"The Banter" A Quarterly Newsletter: Vol. 2, 1st Quarter :: January 2006

2006! New Year. New Technology. EBPP: Now's the Time Our Clients in the Spotlight: First Federal Credit Control Tech Tips: Combating SPAM Product Highlight: IAS Online Payment Application A Case Study: Ohio State University Designers Corner: Web Site Performance Assessment: How Good is Your Website? 2006! New Year. New Technology. by: Lou Muttillo We have some new and exciting things scheduled for 2006. We are upgrading our software development system to the latest release of the .NET framework. This will allow us to include many new features into the web applications we design for you. The Internet continues to grow. More and more people want to view their statements and pay their bills online. In response to the demand, we are developing Customer Service Centers and Online Payment services that can be easily integrated into existing web sites. Since we are standardizing on the MS SQL Server Database, we will be able to integrate our customer's online shopping carts to their "in house" accounting systems with greater efficiency. We are also in the process of upgrading our servers, which will result in more space for our customers. And we will be implementing a new tech support system, which will result in faster support. Thank you for your patronage in the past years and we hope to continue to bring you the latest in technology in 2006. Back to Top EBPP: Now's the Time by: Joe Muttillo Electronic Billing and Payment Processing. Adding Value for You and Your Customers! So, you've got a web site and a nice one at that. Maybe you even have added some excellent functionality to the site that really boosts your Customer Service and Satisfaction. You've done things, like create Order Status reporting, Inventory level displays, provided access to a wealth of information and many more improvements. Your site has entered the 21st century... Congratulations! Here's my question. Are you still processing Invoices, Statements and Payments the way we did back in the 1800's? I mean, "Print and Mail" for billing and "Write and Mail" for payments, hasn't changed much since the turn of the century and the last one at that. But shouldn't you look at taking the lifeline of your business into the 21st century? Let's face it, you don't get paid until you send an invoice or statement. Then you have to wait for the mail, wait for the customer to pay it, and then wait for the mail some more. We even get all those great excuses to boot. "Check's in the mail", has been for weeks now right? "I didn't get the Invoice", although you mailed 3 copies and faxed one. "We'll cut the check today", right and mail it next week. Maybe it's time you looked at EBPP (Electronic Billing and Payment Processing). According to the Tower Group, in 2004 16.7 billion consumer bills were sent and 14.4% of those were delivered online. On average, the cost to a biller for submitting a paper bill, including printing, postage and billing inserts, is $1.10 per bill according to a Gartner Group study. Electronic bills reduce that cost by OVER 50%! On the payment side, electronic payments are much more efficient than paper payments, less expensive to process, result in fewer errors and fewer customer inquiries. Another tremendous benefit is that customers are directed to your web site to make their payment. Isn't that a great way to tell them about all the great new products or services you are now offering? Maybe tell them about some great news? EBPP is just another easy way to get your valued customers to your Internet Real Estate. One very important point to remember is what EBPP can do for your customer. EBPP enhances the customer relationship by putting the control over the timing and amount of the payment directly into your customer's hands. Online payments eliminate the cost of checks, envelopes and postage. Online payments even help reduce customer stress by eliminating the need to get to the post office in time to make sure their payment is not late. Want to learn more? Give us a call, 1.888.932.7228, to chat sometime soon. And, a little further down, you can learn about IAS, our online credit card payment system. Back to Top Our Clients in the Spotlight: First Federal Credit Control Website: www.ffcc.com We've just launched a new web site for First Federal Credit Control (FFCC), a debt collection agency based in Beachwood, Ohio. The web site features an updated look, the capability for debtors to make payments online, and for clients to submit debtor accounts online. With satellite sales offices in Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, West Virginia, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Florida and call centers in Cleveland and Columbus, FFCC maintains the largest professional client base of any collection agency in the Midwest. FFCC represents more than 5,000 medical and professional firms in the collection of their delinquent accounts. Back to Top Tech Tips: Combating SPAM We receive a lot of questions about spam, what it is, how it works and what can be done to STOP IT! The short answer is that there is not, at this time, a 100% fool-proof solution. Spam, just like viruses, is a common risk of using the Internet. What Is Spam? Spam is described as unwanted, unsolicited email that is sent to your email inbox. In other words, spam is basically the electronic version of junk mail and unfortunately, it appears that the problem of spam is here to stay. Most spam emails can contain anything from pornography, 'get rich quick' schemes, hoax virus alerts, to chain letters. They may also contain viruses attached to the emails. How Does Spam Work? The most common way that spammers send their spam emails is to use a free email address from providers such as Yahoo and Hotmail. Spammers will use this free email address as long as they can until being blocked by the provider, sending out as much spam emails as they can during this time. Once blocked, the spammers will simply get a new email address and repeat the process over again. Another way used by spammers is to find an email server that is inadequately managed by a hosting company or an organizations in house Exchange server. They will hack into these servers and send out their spam emails using that mail server. Intersoft makes sure that we implement the latest security patches & updates on all our servers and we also implement spam-reducing techniques such as Closed Relay servers & SPF verification done through our DNS. How Do These Spammers Get My Email Address? There is a plethora of clever ways that spammers can grab your email address. The most common method is to harvest email addresses from the Internet. Spammers will use programs called SpamBots or Spiders that scour the Internet looking for the @ sign in an email address. Once found, these programs grab the email address and add them to the spammers list. Spammers will search the following Internet sites to find email addresses: Web pages, Blogs, posts & online forums, Mailing lists, ICQ and chat rooms Another way that spammers gather email addresses is to guess. Yes?guessing, spammers will generate a list of common user names and actually send an email to those user names on your domain name (ie. sales@domain.com). There is a confirmation header that spammers will add to their emails. This header is non-industry standard however most email clients like Outlook, Outlook Express and Eudora recognize it. Once you have downloaded your email these email clients will actually send back a confirmation notice that you have received it. Thus letting the spammer know that they have actually hit a live email box. Why Doesn't Intersoft Stop Spam From Entering My Email Account? Spam is purely subjective to the content inside the email, which unlike viruses that usually have a known attachment, it are harder to filter. Let's say, for example, that we would filter on the word Violence. Well, that would also filter out any emails that contain information on Domestic Violence, which some customers would want. Intersoft does not censor email coming into our servers, however, we do provide all our hosting accounts with an Anti-Spam feature that allows you to enable certain filters according to your needs. OK, Now How Can I Minimize Spam? 1. Try not to publish your email address on your web site. If you need to do so as a contact method, ask your web developer to use Mail Forms or javascripts that hide your email. The best way to avoid receiving spam is for spammers to not even know that your email address exits. This may be a difficult task to undertake, especially if you need a contact method to allow current and potential clients to reach you through your web site. But as spammers come up with new ways of cultivating email addresses, web developers come up with techniques to hide them. Our developers know how to publish email addresses so that spiders and spambots cannot harvest them. Contact your Sales Rep, 1.888.932.7228, if you would like our development team to implement these techniques on your current site or ask your Project Coordinator to implement them when they are developing your site. Of course, within a few months to years, spammers may figure out ways of getting around these techniques, which at that time will bring around new ways of "hiding" email addresses. 2. Create a spam email account when signing up for sweepstakes or posting in blogs, message boards, etc. This spam email account is what some refer to as a "throw away" account. You can get a free email account from providers such as Yahoo or Hotmail. You would use this account when registering for sweepstakes and contests and posting in blogs and on message boards and the like. However, a much different scenario would be to sign up with a trustworthy source, like Intersoft's mailing list, since most reputable companies don't sell their email lists. This way if the source is not 100% reliable your business email will not get consumed with spam. Then once your "throw away" account becomes filled with spam emails you can throw it away and sign up for a new one. 3. Never follow the unsubscribe instructions in a spam email. True, unless the email is coming from a reputable source, most unsubscribe instructions are just there to validate that your email is active. By following those instructions, it'll just let the spammers know that your email address is working and will result in even more spam emails. 4. Don't forward virus hoaxes, chain letters and the like. These types of emails spread quickly throughout the Internet and are usually originated by spammers. What can end up happening is that these emails will eventually end up back to the spammers along with all the email addresses that they were sent to along the way. If you receive a virus warning that is not from Intersoft, check the validity of the warning at http://www.sarc.com. If you don't see it there?don't send it. 5. Use a Spam Filtering software Your Intersoft hosting account includes free Anti-Spam Filtering, which can be enabled or disabled through your web based email system. Our spam filters compare incoming mail against "spam blacklist" servers and can automatically delete those emails that are sent from one of the blacklisted domains. There are other filtering features such as Phrase and Statistical filtering. Please be aware that these filtering options are not perfect. There is not a filtering software available on the market that won't either occasionally let spam emails through or reject legitimate emails from being delivered. Also, please note that any mail deleted as a result of server-side spam filtering is not recoverable. There are other spam filtering options available to you to install locally -- this gives you the choice of what to filter and what not to filter, and allows you to recover any legitimate emails that were deleted. SpamEater Pro and POPFile are some products that we have heard about. However, we always recommend that you do research first on the product you are purchasing & installing on your PC or Network server. If in doubt?don't buy. You can also always contact our Network Partner, Itek Systems, Inc. at 216.261.8718 about what program they recommend. 6. Use Spam Filtering Service There are several companies that offer a service to filter your email for you for a fee. Most of them allow you to manually create a whitelist of email addresses that you want to be delivered. If a person sends you an email that is not in your whitelist then they are sent an automatic notification informing them that they need to log onto a web site and prove that they are human and not a spambot. Some popular filtering services are MailBlocks.com and SpamRival.com. 7. Other Tips Think carefully before giving out your email address. Install an Anti-Virus software and run the updates regularly. Be careful when downloading Adware, Freeware and Shareware. These types of software usually require an email address, which usually ends up causing more spam or worse, some are know to download files secretly to your computer. If you have tech question that you would like us to write about email us at techtips@intersoftgroup.com. Back to Top Product Highlight: IAS Online Payment Application Intersoft's IAS Online Payment Application allows your company to easily set up payment forms on your web site without the need to learn HTML or programming! Set up your own payment forms and accelerate your receivables! IAS can integrate to your existing, compatible Merchant Account for Internet processing of MasterCard, Visa, Discover and American Express. If you don't have a Merchant Account or do not have an Internet enabled account, we can provide one for you. With IAS you can tell your customers they can pay their bill online, ANYTIME. Simply add the web address to your invoices and statements, mention it on your voice mail, walk a customer to it live over the phone to ensure prompt payment! IAS provides your customer with a printable receipt and an emailed receipt and emails you instantly when a payment is received! Funds are then automatically deposited to your organization's checking account. IAS is affordable too! A $295 setup fee gets you going and a .5% transaction fee applies to all payments processed with a minimum of $25/month. Learn more today or call Joe at 1.888.932.7228 ext. 103. Back to Top A Case Study: Ohio State University OSU Extension The OSU Extension interprets research developed by the Ohio Agricultural Research and Development Center so that other Ohioans can use the scientifically based information to better their lives, businesses and communities. OSU Income Tax School The Ohio Income Tax Schools are designed for tax preparers with some experience preparing and filing federal tax returns for individuals and small businesses. Challenge: These two schools of Ohio State University were looking for a way to allow their end users to register for classes and/or download manuals online. During this process they wanted to be able to receive the necessary payment and have it verified online. They also needed the ability to create multiple forms for different areas within each school that contained different fields per each form. Solution: Intersoft offered OSU our Online Credit Card Verification System, IAS. IAS allowed OSU to create multiple forms giving them the opportunity to have unique fields on each one. They are able to customize their forms to look like their current web site. IAS allows them to automatically charge credit cards online and have the funds deposited directly into their bank account. Back to Top Guest Columnist Designers Corner: Web Site Performance Assessment: How Good is Your Website? by: Michael Baron If the article?s title has led you to an assumption that I have an ultimate ?formula? for complete evaluation of Website performance you are unfortunately very far from the truth. In fact such formula does not even exist! There are many different factors that are to be taken into account when assessing Website performance. All I am trying to do in this article is to provide a brief explanation of the main aspects of the Website performance that companies need to concentrate on in order to measure effectiveness of their efforts on the Net. When my clients ask me to examine their Web sites and give them a complete health-check I usually focus on the on the following 4 factors: Informational Content Design Functionality Value Added Informational Content Informational content of the Web sites plays a very important role in conveying the company?s messages to its customers. Commercial Websites should contain information that the visitors may find useful in their exploits to get to know the company better. If you are buying online from a company you have never heard of before, you would certainly want to make sure that you are dealing with a legitimate reputable business rather than with a group of tricksters who will take your money and disappear in the direction unknown to you. The Website should inform the visitors about the company?s background, latest news, products and services offered and excellency awards achieved. Not every commercial Website is providing customers with an opportunity to make purchases online. Quite a few sites are focusing on the marketing function and they view their online presence as a support network for their existing sales and distribution channels. Whether you are selling online or simply using the marketing capacity of the Web, you need to provide your customers with sufficient information not only about the company itself but also about characteristics of the products/services offered. Consumers need to know what your products are fit for, price, availability, unique characteristics and (of course!) special offers that they can take advantage of. Do not hesitate to incorporate some seemingly ?useless? stuff such as jokes, puzzles, contests into your site? informational content. It will help you to attract greater numbers of ?accidental? visitors. Chances are you will be able to gradually convert some of these visitors into becoming your loyal customers. Design Our life consists of experiences. Make a visit to your Website a nice one! If you are not a professional developer, do not adopt ?do-it-yourself? approach. You will be better of outsourcing services of a competent Website designer. Time of home made half-baked Websites is gone. Consumers are expecting sites that are easy to navigate, use good color combinations and contain more than mere text. While pictures and animation are becoming integral elements of Website design, try not to overdo it. I can think of many sites for respected companies that have been flooded with animations. Designing a good site is not just about displaying a lot of artwork and flashiness. After all, you are not in business of selling cartoons. The role of the artwork is simply to increase the appeal of your site. Functionality The fanciness of your Website is if it does not work properly. Try to think from a consumer?s perspective. How often have you been frustrated by defective links, faulty catalogues and failure to log into your account? Unfortunately with many small and medium-sized companies, these problems are quite common. They can usually be attributed not to lack of the technical expertise but to enormous hurry to get the Website up and running. If your Website is ?sort of complete? and ? kind of ready for upload?, hold your horses! It is unprofessional to place an unfinished product on the market. It is true, that time is money but it is better to wait till your Website development project is 100% complete. Make sure that you test every single feature and function of your site prior to uploading. Do not take it for granted that applications or code that were fully functional at the time of initial installment are going to remain unaffected by your later developments. Software and code integration is fairly complex. In many instances, applications that are working beautifully when tested separately may be difficult to integrate into a working system. Value Added When you are starting out with a Website, make sure that your expectations from the site are realistic. Plan your Website well by outlining the business objectives you would like it to fulfill. Effective online presence can provide your company with the critical competitive advantages over the rival firms. Identify the ways you can utilize the powers of the electronic communications to maximize efficiency of your marketing programs, improve communications with distributors and suppliers, expand your market share and provide better customer service to the existing customers. Be aware of the problematic issues you may have to deal with such as channel conflicts and greater expectations from the customers? side. When assessing performance of your Website, remember that you are assessing a virtual storefront. Your assessment is never going to be final. Same as with any other storefront, the final assessment is the prerogative of your customers, who are going to be judging your efforts and voting with their dollars! Michael Baron is the founder and CEO of Baron Consulting Group (BCG) ? one of the leading E-commerce consultancy and training service providers in Australia. Michael has been involved in Electronic Commerce since 1997. He has completed over twenty E-Commerce projects in the areas of E-Learning Software Development, Web Site Development, Web Site Mapping and Electronic Marketing for both government and commercial organisations in Australia and overseas. Michael has also published a number of research and white papers and has been lecturing in Electronic Commerce at some of the leading Australian Universities. He is a sought-after speaker at E-Commerce Conferences, Forums and Seminars. Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Michael_Baron Back to Top