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Every successful, long-term business has a common denominator in training as it relates to online sales customer contacts. Notice I said "long-term." A great product or unique marketing effort can fall short when a customer contacts an employee who is ill-equipped to respond. Some 72 percent of onl...

Google has inked a deal to acquire 6-year-old Ireland-based firm Pointy for $163 million. Pointy provides a $900 box with built-in cellular connectivity, which lets brick-and-mortar retailers list their stock online. It plugs into the retailer's barcode scanner and automatically obtains accurate pro...

The CCPA -- widely considered to be the toughest law in the U.S. regulating the collection, storage and use of personal information -- went into effect on Jan. 1. Rather than preparing for it, however, many businesses have taken a wait-and-see approach. This could be a serious mistake. The new law i...

Adobe has announced the availability of Adobe Experience Manager as a Cloud Service for B2B and B2C companies of all sizes. The service provides "a globally scalable, agile and secure digital foundation that optimizes marketer and developer workflows across the entire content lifecycle, and connects...

In order for SMBs to compete with larger firms when it comes to customer reach, they need to approach their marketing plan with a strategic mindset. Marketing automation not only provides important opportunities for interaction with the customer, but also saves time.

After 10 years of fully supporting Windows 7, Microsoft ended its official support for the out-of-date Windows operating system on Tuesday. The popular classic Windows 7 OS still runs on some 200 million PCs around the globe, according to industry estimates. Users include small business owners, some...

As most security pros know, application containers -- Docker, rkt, etc. -- and the orchestration elements employed to support them, such as Kubernetes, are used increasingly in many organizations. Often the security organization isn't exactly the first stop on the path to deployment of these tools.

Consumers are on social media constantly, scrolling through posts from both friends and brands. Many have begun clicking on some of those brand posts and making purchases. "Social commerce is becoming increasingly popular for brands," noted Darin Archer, chief strategy officer at Elastic Path. "Even...

No matter how good a product or service is, the e-commerce Web and mobile design surrounding it will play a key role in maintaining engagement and ensuring consumers complete their shopping journey. Even the slightest friction, such as poor load speeds, can drive users away from a site, resulting in...

PR companies long have been known for reshaping perceptions to favor their clients. Some now engage in "black PR" -- the calculated spread of disinformation and misinformation online. For example, entrepreneur Peng Kuan Chin's "Content Farm Automatic Collection System" harvests online articles and p...

Facebook has promised to remove certain "misleading manipulated media": videos edited or synthesized in ways not apparent to an average person, which likely would mislead viewers to believe that video subjects said words they did not say; products of artificial intelligence or machine learning that ...

Companies across industries are shifting toward an automated approach to customer relations. With the help of chatbots, businesses can reduce their customer service costs by up to 30 percent and save both employees' and customers' valuable time. Many customers welcome chatbots in the customer servi...

The service speed average among U.S. broadband households has increased steadily over the last four years, but only 6 percent of U.S. broadband households currently have plans with speeds of 1 Gbps or higher.

Samsung introduced a high-end Galaxy Chromebook at CES 2020 in Las Vegas. The new model could serve as an extension of the company's smartphone lineup and spawn a premium device demand in the category. Samsung aims to position it as the company's flagship Chromebook to meet potential demand for a mo...