Key Smadi Sonwi Technology News

Posts Tagged ‘online’

Many companies are now doing the majority or even all their business online and foregoing the “Brick and Mortar” storefront. It is easy to see why that trend has happened. For one thing, the cost of setting up such a business is relatively inexpensive and easy. There is no need to pay for the overhead of a physical building. Also, the cost of maintaining a Web site is minimal. Moreover, the Internet provides a convenient and efficient way of marketing products. As more and more people are spending time on the Internet, the market of online customers continues to grow.

But when businesses shift from face-to-face customers to anonymous online customers, there is a loss of personal connection and trust. All the online spamming and scamming hasn’t helped the matter at all. That has eroded the trust in E-commerce and the credibility of many companies. How are you gaining and maintaining customer trust? What are you doing as an online vendor to communicate to your customers?

In an online world, business just doesn’t stop after hours and on weekends. What are you doing to answer your customer’s questions? Here are a few things that you can do to improve communication with your customers:

1. Offer a Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) page and online product support information. This is an excellent way of answering basic questions that may otherwise flood your support email. For example, our voice-changing product, MorphVOX, has a FAQ on the common issues that customers may come across. We also have provided detailed online documentation on topics that users may want to explore more. This takes care of roughly 95% of the questions people may have.

2. Add a support email link on your Web site for issues that can’t be resolved by the Web support. At Screaming Bee, we try to answer our customer questions within one business day. More often, we’ll answer questions within an hour of receiving the email. I believe that we have gained many loyal customers because of our aggressive efforts to meet needs in a timely manner.
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The traditional approach to implementing an intranet is to purchase a software package, modify it for your needs, and install it on your system.

Over the past few years, another option has grown in popularity – the implementation of a web-based solution.

As you consider the choice between installed software and a web-based intranet, here are some considerations:

1. The most important requirement of any intranet is that everyone uses it.

To assure broad-based participation, the intranet must be easy to implement, simple to use, cost-effective to maintain, and offer each individual user the power to post, access and use content in a way that serves their specific needs. In short, the intranet must have value to everyone.

Web-based intranets are designed around this concept. The interface and navigation are consistent with their use of the web – an environment in which they feel in control, using familiar tools.

In contrast, the business world is littered with countless elegant and feature-rich soft-ware based intranets that have failed. Why? Because they represented an alien environment into which the user was expected to venture. Few employees had the time or the interest (or courage) to enter, rendering the intranet impotent, with the powerful tools unused.

This is the plight of traditional, out-of-the-box software solutions. Unlike web-based intranets, they force users into a constrained environment requiring in-depth training, built around rules designed for the group, rather than the individual.

2. Software intranets have unpredictable costs: in time, attention and money.
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Tetris was the first computer game that involved falling tetromino pieces that the game player must align in order to create an unbroken line which subsequently disappears in order to free up more game play space. If the player is unable to make an unbroken line, the game play space quickly gets crowded until the point where no more space is available and the game is over.

The game of Tetris was first programmed in 1985 in the former Soviet Union by Alexey Pazhitnov. It ran on a machine called an Electronica 60 but was quickly ported to run on an IBM PC in the same month of its initial release. One month later and the game had been ported for use on the Apple II and the Commodore 64 by a programming team in Hungary.
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A short overview of the history of arcade games and flash games will show that there is a huge connection between these two types of games. Arcade games have a long history and, even though the arcade games were not in the past what we know them to be today, the same concept is the main ingredient for the new ones as well. The arcade games are usually simple, have iconic characters, a certain number of levels with increasing difficulty and they do not require high skills or much learning time. In addition, they do not have deep storylines as most console games have in our days. Today’s PC or console games with the same qualities can be considered arcade games.

Starting from the early 1920’s with the use of old ‘arcade games’ in the amusement parks (such as ball toss games, coin-operated machines or pinball) this whole ‘industry’ has evolved immensely. This passion for arcade games motivated their producers to always search for something better and more entertaining. They have outdone themselves every time something new appeared on the market. From wood made machines and mechanical or electronic scoring readouts to the playing of games online, all games have conquered the hearts of the ageless children. Because people enjoy these arcade games so much they want to play them all the time. This is why they have not even completely left aside the coin-operated arcade games. They resort to them in restaurants, shopping malls, bars or pubs. However, they are only a substitute to the computer versions because playing games online is much better.
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