Web Hosting

Zopim Live Chat launches reseller platform for webhosting companies

Yesterday (August 2, 2011) Zopim announced a reseller program enabling web hosting companies to resell Live Chat to businesses around the world. Authorized resellers will be able to sell and customize Zopim for their customers, creating new revenue opportunities instantly.

“Zopim has built a live chat product that is valuable for businesses selling online” says Qing Ru, VP Marketing, Zopim. “With our reseller program, we want to give web hosting companies an easy way to add Zopim into their existing suite of third party offerings, while making their packages more wholesome at the same time”.

Zopim will provide resellers with materials and promotional tools for sales and marketing. Resellers bill their customers directly, and can opt to have control over all customer communications, enabling them to retain a close relationship with customers.

There is no setup fee, no minimum upfront purchase and the resellers do not have to pay anything before their customers do. “Reselling Zopim opens up new revenue opportunities for us, with minimal risk,” says Jay Shah, Managing Director, LicensePal Limited. “What Zopim offers to our customers – an award winning product delivered with a great user experience and accolades- cannot be matched anywhere else.”

In addition, Zopim will be providing support for end users, taking the burden of supporting an additional product off resellers. “Providing good support can be costly for companies who take customer satisfaction seriously. We want to reduce the load of our resellers so that they can concentrate on their core business,” says Royston Tay, CEO, Zopim.

Zopim is in the midst of launching the reseller platform to select webhosting companies. The program is now open for applications from interested web hosting companies around the world. Potential resellers will be evaluated and prequalified.

The reseller program will include

● a portal with a rich set of business and technical information
● customer marketing materials and promotional tools
● reseller tools for setting up business customers, provisioning end users, management and reporting
● integration API for automated account provisioning, billing, reporting and single sign on

About Zopim

Zopim (www.zopim.com) is a live chat company that provides communications and sales tools for small and medium businesses. Zopim Live Chat makes it simple and affordable for companies to have high-quality conversations with their online customers in real-time. The company was founded in 2007 and is headquartered in Singapore, with a presence in San Francisco.

Security for Mobile Applications

Mobile applications have developed into one of the most popular trends in the technology sector. However, this has come at a huge price. The quick rise in acceptance equates to businesses rushing applications to the market without extensive security testing. Unfortunately the developers and app stores do not test applications prior to release. Therefore, a number of security issues have emerged, especially for those connecting to a corporate network.

The source of this growing problem is the failure of developers to make security a process not an added feature. Mobile device security can be divided into four sections which combine to become a “Security Stack.” Essentially the top layers of security rely solely on the bottom layers to function correctly and thus protect the user and their information. These four security layers include:

• Infrastructure Layer
• Hardware Layer
• Operating System Layer
• Application Layer

The infrastructure layer is at the bottom of the Security Stack and is directly managed by the mobile carrier. This section also provides integration between the infrastructure and handset. The Hardware Layer is the equipment associated with the operation of the system and direct access to the infrastructure layer. This section is also known as firmware, can be upgraded and is operated by the device’s manufacturer.

The next highest segment is the Operating System Layer which works with the hardware and applications. This area is also upgraded and managed by the device manufacturer. The Operating System Layer is typically targeted by cyber criminals. Finally, the Application Layer contains all programs utilized by users; therefore, it is comprised of every entity running on the operating system. Device manufacturers and users have the ability to install applications.

To successfully develop a secure mobile application, it is important to be able to identify the threats. Once you discover what these threats are, you will be able to prevent them immediately from the planning stage and should continue through regular maintenance and involve all groups involved in development.

Most individuals believe information on mobile phones is safe because it is such a new technology. However, with the growing usage of mobile device applications that reveal sensitive data, attackers are learning how to extract that information and wreak havoc on mobile systems. As a result, application developers must be more cognizant to the potential threats involved with these small programs and do everything in their power to eliminate them.

New Opportunity for Retail SEO on Bing

Major search engine agency, Rosetta, recently conducted a survey of organic search engine traffic headed toward their clients’ websites. The company measured the percentage of contribution or organic clicks from Bing, Google and Yahoo and separated the information into vertical markets. The study concluded that the alliance between Bing and yahoo has created a significant competition with regards to financial services and retail against Google.

Different Results from Experian HitWise and comScore

The information was generated by over 10 million organically-referred visits between January 2011 and May 2011. This study verifies much different results presented by other search engine market data companies like Experian HitWise and comScore. Although there is always differentiation with regards to official studies due to different methods of data collection, the Rosetta findings corroborate other results and leads to untapped potential.

Explicit Core Search

The recent market share figures released by Hitwise and comScore are consistent with Google dominating at 65 percent. Both have found the combined market share for Bing and Yahoo equate to around 30 percent. These two organizations measure market share by the number of search queries found on destination sites. This is a common metric known as an explicit core search.

Search Success

Additionally, Hitwise uses the “search success” method which measures the exact number of searches that led to the click of a specific website. Hitwise found that Yahoo and Bing hold approximately 81 percent of websites that are clicked while Google searches only produce a click 66 percent of the time. This is further evidence for the rise of Yahoo and Bing.

Rosetta Study Estimations

On the other hand, the Rosetta study estimated the market share based on the perspective of a site owner by aggregating organic clicks from search engines to specific industry categories. The findings show that Google is dominant in all industries, commanding a market share of up to 75 percent in many. However, the numbers also prove that in financial services Google only holds 54 percent and in retail only 60 percent.

This indicates that the Bing-powered search through Yahoo creates a considerable SEO opportunity for those in the retail sector at almost 37 percent. These numbers are physical proof that the retail industry is becoming more prevalent with the new relationship formed between Bing and Yahoo. Therefore, it might be prudent for online retailers to invest in advertising in the Bing search engine.