Convenience and value for money have become priorities when it comes to shopping these days. And what better than online shopping - a host of catalogues to flip through, a wide range of products in the same segment and a killing deal! But along comes skepticism; what if the goods are damaged or are of improper size or maybe you are simply dissatisfied.

Here comes in the option to return the goods you don’t like. Almost all the online stores have ‘Return’ and ‘Exchange’ policies based on certain criteria. So here’s a few trustworthy names for easier returns and having fun shopping.

Terms On the Go

In the advanced world of information technology, being online every day is the in thing for both individual and businesses. Today, everyone wants to be on the web and aims to establish an online reputation. Especially, the small business owners who target to improve their market by being on the internet through their business website and therefore, targeting more audience and clients worldwide. To become visible on the web, it is important to host the website on one of the best dedicated servers. Depending upon the pick and need, web owner or user can host their business site either on shared hosting or dedicated server.

Dedicated host server provides the users the capability to handle the assembled web servers that are leased to them by a hosting business. With this type of web service package, the customer will characteristically have complete power over their hosting environment and have the choice of picking their own OS as well as other personalized security settings. Best dedicated servers are in charge of hardware and all other network administration problems.

Choosing the Best Dedicated Servers

A dedicated host server is a complete solution for web services that will normally include email, hosting, databases, storage, and safety. Companies that need high performance, consistency, privacy and full control of their business website and wants nothing to share any information with others should use a former server for their web hosting needs.

Best dedicated servers are expensive rented web hosts where the users tap the email server, the software and the online storage from a trusted host company. In this way, the whole web server is dedicated to the user on a rental basis. There several advantages linked with such high-end web service. First, these dedicated host servers offer one of a kind security requirements, hence, the clients or customers will not be worrying about information infraction. Second, it gives them good access to pick the OS (either the user-friendly Windows or Linux, the virus-free) as per business need.

Third, as per the requirement, one can get well-matched software of their pick together with the operating system chosen for the web host server. Aside from this, since you get dedicated hosted server, it is still completely yours and web resources are private and not shared with any other user or customer. To put it briefly, the dedicated web host server remains the fitting corporate email solution for bigger commercial industries and businesses.

In Conclusion

There is a huge numbers of companies that are involved in providing dedicated web server hosting solutions at affordable prices. While you are looking for one, it pays to check the different best dedicated servers factors, their prominent features and, of course, the price. To begin with, it is imperative to focus on the consistency factor.

You should assure that the dedicated host server you picked should be advanced, reliable and safe. As such, before investing on best dedicated servers, be sure of the fact the company is highly experienced and possess good market credibility so that, you can make the most of the web services that helps you launch a lucrative, successful and series business online.

Social media will stay for longer than assumed period and this is something to cheer for small and medium sized entrepreneurs. It is important not to miss the opportunity if you really want to grow. It is also important to become an expertise to gain more from the social platforms. If not, it is suggested to take the help of social media services.

However, below are some important points to remember:

Identify goals

Mission is important and your company too has one. But remember that every mission has a goal and the positive outcome of it is to become popular on the Internet, among your potential customers.

Brand clarity

Be very focused on the clarity of your brand. Answer yourself what do you do, who do you help and what do you want. Once these questions are answered, you are very clear about your brand and you can forward the same clarity to your audience or potential customers.

Connect and build relationships

Trusted relationship is what counts. Connect with your audience based on the policy of building trusts. For this, you must truly converse and engage with people on social platforms before they start trusting you. One of the best ways to connect is by using groups inside of social media platforms such as LinkedIn, Google+ and Facebook.

Similarly on social sites likes Pinterest and Instagram too you can connect with your potential audience. Twitter too helps in achieving goals. You need to be very active and very engaging on these platforms to grow.

Create action plan

This is very important. You need to create action plans for your brand on social media. You must know how the marketing on the platforms work and work out accordingly.

Grab a social media company. Talk to them with your plans and growth destination. They will suggest you how to do. Once you are satisfied with their ability, hire them or outsource the work to them and relax. They will do all the needful and you concentrate on your core business.

Key Performance Indicators (KPI’s) should be a vital piece of your public relations campaign’s toolkit. They are metrics used to measure how your campaign is performing. It can give you a snapshot of where you currently stand. In what areas does your campaign excel? What areas need improvement? Are the results in line with what you anticipated? If you’re tracking the right metrics, this data can be used to improve the return on investment (ROI) from your PR campaigns. Data can make all the difference between a successful campaign and one that goes down in flames. However, first you’ll need to know exactly which KPI’s you should be tracking. While there are many that are useful, we’d like to focus on the following four.

Cost-per-lead

It’s important to ascertain the efficiency of your campaign. How much did it cost your business to garner those sales leads? How much is it costing you to secure a customer through inbound marketing vs outbound marketing? Identifying that number can help you create better strategies in the future. If you’re spending too much to get potential sales, then your ROI is being affected.

Sales analytics

The primary function of any campaign is to result in making money for your business. Tracking not just how much comes in, but from where and how it came in is of tantamount importance. You need to find out whether the majority of purchases are coming from online, how many are off-line, by phone, or even in an actual retail store. Keeping track of this information will allow you to tailor your marketing efforts to be more effective.

Sales qualified leads

Sales qualified leads metrics measure how many of your leads turn into clients. This information can help you track the success of your sales strategies and your sales team, if you have one. You’ll be able to see how you excel, and how your business might be struggling. This will allow you to make improvements and adjustments as you cater to your strengths and improve upon your weaknesses.

Landing page Conversion Rates

Once a potential customer lands on your site, are they making the purchase or are they leaving your site? If they aren’t sticking around, what is the issue? In reality, you only have a few seconds to make an impression on a potential customer, which means you must have engaging content. That’s why it’s so important to be able to measure your conversion rates. If you aren’t getting the results you want, you can tweak your content and see if it makes a difference.

In this day and age, information is everything. To grow your business, you need to maximize your ability to collect data and properly use it to improve your PR and rack up leads and sales. KPI’s provide a great way of measuring your ROI. The best part is that there are media analytics tools that can do the work for you. Companies like Isentia can provide those analytics, and guide you to making the right choices to get the most out of your campaigns.

Written by Elizabeth Victor

Picture Credit / Isentia

Shopping has become a hassle free cake walk today! Especially, now with online shopping and banking, you can go about splurging your money on a shopping spree without moving an inch. Purchases are just a click away. The varieties are endless. Speedy deliveries. Return and exchange policies and so much more. The advantages never end, do they? Let’s find out the top five ways why online shopping weighs out offline shopping!

1. Find everything at a click

Finding a thing online is much less complex than hunting it down in the area store. In a store, you have to filter for the thing you require; in case it's not there, you may need to visit a couple of other stores, which is tiring and dreary. Regardless, online you can shop without quite a bit of a stretch journey for any thing by using the web page's request highlight.

2. Cheap deals all day long

Products are frequently less costly online than they are in stores. There are a couple of clarifications behind this including no store rental, variable cost, miscellaneous other reasons. In addition to that, you don't have to waste your time going to stores, searching, spotting items and staying in lines. You can shop hassle free on the world wonder web!

3. Shopping online gives you access to a more broad extent of options

You have a fantastic chance of choice when you shop on the web illustrated by top e-commerce stores like Snapdeal, Flipkart, Freecharge, Paytm, Jabong and more That pretty much says it all. The Internet gives a significantly broader extent of things than that in any close-by store. Customers are more than fulfilled. These days, shopping online is to a great degree tried and true. Merchants are viewed as capable by customer feedback and overviews. Without a doubt, even in online stores where you buy from distinctive customers.

4. It's less difficult to pursue for an exceptional deal

You will in like manner have the ability to value the chance of quality flexibility. On the off chance that, you don't lean toward the expense of a thing from an online shop, you can change to another store conveniently. Also, sites like Freecharge never run out of deals and availing them is very easy!

5. Finding uncommon items and keeping up privacy

Shopping online is extremely useful in obtaining extraordinary things. Also, there are a couple of things that you essentially would incline toward not buying publicly. You can buy any kind of thing online while keeping up your security.

The cloud empowers employees in ways never seen before in business; it provides the tools and services, much needed, by employees to proficiently conduct their work without the limitations of being tied to their terminal. Because of this flexibility the employees can now manage sales, network, market, and conduct customer service at any point in time without the tedious nature that comes with dedicated, localized software or hardware.

What are some of the benefits of using the cloud you may ask?

You’ve heard the buzz about going to the cloud and you may have entertained the idea. Now the basics to bringing your company into this arena and gaining all the wonderful benefits.

A) Perhaps the biggest advantage of using cloud based services is to improve customer service. Through offerings like Astea field service management your company can use cloud-based services to maximize potential through marketing automation, reporting, business intelligence, scheduling, and streamlining areas such as field servicing, CRM automation, and dynamic scheduling.

These services become ingrained and intuitive (though this area may seem intimidating). Once your company have ditched the rolodex, hard copy reporting, and scattered, interlinking software for one that handles it all there will be a major boost toward productivity.

B) Team Management has always been troublesome for any business operating using traditional means and there’s no reason to, anymore, thanks to great cloud-based services such as BaseCamp, Trello, Time Doctor, and those offered by the likes of IBM, Microsoft, Google, and Apple.

Team management services will keep projects in line due to accountability but more so because the tasks can be delegated, divvied, and monitored through just about any device imaginable. A field operator can update those in the office on-the-fly, and vice versa, to keep things moving smoothly.

C) Cloud storage and security are yet another major improvement that come with hopping to the cloud. No longer is the stability of the business reliant on what happens within the brick and mortar. Events such as theft, natural disasters, or cyber-attacks can be thwarted and quickly dealt with through the benefits of cloud-based security services and regular cloud-based backups (off site).

D) Social media and those tools used for its automation and the like has been phenomenal for providing better customer experience and service. Tools like Hootsuite are at the top of their game because they house the social media experience under one, easy-to-use roof that takes the task that would otherwise require a handful of social media mavericks to conduct and condenses it to one that can be handle by just a sole individual.

Before long you will find that much of your sales generation and customer service will come through social media and the use of cloud services in the social media arena will be doubly as valuable.

Bringing your business to the cloud can be a daunting task considering that the systems and hardware in place is already getting the job done. However, this is where your competition has decided to move and with these cloud-based services they will soon gain an edge because of all its value and flexibility. You won’t want to wait too long before making the leap even if it’s just one area of your business at a time.

Is your business ready for the cloud? It is and there’s no better time to start that transition than today.

Written by Jane Brown

Media monitoring is one of the top priorities many large companies focus on today. Staying on top of what the media, your target audience and the public at large say about your brand and your competition, can give you the edge for engagement, reputation management, and increasing sales. Therefore, a lot is on the line when you hire a media monitoring company. Here are 5 things that your media monitoring company should do for you.

1. Identify and then track all the types of media you need covered.

A media monitoring company should be able to help you identify the types of coverage and issues you want to track. In many cases, you might already know what you want to track. You probably have customers that do some or all of: watching television, spending time online, reading newspapers and listening to radio. Also, your competitors may be active in all those media, and your industry issues might be discussed. Therefore, you need to make sure your monitoring provider can actually cover television, online, radio, newspapers and magazines. In many cases, you will want to break down television and print coverage to regional specifics, as well, depending on where your markets are. Once you have agreed upon the types of media coverage your company needs, then you can determine which media monitoring company has the ability to provide you with the services you need.

Assist in setting up media monitoring briefs and creating the right searches.

Once the media monitoring scope in our #1 is defined, then it is time to set up that monitoring. This is a critical step in the process. The company you hire should help ensure that you have the right searches set up. Media monitoring won’t be useful if your tools aren’t set up properly. Irrelevant search returns just waste valuable time. Your media monitoring company should have the expertise and customized client service to help you create your set up and keep an eye on it to ensure that it is up to date and changes with the times as different issue might arise. Setting it once and then leaving it will not help you for the long term. Before signing with a media monitoring provider, ask them to detail what type of support they provide so that you know what to expect.

2. Offer different speeds of monitoring delivery with filters.

Some media monitoring providers have different speeds of delivery. Some may provide a daily email with your mentions for that day or maybe you only need a weekly summary of mentions. Some providers will give a real-time feed, but with only minimal filtering and lots of irrelevant content. The combination of speed, accuracy and scope provide the fundamental benefit of media monitoring. Filtering helps with the accuracy, and therefore the effectiveness, of your media monitoring service, and you should make sure your monitoring provider can demonstrate their ability to provide both accuracy and speed before you sign up. Some media monitoring companies will try to lock you in to a long term contract without letting you even see how their platform works in real time with real issues.

3. Guide you when you need assistance.

Just as you are an expert in your field or your industry, your media monitoring company needs to be an expert in this arena. If you aren’t sure about what you should be monitoring, then you should be offered advice and assistance in figuring out what you should be tracking in the way of keywords and key phrases as well as where the company should be looking to monitor.

4. Offer concise reports on coverage.

This is especially important if you need to report your media tracking findings to a manager, board or directors, or other team members. A great media monitoring provider can make this easy by having a report function that quickly and easily prepares regular media coverage reports for you.

Summary

Media monitoring can be a big advantage for your company and help you stay one step ahead of your competition. Local and regional monitoring is one important way to hone in on media monitoring and ensuring that your media mentions apply to your company. Isentia media monitoring would be an excellent example of this. When you are looking to hire a media intelligence company, make sure that you can check our 5 things off your list that your media monitoring company should be able to do for you.

Written by Elizabeth Victor

Photo Credit / Isentia

The Internet itself is not a safe and protected environment because the early pioneers never imagined the level of malicious activity that has now permeated it. Instead, it was conceived as an open network of computers that communicated freely with each other to share ideas. Information streaming through the Internet like email messaging and online purchasing zips through a number of heterogeneous, loosely-connected computers (usually servers) and networks.

The Dark Side of the Internet

Like a prosperous city with little security, the Internet has attracted hordes of criminals—thieves, predators, and scam artists. Their principle occupation is to either penetrate computers and networks to steal or change information or to intercept data as it travels across the Internet. Realizing that not every computer around the world can be protected, they roam the Internet either individually or in gangs looking for weak links in the chain of information that is constantly being exchanged between computers.

Vulnerability

At one time, most security risks came from inside a company, but now even companies with honest employees are at risk because access to the Internet has made them vulnerable to thieves and industrial spies online.

Individuals tend to be more vulnerable than businesses and small companies tend to be more vulnerable than medium to large-sized organizations with IT staff who are aware of the multiple risks online and have created Internet security measures.
Individuals can protect their computers by using firewalls and anti-virus programs.

However, companies need to do more, besides firewalls and anti-virus software, they also need security policies to protect their hardware and software from employee errors. Hiring network administrators and conducting training for employees are necessary steps to secure their computers and networks.

While it’s impossible for a company to totally secure all computer systems, they need to do the best they can to reduce the risk of conducting business online because their security measures not only impact the company itself , but also partners, suppliers, and customers.
Common Threats
The most common threats are viruses, hackers, and phishing scams.

Viruses

While there are many possible threats online, one of the most popular are viruses. Like biological viruses that attack the human body, these digital viruses can wreck havoc.

One kind of virus may rewrite code to render an operating system or a software program from becoming unusable, another kind may scramble information to make it unreadable, and yet another kind may destroy data.

Viruses often spread quickly throughout a computer and from one computer to the next, and often operate quietly without the computer user or system administrator realizing their presence.

Viruses are often trend-driven. When security experts figure out how to neutralize a particular type of virus, others are invented.

According to Internet Security developers at Trend Micro, “Three trends driving change in the landscape require a dedicated security focus to 1) secure all end-user activity, regardless of device; 2) secure cloud and virtual data centers; and 3) enable advanced cyber security against targeted attacks.”

Hackers

Hackers are usually interested in one of two things—how to break into a computer system to steal or destroy data or how to attack a computer system from the outside by overwhelming it with so much superfluous data so that it forces the computer system to shut down.
Hackers can break into a company’s computer network through an open portal or an Internet connection that is open when it is not being used. They also attempt to steal passwords. When it comes to stealing usernames and passwords, some hackers are expert at guessing weak passwords while others send emails that appear to be from a trust source—perhaps a vendor or a customer—that trick employees into divulging this critical information.

Phishing Scams

One common way of theft has been phishing scams.

Here’s an illustration of how the famous Nigerian phishing scam may be used.

A career girl on a lunch break in a coffee shop in Hong Kong may receive an email on her laptop to ask her to fix a problem with her PayPal account and the email conveniently provides a link to access the website. Unknown to her, her actions are being digitally tracked by a remote thief in Nigeria who records her user name and password so that he can steal her money after she has logged out.

Prevention

Fortunately, there are a number of ways to ensure protection:

1. Installing firewalls. These act like web servers and block external users from connecting to an internal computer system.

2. Using encryption. Information sent across the internet may be intercepted. One way of making the information difficult to steal is by scrambling it. This information cannot be read without a key.

3. Password authentication. A network administrator can verify that the password is being used by the authorized person by using authentication technology. This can consist of handprint recognition, retinal scanning, voice recognition or a coded ID card.

4. Digital signatures. The use of digital signatures verify that an outside document was sent by the person whose name is on the document. This prevents phishing attacks and all kinds of email spoofs.

5. Antivirus software. This keeps updating its security information on viruses to combat newly invented viruses.

Written by Jane Brown

As a company grows in scale and operations, it reaches a point where it becomes a multi-location business. At this point, it is faced with technological challenges that are quite different from issues it faced when it was a smaller, centralized business.

One of these new problems is how to move information from one office quickly and securely through a Wide Area Network (WAN).

Adding to the complexity of this problem is the fact that this information-transference is not simply data, but data that converges with voice and video networks. What’s more, these networks must also offer Quality of Service. (QoS)--high quality calls and videos that don’t skip.

Why Ethernet Is Secure

Ethernet that traverses a metropolitan-wide local area network–called an Ethernet WAN--does not rely on routers for networking. Instead, it is a much more basic transport layer, one that creates point-to-point pathways using switches. Essentially what this means in plain English is that Ethernet technology is simply a long network cable. It can connect one office to another because a company’s Internet technology department builds its own Internet protocol network on top of the existing Ethernet network.

3 Advantages of Ethernet Platforms

There are three primary advantages of having a switch-based infrastructure rather than router-based ones like VPNs and MPLS.

First, an Ethernet network offers lower latency. Latency means the time a packet takes to travel from one point to another one in a network. It is a measurement of the speed of transmission. Since Ethernet is based on copper wire, the packets travel at a fast speed. Essentially, the lower the latency, the faster and more efficient the network when it comes to transmitting data. In real time business operations, where, say, financial transactions are being communicated, milliseconds do make a difference.

Second, a point-to-point architecture means that the information is secure. It is not transferred across the Internet where data could be intercepted.

Third, this type of network also offers dedicated bandwidth. The amount of bandwidth can even be customized to meet the demands of a specific task.

According to Dan Foster, President of Business Markets at MegaPath, a leading provider of managed data, voice, and security services in North America, "The SMB and enterprise markets are demanding more affordable ways to get high bandwidth and Ethernet is delivering a reliable and secure solution at a breakneck pace."

Conclusion

When considering what type of technology to use to connect one office to another across a wide area, a company has to ensure high-speed communication. One solution that has worked very well for innumerable companies, both medium and large, is Ethernet. While it is not the only platform—a WAN can also be supported by Virtual Private Network (VPN) or MultiProtocol Label Switching (MPLS) – Ethernet offers a higher level of security than the other two platforms. While VPN tunneling is often favored by multi-location companies, this is an economic decision rather than one based on maximizing security and efficacy. A VPN platform is lower in cost, but it does not offer the same level of security, quality of service, and speed as Ethernet.

Written by Jane Brown