Monday - November 23, 2009
While retailers are facing increased competition, many have recognized that the way to thrive today is to invest in new ways to engage and serve their customers. Many are taking a fresh look at one of the cornerstones of the online experience: site search. Good site search can enable more personal and transparent shopping and, in this way, play a central role in a retailer's merchandising strategy. This can have far-reaching implications on the user experience offered, enabling higher sales and lower abandonment. This is "search as merchandising."
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Monday - November 23, 2009
Companies considering CRM systems often view them as a way to improve customer satisfaction and retention, boost sales and accelerate employee productivity. However, as with many technology-enabled business process, success is a complicated and interdependent proposition.
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Sunday - November 22, 2009
As the general notion of cloud computing continues to permeate the collective IT imagination, an offshoot vision holds that multiple business-to-business players could use the cloud approach to build extended business process ecosystems. It's sort of like a marketplace in the cloud on steroids, on someone else's servers, perhaps to engage on someone's business objectives.
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Saturday - November 21, 2009
Selling a home without a real estate agent can save thousands of dollars in commission fees, but it can also be a painstaking, confusing task. Foregoing an agent, however, is easier these days thanks to Web sites that help homeowners advertise their properties on the hottest real estate portals and even walk them through figuring out how to price their home to sell.
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Friday - November 20, 2009
The early indicators that Windows 7 is doing well seem to be piling up. CEO Steve Ballmer gave that perception a boost at the company's annual shareholders meeting on Thursday, announcing that Microsoft "has already sold twice as many units of Windows 7 than any other operating system ever launched in a comparable time." Do the early numbers indicate that Windows 7 may be strong enough to cheer the shareholders of other companies -- namely, battered computer OEMs like Dell?
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Friday - November 20, 2009
Many companies would give up their right to right-click to be able to duplicate Apple's success with iTunes. However, only one actually has the pieces already in place to do that, and its executives announced their intentions Thursday to take on Steve Jobs' company with its own online content service.
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Friday - November 20, 2009
It's fitting that the last stop on my tour of travel-planning Web sites for the E-Commerce Times was American Airlines. The site illustrates all of the problems that spurred this special look at travel sites in the first place. Travel sites have developed a reputation for being hard to navigate and poorly designed with cluttered user interfaces.
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Friday - November 20, 2009
CRM has lagged in the health insurance industry, but a major transformation is imminent. "There's been a reluctance to make comprehensive investments in technology compared with other sectors," said Gartner analyst Joanne Galimi. "Generally, the firms in the sector have been very tactical, only investing in specific areas -- basically reacting to pain points."
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Friday - November 20, 2009
European Union regulators said Friday that they have extended until Jan. 27 a deadline to wrap up their antitrust review of Oracle's planned US$7.4 billion takeover of Sun Microsystems. The European Commission said Oracle had asked for more time "in order to have the opportunity to further develop its arguments in response to the Commission's concerns."
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Thursday - November 19, 2009
From high-flying Internet pioneer to movie punchline: AOL's nadir may have come when Nicole Kidman's character in the 2004 remake of "The Stepford Wives" asks a group of husbands of robotic spouses where they work. "AOL," answers one man. "Is that why the women are so slow?" Kidman responds. The joke offers cold comfort to the AOL employees who found out Thursday that one-third of the workforce may be let go.
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Thursday - November 19, 2009
Salesforce.com is marrying its cloud computing bona fides with its growing expertise in collaboration in Salesforce Chatter, a new application and development platform. The company introduced the product at its Dreamforce tradeshow and conference under way in San Francisco.
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