With the increasing adoption of live chat as a support channel, more and more companies are wondering if it’s a good fit for them and how they can deliver an exceptional customer experience with chat. BoldChat recently partnered with TSIA on a webinar to answer 5 key questions about why live chat is an important communication channel and how companies can best utilize it for customer support.

In 2010, e-commerce sales in the United States were nearly $170 billion. In 2015, online shopping is expected to generate $350 billion — and by 2018, that number could rise to $500 billion.

What do Hospitals, Barbershops, Hotels, Retail Stores, Supermarkets, Nail Salons, Car Dealerships, and Stadiums, all have in common? They are all starting to utilize Google Business View to drive foot traffic to their business by optimizing their Google + Pages with virtual tours and still photography. Once uploaded the content is directly accessible through the See Inside window on Google and Google Map Searches.

Marketing has come a long way. It used to be so simple; engage your audience by having a great website with content sprinkled in. Now, with 70% of the buyer’s journey self directed the power has shifted to the consumer. Many organizations are hyper aware of this shift and are taking a ‘content is king’ mentality. As marketers, how do we align our efforts to our consumers needs?

With more than half of all small business in the U.S. conducting business over the web, the need to keep your ecommerce website secure and performing optimally is more important than ever. Users expect safe online shopping environments while at the same time being increasingly intolerant of any delays. Ecommerce providers thus have the seemingly contradictory task of ensuring their websites are fast and always available, while being fully secure.

In the digital world we live in today, the average shopper uses at least three devices to access the Internet. Across those devices, they’re faced with a myriad of retailer engagements ranging from email offers, product ads, promotional texts, to sponsored tweets and more. The growing number of interactions before purchases has complicated the retailer’s ability to clearly track the path to purchase, let alone properly assign credit to each interaction.

As we enter the second quarter of 2015, it is essential that we continue to evolve as digital marketers and actively seek new opportunities that will enable our digital experiences to be more successful.

Companies with recurring customers are commanding higher valuations because investors can more accurately forecast growth and trajectory of the business, making them better bets. Customer retention is therefore critical for businesses that rely on a recurring revenue model. Customer lifetime value (LTV) must exceed cost to acquire a customer (CAC) by delivering maximum value with minimal friction.

Online advertisers are always looking for innovative ways to engage customers early in the visit, increase conversions and ultimately boost sales. There are several ways to reach consumers at key times in their purchase process, such as asking for an email address or a Facebook "like", encouraging consumers to add more to their carts at checkout, and incentivizing users to click on special offers and deals.

Imagine being able to reduce your customer service costs while at the same time increasing customer satisfaction and loyalty. Most customer service initiatives help with one at the expense of the other.

It’s no secret that gaining a new customer is always harder than getting an existing customer to buy again. In marketing parlance, this is referred to as instilling customer loyalty and driving repeat purchases from existing customers. Customer loyalty increases customer retention, maximizes engagement and drives up customer spend. In this blog post, let’s explore how an integrated loyalty program across online and offline channels can work wonders for marketers and drive up sales.

In its April 2014 Internet Security Threat Report, Symantec declared 2013 the “Year of the Mega Breach”. Supporting their findings, the authors noted rampant Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) attacks, that 77% of all public web sites scanned as a part of the study were identified as vulnerable with one in eight of those affected by known critical vulnerabilities, and that the average time to patch published critical vulnerabilities was estimated to be four days.

Engagement—what does it really mean? Why is it important? How does it apply to my organization? In the association industry, leaders often think that because members are paying their monthly dues on time or registering for an annual conference or governing a board of members, they’re actively involved and engaged—but could they be doing more?

If you are an online retailer, you may have thought about opening your business to international markets, but have been daunted by some of the barriers to doing so – language translations, currency exchange, payment processing, shipping rates, duties and taxes, etc. A recent article in Forbes Magazine looked at why so many businesses avoid the global ecommerce market, and why they should reconsider.

Companies large and small now turn to launching online communities, in an effort to create a more cohesive and compelling online experience. Here are six tips for how organizations can build a truly effective online presence that also drives customer engagement...

Integrating your current website and association membership system is no longer an idea of the future, but a reality of now. Mirroring your member’s behaviors online in their free time and providing a similar experience in regards to their membership could yield very positive results in terms of things such as event registration and membership retention moving forward.

Direct Mail is an effective way to complement the company’s existing e-commerce marketing elements. Variable print technology has increased the power of Direct Mail marketing by providing personal content and relevant imaging that resonates with the target audience in a meaningful way.

Would you like to learn how to use YouTube to drive traffic and generate sales? Click below to read more.

Retailers that have both a physical store and an online presence report a 23% increase in sales on average. Yet, a recent survey shows that 40% of merchants still aren’t satisfied that their websites have met their revenue generation potential. So what will it take to get customers to come to your site, stay and shop?

Let’s face it, consumers expect your website to load quickly. The problem is that performance improvement for web experiences can be a monster. Where do you start?