Articles by Erika

For many e-tailers, online chat is a closer. Packaged and offered up to site visitors as a service, it provides an opportunity to close a sale when an uncertain customer wavers. Retailers were early adopters of this technology precisely because of the distinct return on investment, Conversive CEO Robert Williams told CRM Buyer. There are signs tha...

E-commerce has certainly not been immune from the recession battering the U.S. economy, but for reasons that can only be guessed at, most of the leading e-tailers have not stepped up their efforts to retain customers by providing improved service, according to a recent customer satisfaction survey Only two e-retailers scored above 80 on a 100-point...

Memo to telecom service providers: "We never thanked you, but you did a great job offering us consolidated billing. It is hard to remember now, as for the last few years you have been so aggressive in promoting bundled services, but five years ago, this was a major pain point. Three bills for ISP, cable and telephone, and usually three different due dates as well...

Ever since she found out her niece was reading her Web site, Jen Singer began making sure the majority of her content was G-rated -- appropriate for a general audience "Even though MommaSaid.net is a Web site for mothers, it appears that it's popular with quite a few tween girls, too," she told the E-Commerce Times. "Besides, some moms read and wat...

A small networking company is suing three tech titans for patent infringement. Cygnus Systems has filed suit in the U.S. District Court in Arizona, alleging that Microsoft, Google and Apple have all violated a patent Cygnus received in March 2008 on the use of document preview icon, or so-called thumbnail, technology. The patent is described as a...

This summer, Bob Lyons was tapped to lead Avaya's contact center division. The new general manager and vice president of customer service applications -- a relatively new position at Avaya -- joined the company at a crucial time. It was in the midst of reorganizing its operations around three business units: the contact center, unified communications, and small and mid-sized business applications...

This story was originally published on Aug. 15, 2008, and is brought to you today as part of our Best of ECT News series Every blogger should know the story of Heather B. Armstrong, nee Hamilton. In February 2002 she was fired from her job for blogging about her job. Blogs were relatively new at that time, and they were on few employers' radars. Ha...

Lorrie Thomas does not "sell, share or whore out" the personal information of any visitor who comes to herLorrie Thomas Web Marketing site -- and she backs up this no-share promise in herprivacy statement. Indeed, the entire document is a straightforward description of what the company will and will not do with personal data. For example, it "coll...

Microsoft is giving PC makers -- essentially, companies that make build-to-suit computers -- an additional four months to buy the Windows XP operating system. Redmond had originally designated Jan. 21, 2009, as the cutoff for shipping the OS. Now, these manufacturers can take delivery up to May 30. Now seven years old, XP is becoming the OS that s...

Five years and 35,000 people later, the Recording Industry Association of America has apparently conceded a major battle over music file-sharing. The music industry trade group has decided to stop suing individuals it suspects of illegally downloading music via peer-to-peer Web sites, according to press reports However, that doesn't mean the war is...

The Federal Reserve Bank has issued new rules that will take effect in 2010, radically changing the way credit card companies treat their customers. Essentially, they are strong protections that regulate interest rates and billing methodologies For instance, card companies will be prohibited from charging interest on balances that were paid off in...

Move over Black Friday and Cyber Monday, and make room for yet another retail-inspired shopping event. Free Shipping Day is here -- or rather, it will be here on Thursday, Dec. 18 -- the last day someone can order a gift online and have it guaranteed to arrive on Christmas Eve with free shipping. Free Shipping Day is the brainchild of Luke Knowles...

Some 20 years after the Exxon Valdez went ashore on Prince William sound, oil still remains at the bottom of the arctic waters -- but not because those responsible for cleanup have ignored it. Rather, multiple attempts to remove the oil from the sea floor have failed. Cold temperatures have rendered the oil too thick to move through pumping equipment.

Over the past eight years, HP has quietly built itself a solid constituency in the Software as a Service community. The company offers a huge range of applications hosted in the cloud -- almost its entire IT portfolio, in fact. That is why the company views the current economic crunch with equanimity. While many vendors see it as an opportunity to...

Over the past eight years, HP has quietly built itself a solid constituency in the Software as a Service community. The company offers a huge range of applications hosted in the cloud -- almost its entire IT portfolio, in fact. That is why the company views the current economic crunch with equanimity. While many vendors see it as an opportunity to...

Over the past eight years, HP has quietly built itself a solid constituency in the Software as a Service community. The company offers a huge range of applications hosted in the cloud -- almost its entire IT portfolio, in fact. That is why the company views the current economic crunch with equanimity. While many vendors see it as an opportunity to...

Microsoft and the Internet security community are trying to get a handle on a vulnerability that exposes Internet Explorer to the threat of zero day attacks. When the problem was first discovered -- only a few days after December's Patch Tuesday -- there was confusion about how the exploit worked, as well as which versions of IE were impacted Micr...

Part 1 of this two-part series on online advertising addresses some basic errors that even sophisticated ad buyers can make: ignoring target demographics' tastes and sensibilities; using archaic assumptions when measuring the success of an online campaign; and failing to plan for follow-up activities such as fulfillment. Part 2 takes a look at some subtler missteps that can derail a strategy just as easily...

Fourteen more companies have joined the Open Handset Alliance, throwing their support behind Android -- the open source mobile platform developed by Google. The most notable new member is Sony Ericsson, which, interestingly, is a founding member of the Symbian Foundation The other new OHA members are AKM Semiconductor, ARM, ASUSTek Computer, Athero...

MySpace has introduced its own version of single sign-on functionality, a move that follows on the heels of a handful of announcements last week from competing social networks MySpace Open Platform is a suite of products that includes the MySpace Application Platform, MySpaceID -- formerly called "Data Availability" -- and Post-To MySpace.