastic merchants play a big role in deciding which features are most beneficial to add. We are dedicated to continually striving to make our software the very best in order to benefit our customers,” said CEO Matt DeLong.

It is also important to note that the Nivo Slider gallery has been updated to identify photo dimensions, as well as offers merchants the ability to add a background color to the slider. Additionally, CoreCommerce stores can create a custom message for purchases made with money orders, which will appear on a printer-friendly customer order receipt.

Lastly, CoreCommerce merchants using the QuickBooks integration should know that a purchase order column has been added to the account order history, which can be searched by using the purchase order number.

Badgeville Launches Salesforce Toolkit

Allison Howen — Wed, 27 Mar 2013 18:25:00 GMT

If you need to find a way to get your customers or employees to better engage with your Force.com applications, look no further than Badgeville.

The popular gamification and behavior management platform has launched a toolkit for the Salesforce platform, which enables companies to build more engaging experiences for their apps built on the Force.com platform. The toolkit allows businesses to layer Badgeville’s game, reputation and social mechanics across their cloud applications in order to improve loyalty, enhance employee productivity and maximize return on investment from their Force.com apps.

In fact, Badgeville claims that companies including Docusign, Autodesk, Engine Yard and Phoenix Idea Labs have already implemented its Behavior Platform on top of their Salesforce applications, which has resulted in increased customer engagement by 50 percent or more. Additionally, Badgeville customer Marketo layered the gamification company’s engagement mechanics across its customer community, which increased its active users by more than 51 percent and user engagement by 67 percent. This means that Marketo’s customers are not only more engaged, but are also learning more about Marketo products, which can be very influential and lead to future revenue opportunities for the company.

Videos, Brochures and Surveys Added to 1&1 MyWebsite Package

Allison Howen — Mon, 25 Mar 2013 19:05:00 GMT

Popular Web hosting provider, 1&1, has launched a new set of inclusive features for its MyWebsite package, which aim to enhance the appearance and capability of small business websites.

The new tools enable users to add video, brochure and online survey functionality to their websites. For example, the new Video Maker tool allows users to create audio-visual material that can be published on sites for a more influential sales approach. With the tool, users can create a video from up to 20 images, and have the ability to add royalty-free music to the video to accompany the images.

Moreover, 1 &1 has launched a brochure app, which can be helpful in assisting consumers with their search for products or services. With this tool, users can combine images and text to create a 32 page PDF brochure that can be viewed, saved, printed or shared from the business’s website.

Lastly, 1 &1 is launching an online survey tool that will be available in April. This app allows users to create and embed surveys directly within their company’s homepage. The tool comes with a variety of survey templates that can be edited and customized. Additionally, a report of the survey results is provided online or emailed to the business owner in either PDF, Word, Powerpoint or Excel formats.

The Latest Google Drive API is All About Collaboration

Michael Garrity — Fri, 22 Mar 2013 21:00:00 GMT

Earlier this week, Google launched its Google Drive Realtime API to allow developers to utilize Google Drive’s real-time collaboration features in their own applications.

According to Google, this API is meant to offer collaborative versions of popular data objects, like maps, strings, lists and JSON values, as well as automatically synchronizing and storing any modifications to these objects. Developers can even add their own custom objects and references.

Plus, since the API will track the presence of collaborators, the developers can alert users when other people join and leave, as well as when they make changes to a document.

As with Drive, the Realtime API will enact any local changes that take place when a user is in the developer’s application, and these will be immediately reflected in the local document via the use of operational transformation. In other words, local apps will continue to be responsive, even if they’re running on high-latency networks.

In addition, Google has opened up the Drive Realtime API Playground, so that developers can go in and test out their applications. To use the Drive Realtime API and gain access to the Playground, users must first sign up for the original Google Drive API.

Yammer Will Help Microsoft Office Be More Social

Michael Garrity — Fri, 22 Mar 2013 17:35:00 GMT

Taking a page out of Google’s digital book, Microsoft now seems to be trying to add a social spine that runs through all of its various software products, and it’s using its acquisition of the enterprise social network Yammer to do it.

In fact, according to the Senior Director of Microsoft’s Office Division, Jared Spataro, in a blog post published Tuesday, Yammer is the company’s “big bet for enterprise social, and we’re committed to making it the underlying social layer for all of our products.”

The first step in this process was integrating Yammer with the Microsoft Dynamics customer relationship management (CRM) platform, but it’s certainly not stopping there! In fact, this summer, the company plans to release an update to Office 365 that will let customers replace their SharePoint “newsfeeds” with Yammer, in addition to supporting single sign-on and seamless navigation from Office 365’s global navigation bar.

Included in this new, improved and Yammer-incorporated version of Office 365 will be rich document capabilities that let users integrate Office Web Apps to add editing and co-editing capabilities to Word, PowerPoint and Excel documents. Plus, by 2014, Microsoft apparently plans to initiate a 90-day update cycle for the social enhancements included in Office 365 to “combine social, collaboration, email, instant messaging, voice, video and line of business applications in innovative new ways.” In other words, the company will be able to incrementally flesh out the connections between Yammer and Office 365.

However, Office 365 isn’t the only Microsoft product that’s going to be getting a boost of Yammer. The company is also going to allow customers to replace their SharePoint newsfeeds with Yammer when conducting on-premises installations of the SharePoint Server 2013. This will, in turn, create a sort of hybrid between the two services.

Manage Those Pesky Consumer Use Taxes More Effectively

Michael Garrity — Wed, 20 Mar 2013 12:55:00 GMT

Running an e-commerce business can be taxing (literally), but the sales tax and compliance automation service provider Avalara wants to help lessen the burden with the release of a new, completely automated consumer use tax management solution known as AvaTax Consumer Use.

The new solution will work with hundreds of different billing systems, financial applications and enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems to ensure that it can serve businesses of all shapes and sizes by integrating seamlessly into their accounting systems.

Unlike Avalara’s older tailored consumer use tax service, this new solution provides a simple and affordable product to companies of all shapes and sizes that leverages Avalara’s powerful, accurate tax decision engine. In fact, AvaTax Consumer Use was built with a focus on small and medium-sized businesses.

In the past, consumer use tax management has been, at best, minimally supported by accounting software and ERP solutions, making the whole process not only time-consuming and complicated, but also costly. This added a substantial burden to SMB owners, as those who didn’t take consumer use tax management seriously were at a great risk, as underreported or misreported consumer use taxes “create a fertile ground for audits and penalties.”

With this new solution, tax calculations can be arranged to fit a company’s filing schedule and processed by just clicking a button; after that, all tax data will be automatically available to AvaTax Returns to further streamline the tax management process, (mercifully) eliminating complexity and saving a lot of time.

Microsoft Dynamics users will be the first to get a chance to try out Avatax Consumer Use, as the product for the Dynamics AX, GP and NAV today at Convergence 2013.

Make Your Website More Communal with DNN Social

Michael Garrity — Tue, 19 Mar 2013 18:45:00 GMT

Today, the Web content management system (CMS) DotNetNuke (DNN) announced the release of a new social software solution to help website owners optimize customer engagement and loyalty through the use of online communities, thus combining both content and community management in a single, easy-to-use solution.

The conspicuously named DNN Social product provides businesses with the ability to create and then manage social communities on their websites with the greatest of ease. In turn, the end users get a one-stop destination for consuming content, exchanging ideas and interacting with other members of the community.

Businesses that implement DNN Social can benefit from the ability to more effectively control the customer conversation than they would on a third-party social network like Facebook or Twitter, because now it will take place on a corporate website. Plus, introducing a thriving user community into a website can reduce support costs, drive product innovation and increase sales and brand awareness.

“Online communities represent a golden opportunity for you to deepen engagement with your prospects and customers in a leveraged, cost-effective way,” said Kim Celestre, the senior analyst serving technology marketing professionals at Forrester Research.

DNN Social comes with a number of features that will help enhance digital marketing, customer support, product development and e-commerce, including gamification, data analytics (along with a user-friendly dashboard), crowd-sourcing ideation and a “Q&A” customer service environment that allows users to submit, search for and answer questions.