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Carnegie Mellon researchers propose AI that surfaces positive online comments

January 13, 2020 Big Data

Researchers at Carnegie Mellon’s Language Technologies Institute say they’ve developed a system that taps machine learning to analyze online comments and pick out those that defend or sympathize with disenfranchised peoples. Although it hasn’t been commercialized, they’ve used it in experiments to search for nearly a million YouTube comments, focusing on the Rohingya refugee crisis and the February 2019 Pulwama terrorist attack in Kashmir. And they hope it’ll form the foundation of a future system that’ll reduce the manual effort necessary to curate comments on publisher websites, social media, and elsewhere.

Tamping down on abusive online behavior is no easy feat, particularly considering the level of toxicity in some social circles. More than one in five respondents to a survey by the Anti-Defamation League, a nonprofit that tracks and fights anti-Semitism, reported having been subjected to threats of violence. And nearly one in five said they’d experienced sexual harassment or stalking and sustained harassment, while upwards of 20% said the harassment was the result of their gender identity, race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, religion, occupation, or disability.

As the researchers explain, improvements in AI language models — which learn from many examples to predict what words are likely to occur in a given sentence — made it possible to analyze such large quantities of text. The study’s contribution was a technique enabling those models to digest short texts originating from South Asia, which can be difficult to interpret because they often contain spelling and grammar mistakes and combine different languages and systems of writing.

Specifically, the researchers obtained embeddings — numerical representations of words — that revealed novel language groupings or clusters. Language models create these so that words with similar meanings are represented in the same way, making it possible to compute the proximity of a word to others in a comment or post.

The team reports that in experiments, their approach worked as well or better than commercially available solutions. Random samplings of the YouTube comments showed about 10% were positive, compared with the 88% found with the AI algorithm.

“Even if there’s lots of hateful content, we can still find positive comments,” said post-doctoral research Ashiqur R. KhudaBukhsh, a contributing author on aforthcoming paper describing the work. He’ll present his findings with coauthors Shriphani Palakodety and Jaime Carbonell at the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence annual conference next month in New York City.

The study follows the release of a data set by Jigsaw — the organization working under Google parent company Alphabet to tackle cyber bullying, censorship, disinformation, and other digital issues of the day — containing hundreds of thousands of comments and annotations with toxicity and identity labels. It’s intended to help measure bias in AI comment classification systems, which Jigsaw and others have historically measured using synthetic data from template sentences.

In a related development, researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology and email marketing startup Mailchimp recently proposed RECAST, an interactive tool for examining toxicity detection models by visualizing explanations for predictions and providing alternative wordings for detected toxic speech. The plan to release an open source browser extension in the near future.

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Big Data – VentureBeat

How to keep your online game running and bug-free

December 9, 2019 Big Data

Today’s game consoles offer functionalities — such as platform crossplay — that are something of a miracle. Because every game runs differently, especially across different systems and networks, these new perks come with backend complexities that, without the proper strategies in place for monitoring and observability, can negatively impact the gaming experience.

So, how are today’s companies staying ahead of these challenges to ensure the best game experience? The answer: monitoring tools that help them observe their infrastructure in real time and provide timely feedback and internal notifications when things go wrong, so they know before the player does.

Red alert?

In my role at Sensu, I oversee the customer reliability team and regularly hear from our customers about the overwhelming number of alerts their teams are tasked with managing and addressing on a daily basis. It’s been our experience that alert fatigue can have a huge, often negative, impact on any organization, putting stress on monitoring teams dealing with them every day. In fact, in a recent report, 72% of CIOs say that alert fatigue is a big problem affecting their team.

Given the scale and complexity of gaming companies’ legacy monitoring setups, monitoring teams are constantly faced with thousands of critical errors. With so many alerts, it can be virtually impossible to tell not only which issues to escalate, but which are impacting players (and how). Under these circumstances, team morale is understandably low, and turnover is typically very high. As games continue to make the shift to online, companies are faced with the decision to entirely re-evaluate their approach to monitoring, migrating from their legacy toolset to a next-generation solution designed for scalability.

While monitoring tools may make it easier for gaming companies to stay ahead of potential bugs and server issues, what do these behind-the-scenes technologies really mean for the player and their experience? To name a few:

Uninterrupted online streaming
Seamless crossplay
Quicker updates to bugs and errors
Less downtime, more game time

Companies such as Industrial Light & Magic, Weta Digital, Verizon Media, ArenaNet, and Activision, which includes Demonware — a global online gaming company that creates and hosts online services for popular video games such as the Call of Duty series and Guitar Hero across various consoles — have introduced new monitoring solutions to their internal teams to replace legacy solutions that couldn’t keep up with the demand of today’s online gaming ecosystems.

Focusing on what matters

During Monitorama 2018, Demonware presented on how the company was able to reduce daily alerts and notifications by addressing underlying issues to ultimately create a more engaged monitoring team. Previously, the Demonware monitoring team felt overwhelmed with the volume of alerts and notifications they were receiving on a daily basis — they received literally thousands per day, each of which needed to be addressed with an antiquated system. Keeping up with these alerts for a team of their size was daunting, and the task of vetting these alerts and addressing the issues seemed impossible.

After implementing a modern monitoring platform that could keep up with the company’s scale and complexities across various game titles and consoles, Demonware reduced the volume of alerts by 99% — from thousands of alerts to only ten per day. With a proper monitoring solution in place, Demonware’s monitoring team better understands the issues affecting their games, and now has the data and insights needed to resolve long-standing bugs, resulting in a more reliable and quality experience for their players.

Detect and correct issues on the fly

Over the years, online video games companies have evolved from the traditional development model to the fast-paced DevOps model which provides the flexible and rapid “feedback” loop to detect and correct issues on the fly. With next-gen monitoring solutions in place, monitoring teams are able to quickly identify and resolve specific anomaly patterns in their applications which could have resulted in the game going down for an extended period of time while the issue was being addressed.

Monitoring tools have allowed for gaming companies to stay one step ahead of delays and downtimes for their players, ultimately boosting team morale and avoiding a throwdown on a subreddit (as reviews and conversations are integral pieces of the gaming community).

As the gaming industry continues to evolve, companies and their monitoring teams are challenged with keeping up with the changing landscape. From understanding new infrastructure and tooling, to navigating the complexities of a new gaming platform — effective monitoring tools can ensure a seamless experience for both the player and the monitoring team tasked with delivering that delightful end-user experience.

Cameron Johnston is the VP of Customer Reliability at Sensu, where he helps customers solve their stickiest monitoring challenges.

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Big Data – VentureBeat

Cyber Security: Keeping Your Data And Online Possessions Safe

September 15, 2019 SAP

The year is 2019. The news keeps screaming about data breaches of staggering magnitude happening every few days, putting hundreds of millions of people at risk. With our dependence on digital technology, having one’s personal data stolen can have consequences that are nothing short of catastrophic. Yet people still make the same face-palm-inducing mistakes: for example, the 25 worst weak passwords still constitute up to 10% of all passwords used worldwide.

Do you want to stay safe online? Then read on – we will tell you about the most critical cyber-security rules.

1. Remember that you are the target

It is not paranoia: They really are after you. Many individuals and small business owners are pretty laid back about online security because they believe that only big corporations become hackers’ targets. In reality, quite often the opposite is true. Big companies have enormous security budgets, which makes them tough nuts to crack. That’s why hackers turn their attention to small businesses en masse – exactly because they are easier targets.

2. Use a VPN

A VPN, or virtual private network, is a tool that allows you to create a secure and, ideally, untraceable connection to another network using the regular Internet. Many people still do not realize this, but when you use the Internet, all your activity is completely transparent for many different parties: your Internet provider, your boss, the owner of the website you are visiting and, with a little effort, a hacker trying to steal your personal and financial data.

VPNs have multiple uses, from accessing region-locked websites to hiding your identity on the web. From the security perspective, its most important abilities are protection from tracing and data collection. It gives you a significant degree of anonymity and prevents hackers from spying on you while, for example, you use a dubious Wi-Fi hotspot.

However, not all VPNs are created equal. Some are registered in the countries that actively try to undermine the idea of anonymity on the Internet. Free VPNs can collect your data themselves and sell it to third parties. It is essential to use a trustworthy VPN with a long-standing reputation.

3. Use proper password hygiene

Have an individual strong password (longer than eight symbols, containing lowercase and uppercase letters, figures, and symbols) for each service you are using. If you use the same password in all your registrations, it means that if one of them gets hacked, your entire online presence will be at risk. Taking into account that an average person today is registered on dozens and probably hundreds of different websites, services, and apps, the only way to go is to use a password manager. To protect your account on a password manager itself, make sure you use two-factor authentication.

4. Do not overshare on social media

Not all people out there are your friends. When hackers target individuals rather than randomly collect information, they often use social media accounts to gather personal data. It can be used for a variety of purposes – for example, to answer a security question on your email. If hackers really want to get to you, they can even befriend you on social media to have you tell them a vital piece of information.

5. Follow the rules of physical cyber security

Hacking does not necessarily happen over the web. You can just as easily compromise your data by allowing physical access to your devices. Therefore, always lock your mobile devices and use access passwords on laptop computers, especially if you have a habit of leaving them unattended.

It does not matter whether you are acting as a private person or a business owner. Hackers can find a use for any personal and financial information they can get their hands on. If you do not follow at least the basic rules of cyber security, you turn your data into a low-hanging fruit – and if you become a victim of identity theft, there will be nobody to blame but yourself.

For more on cybersecurity, see “Staying Ahead Of Insidious New Breeds Of Cyber Attacks.”

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Digitalist Magazine

Setup Postman to use Web API for Dynamics 365 CE Online

September 6, 2019 Microsoft Dynamics CRM

Postman is a popular tool that allows authentication to Dynamics 365 CE instance and then compose and send Web API requests and view responses. Since Dynamics 365 would use Azure Active Directory for identity management so requests from Postman would have to be permitted by AAD. As Azure Active Directory (Azure AD) uses OAuth 2.0 to enable you to authorize access to web applications and web APIs in your Azure AD tenant – so Postman uses OAuth 2.0 to request the data from Dynamics 365.

Before setting up Postman environment you would have to grant permission for D365 in the associated Azure Active Directory so that an application can access Dynamics 365 WebAPI’s.

Follow Steps to register an app in Azure Active Directory. These Steps are generic for registering any application/tool that would connect to Dynamics.

Best way to make sure app registration happens in correct AAD associated with Dynamics 365 is – navigate to AAD through Admin Portal .

You would need to be a Global Administrator to complete the registration. If you are testing this in your own trial Dynamics 365 CE instance you most probably are already Global Admin on your instance and should be able to access the associated AAD.

If you are logged in as an administrator and do not see admin centers – you can Customize navigation and ensure you are seeing all admin centers.

If you have already registered the app then you would now edit the app registered so from Azure Portal you would

1) Set Redirect URI .

2) Validate and optionally modify manifest.

Set Redirect URI

Add Type Web – Redirect URI – https://app.getpostman.com/oauth2/callback

In Implicit Grant option towards the bottom make sure to check Access Tokens as that’s how Postman is going to request token.

Modifying Manifest

Set “oauth2AllowUrlPathMatching”: true,

This is not mandatory but if you keep running into exception AADSTS50011 – by setting oauth2AllowUrlPathMatching to true you are requesting AAD to relax exact pattern matching for url.

Below attributes should have been true from the checkbox while setting Redirect URI.

Set “oauth2AllowIdTokenImplicitFlow”: true,

Set “oauth2AllowImplicitFlow”: true,

Postman allows for different Grant Types

Authorization Code
Implicit
Password Credentials
Client Credentials

As we would be using Implicit flow so oauth2AllowImplicitFlow is to be set to true.

You can go through Description for oauth2AllowImplicitFlow.

After successfully configuring Postman registration in Azure Active Directory we would setup an environment in Postman.

Brief description for variables you have set in Postman environment.

url : Your Dynamics 365 instance
clientid : You get from the app registration done in Azure Active Directory.
version: Required to create the other variable webapiurl correctly
webapiurl: combines url + version variables from above. This will inform Postman which Dynamics 365 instance we need the token for.
callback: Redirect URI you would have set in Azure Portal -> Azure Active Directory
authurl: https://login.microsoftonline.com/common/oauth2/authorize?resource={https://community.dynamics.com/crm/b/crminthefield/posts/setup-postman-to-use-web-api-for-dynamics-365-ce-online-}

In authurl we are requesting Microsoft Identity Platform (https://login.microsoftonline.com/) to authorize the request using oauth2 protocol for the resource (Dynamics 365 instance) .

Note: Ongoing issue with posting the blog with images which is being worked by site administrators.

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Dynamics 365 Customer Engagement in the Field

3 Ways to Safeguard Your Restaurant’s Online Reputation

July 18, 2019 NetSuite

Posted by Brady Thomason, NetSuite Solution Manager, Restaurant & Hospitality

A healthy online reputation is absolutely critical to the success of a business and restaurants are no exception. Consider this: 75% of respondents to the 2019 Brand Disinformation Impact Study report that the public reputation of a brand will impact their purchase decisions.

At the same time, the public reputation of a brand can be largely outside of its direct control. In the 2019 Edelman Trust Barometer, 65% of participants named search engines as their most trusted source when performing research on a business.

Regardless of where and what potential guests hear about your restaurant, public perception has a significant impact. Among companies responding to Deloitte’s Reputation@Risk 41% experienced a negative reputation event and reported a corresponding decrease in brand value and revenue.

But there is an upside: for restaurants participating in a Harvard study on Yelp reviews, those included received a 9% increase in revenue based on every one-star boost in their Yelp rating. That means there could be an 18% difference in revenue for a restaurant with a 3-star rating and one with a 5-star rating – a difference that could make or break any small business.

So how can busy restaurant owners work to establish, maintain and protect their online brand reputation to maximize sales and minimize negative brand events? Here are our top 3 recommendations:

1. Ensure Consistency Across All Channels

Restaurant owners strive to create a strong brand presence inside their brick-and-mortar outlets. A strong color scheme, images and menu design that fit the brand, and themed decorations can all work in unison to convey the brand message. But if that brand consistency doesn’t translate to the online sphere, it can wreak havoc on a restaurant’s online reputation.

Let’s say a potential guest hears about your restaurant and runs a Google search to see what comes up. Maybe there’s an address, a photo of your restaurant, and a link to the website, but no online ordering mechanism.

Then the guest tries searching on Facebook or Yelp and finds a page with no menu images and a different phone number than the Google listing. There’s nothing there that conveys the brand presence you’ve worked so hard to build inside your restaurant. Now what?

In order to create a unified brand presence, restaurants must consider every platform potential guests might interact with. That list can include the Google business page associated with your restaurant, your restaurant’s website, Yelp listing (and associated reviews), Facebook, Instagram, YouTube and Twitter accounts, and GrubHub and Favor ordering systems.

Take a look at Torchy’s Tacos, a local taco chain in Austin, Texas. It has a very distinct brand presence which is equal parts dirty, decadent and devilish. And the chain really nailed cross-channel consistency, as evidenced by the listings on nearly every platform. Here are a few:

Torchy’s Google search results:

Google%20Screenshot 3 Ways to Safeguard Your Restaurants Online Reputation

Torchy’s Facebook page:

Torchy’s Yelp page:

Yelp%20Sreenshot 3 Ways to Safeguard Your Restaurants Online Reputation

And its brand consistency continues across Favor, Instagram, Twitter, YouTube.

2. Develop an Easy, Intuitive Website

Having a website that is consistent with your restaurant’s brand promise is one thing, but making it simple and straightforward for potential guests to find what they need is a totally different ballgame.

Beyond duplicating the branding from your brick-and-mortar location on the website, potential guests must be able to quickly find what they need and complete any actions easily. Are they able to:

View menu items with easy-to-navigate categories
Find your restaurant’s contact information (and different locations, if applicable)
Make reservations
Place online orders
View specials like happy hours, fixed-price days, or brunches
Submit catering requests

Do all these actions flow seamlessly off your website’s main homepage? Could the online ordering system use an overhaul to simplify the process? Is it easier for guests to use your reservation system or a plug-in from OpenTable or Resy? These are all questions to ask when designing the optimal experience for your website.

Consider Via 313, a Detroit-style, Austin-based pizza restaurant with five locations. Its homepage provides easy access to a variety of menu categories right off the bat. The left nav offers a direct link to the full menu, online ordering from both its trailers and brick-and-mortar restaurants and a list of locations.

website%20screenshot 3 Ways to Safeguard Your Restaurants Online Reputation

Ordering pizza can get complex pretty quickly, with requests for different types of crusts and swapping out toppings. However, Via 313’s online ordering platform makes it straightforward to sub out ricotta cheese for standard gorgonzola cheese on the restaurant’s popular Cadillac pizza:

order%20screenshot 3 Ways to Safeguard Your Restaurants Online Reputation

The only improvement here would be a clear link to large catering orders for groups.

3. Create (and Enforce) a Clear Employee Communication Plan

Restaurant staff are trained on how to interact with guests when they’re on the floor. However, they may not consider the impact of their words when they’re off the clock. And that’s not just talking about your restaurant in particular, it’s anything they say or do.

Anyone who works for your restaurant may update their social media profile on Facebook, Twitter, or any number of platforms to display their occupation, immediately connecting them to your brand on social media. Anything they say can then be affiliated with the restaurant.

Let’s say you run a farm-to-table restaurant that focuses on sustainability in the food chain. Your marketing efforts are consistent across channels. You have an easy, intuitive website. Business is good. Then one of your employees starts tweeting articles in opposition to the sustainability movement. All of a sudden, your brand is connected to the opposite side of the argument, and your guests may notice and take action.

Given the ramifications, it’s critical that brands train employees to use the same discretion on social media as they would when they’re working in your restaurant. Otherwise you might end up with:

Employees airing your business’s accounting mistakes on Facebook, as in the case of Triple Play Sports Bar & Grill in Watertown, Connecticut.
Staff who aren’t even working for you yet (!) tweeting their choice words for their new job at your establishment, like the Texas teenager who was scheduled to start working at Jet’s Pizzeria in Mansfield, Texas. (She was fired before even starting her job.)
A huge backlash on your hands, like Applebee’s experienced with its decision to fire Chelsea Welch, a waitress who posted a photo of a customer’s receipt that included a note about why he doesn’t tip.

Don’t Want to Do It All Yourself?

For a new restaurant with a small staff, finding the time to create the framework for a solid online reputation may seem pretty overwhelming – and nearly impossible. However, there are marketing agencies that specialize in working with restaurants to build, grow and maintain their online reputations.

And even if you don’t have the budget to hire an agency, try working on your restaurant’s online reputation one chunk at a time. The first priority items might be your Google business listing, website, Yelp page and employee communication plan. Next, set up online ordering via a platform like UberEats or GrubHub, and put processes in place to read and respond to reviews.

Make no mistake: safeguarding your restaurant’s reputation will take time and attention from your staff that can sometimes be difficult to divert. However, consider it your insurance policy against brand-damaging events that could impact your restaurant over the long term.

Posted on Thu, July 18, 2019
by NetSuite filed under

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The NetSuite Blog

Cybersecurity: How to Protect Yourself Online (Video)

July 7, 2019 FICO

Want to protect yourself online – and protect your family – from data compromise and identity theft?

FICO’s Doug Clare, vice president for cybersecurity solutions, offers some advice in this interview with NBC King 5 News in Seattle. He was interviewed in conjunction with his talk at the US Chamber of Commerce Cybersecurity Series, where he spoke about cyber risk and third-party risk management.

“It’s important for consumers to realize that when they do business with somebody, they may be doing business with more than one party,” Clare said. “Everybody’s got a supply chain.”

For consumers, protection means paying close attention. “It’s important to stay vigilant, particularly about email,” Clare said. “If you get an email with a link, check it out, and don’t click it until you’re sure. Make sure the email is coming from who you think it’s coming from, that the domain name on the email address is correct. Email is a big challenge, be careful.”

Clare also urged viewers, “Have that conversation with your kids and your parents.”

Third-party risk management is a hot issue in the world of cybersecurity, since vulnerabilities in a firm’s supply chain, partner or vendor networks can expose sensitive data. It’s estimated that half of all data breaches occur through third parties.

According to Ponemon Institute’s 2018 Data Risk in the Third-Party Ecosystem, more than 60 percent of US CISOs have indicated being the victim of a third-party breach incident.

More tips on how to protect yourself online are discussed in this blog post and video.

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FICO

Dynamics CRM – Online Product Ordering Portal

June 4, 2019 CRM News and Info

Email |
Print

Dynamics CRM – Online Product Ordering Portal – US$ 2,850 only

Impressive product ordering portal with payment gateway.

Try this template:

https://do.microsoftcrmportals.com

Just US$ 2,850 fully configured

Test Credit Card Account Number AMEX – 370000000000002

www.DynamicsObjects.com

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CRM Software Blog | Dynamics 365

Live Engagement Checklist For The Best Possible Online Experience

May 21, 2019 SAP

Live Engagement Checklist For The Best Possible Online Experience

Priya Iyer

You might have heard the term “live engagement” in reference to various live chat and customer support software and wondered, “What exactly does that mean?!”

Live engagement can be a broad term in the SaaS world, but to us, it means any sort of online interaction between a company and a customer, whether that’s through video chat, text chat, screen-sharing, or co-browsing. Sophisticated platforms have a full breadth of live engagement features, which are designed to provide customers with the best possible online experience. If you’re ready to upgrade your online customer support with live engagement, here are the top five things you need to do to get started.

Decide on a live engagement platform. First and foremost, you’ll need to conduct research, view some demos, and read various case studies from current clients. To settle on a live chat software that’s best suited to your company’s needs, first define where your customer service is lacking and the areas that need improvement. If your customers are complaining about long wait times when receiving support or limited hours of operation, consider launching live chat and chatbot services so multiple customers can be assisted simultaneously and during off hours. On average, customers will wait only 60 seconds or less to receive support.

Get to know the product. Launching an unfamiliar live engagement platform can be stressful. When you go live with your chosen software, your team should be totally comfortable operating the back-end features to ensure the most efficient and productive interactions with your customers. Some live engagement providers offer in-person workshops to make the implementation process as seamless as possible. With continuous training for agents, admins, and operators, your whole team will be proficient with the product by the go-live date. According to a study from MarTech, a chatting visitor is worth 4.5x as much as a non-chatting visitor, which is why it’s so important for your support staff to grasp all of the software’s capabilities.

Customize the live engagement experience. Any worthwhile live engagement platform will enable your company to customize the software. This includes designing the customer-facing panels to incorporate your company branding elements and preferred agent photos. You should also be able to tailor the wording on post-engagement surveys, call-back request forms (when no agents are available), and so on. Consistent brand presentation across all platforms increases revenue by up to 23%, while color improves brand recognition by up to 80%. It is essential that your live engagement provider understands how important it is to have consistent branding across all online channels and during live engagements. This understanding can be achieved only by working closely with clients during the configuration period to customize their customer-facing panels, customer follow-ups, and so on.

Ensure that your customers can access the live engagement features from any browser, on any device. By 2021, mobile e-commerce will account for 54% of all online sales. With more than half of consumers doing their online shopping from their phones, it is so important to offer customer support from all online channels, including social media and email. Ideally, live engagement should function across multiple channels, such as web, mobile apps, and store kiosks, and from any browser. You should expect your provider to deliver free upgrades and system updates to improve the service and keep your software up-to-date on new browsers and devices that are continually evolving.

Confirm that the diverse needs of your customers will be met. Many customers opt for online shopping for convenience, but some people don’t have a choice due to lack of mobility or living in a remote location. For customers who would really prefer to visit a store to receive face-to-face assistance or see products in detail but are unable to, you should offer live video chat, which is the closest alternative to an in-person shopping experience. In addition to video chat capabilities, supporting multiple languages to assist customers who are not native English speakers can give you a competitive edge.

What you can expect: satisfied customers

Studies show that 92% of customers feel satisfied after using live engagement, and most businesses are starting to catch on to this fact. The thought of launching a new live-chat platform on your website may seem overwhelming, but the benefits massively outweigh the cost and labor involved. With the right live-engagement software provider, your team will be properly trained and supported throughout the implementation process and thereafter, while ensuring that your customers are receiving the best help available from your brand.

Data quality is one of the most important challenges of today and tomorrow. Learn how to get the most of your master data using SAP Leonardo Hierarchy Matching and be prepared for the future!

About Priya Iyer

Priya Iyer is Chairman and CEO of Vee24, Inc. With over 25 years of diverse international experience in nearly every facet of software, Priya is a proven, high-growth entrepreneurial CEO with a leadership philosophy centered on engaging clients and employees to build industry-leading SaaS software platforms and delivering exceptional stakeholder value to achieve sustainable competitive differentiation. Priya was awarded New England Entrepreneur of the Year in 2014 and ranked on the 2015 Top 100 Entrepreneur List by the Boston Globe.

Prior to Vee24, Priya was most recently Chairman and CEO of Anaqua, Inc., which she founded in October 2004 and grew into a global SaaS solutions provider for intellectual asset management.

Priya holds a bachelors and masters in Computer Science and an MBA from the Sloan Fellows program at MIT Sloan School of Management. She serves on several boards, women executive panels, and is a regular guest speaker at various business schools in the Greater Boston area.

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Digitalist Magazine

Online Shopping Gets Real: The Rise of Interactive Product Visualization

May 19, 2019 CRM News and Info

People like to try things out before they buy them, and that desire to touch, feel, see and hear is what interactive product visualization is all about. In a world dominated by digital interfaces, interactive product visualization gives consumers the opportunity to experience, see, and understand products before buying them.

“Interactive 3D product experiences provide consumers with the freedom to explore products online as though they were in a store, while getting direct access to enriched content and customization capabilities,” said Aurélien Vaysset, CEO of
Emersya.

These experiences “empower online consumers to fully interact with products to discover every detail, animate the moving parts, visualize interior parts, switch among color and material options on the fly, customize components and get informed about the special features,” he told the E-Commerce Times.

In a shopping process that sometimes can feel removed from the real, physical, everyday world, interactive product visualization brings products closer to the people interested in purchasing them. It gives consumers a sense of confidence as they explore a product’s features, uses and capabilities.

“By providing intuitive interactive product visualization, you are essentially giving the consumer full control of the process and access to the product in a new way,” said Travis Keith, account director for
Column Five.

The Benefits of Interactivity

One of the reasons interactive product visualization is so important is that it takes consumers on a journey with a product, thus improving the chances that they’ll actually end up purchasing that product.

“Product visualization is intrinsic to the buyer’s journey for a multitude of reasons,” observed Philipp Krambeer, senior managing director at
Dassault Systèmes’ 3DEXCITE.

“Most importantly, it can instill a sense of ownership even before interaction with a physical product takes place,” he told the E-Commerce Times. “This typically leads to higher conversion rates.”

[embedded content]

Interactivity also can allow for customization, which can be a particularly powerful tool along a consumer’s journey, increasing a sense of participation and enhancing brand loyalty.

“Along with visualization comes the ability to offer product customization to reflect an individual’s specific preferences or requirements in hyper-reality,” said Krambeer. “Potential customers are more likely to become advocates, ambassadors or even advisors to brands or products that utilize visualization.”

The process of customization also helps to create a beneficial back-and-forth relationship between a company and its customers.

“Because visualization supports customization, there’s very vital data that can be collected on the back end to target product preferences to certain geographic locations based on gender preferences, and so on,” explained Krambeer.

Ultimately, product visualization helps consumers become more familiar with a product, noted Krambeer. “Digitally based, visualized products can offer a view to componentry, unique features and functions that a potential purchaser can explore and understand by experiencing them up front.”

Positive Interactions

A successful interactive product visualization ultimately is one that gives a true-to-life experience of a product, and a key part of this experience is an intuitive user interface.

“There’s nothing worse than trying to engage with interactive product visualization and the tool isn’t intuitive — or it’s incredibly difficult to navigate,” Column Five’s Keith told the E-Commerce Times. “An interactive product visualization with a poor user experience can actually do more harm than good, in most cases.”

The effectiveness of the user interface is shaped in part by the browser and the devices used to access the visualization, so it’s vital that a company incorporating this kind of technology into its sales and marketing strategy ensures that its users will be able to access it.

“It’s important to do thorough target persona research surrounding what browsers your customers are using,” said Keith. “Maybe you’re marketing to a younger generation who are generally using modern browsers, or maybe you’re focused on B2B enterprises, who generally use legacy browsers.”

The quality of the rendering itself also is key to a successful interactive product visualization.

“Realism of the rendering, smoothness of the interactions, and the added value brought by the enriched content are key,” said Vaysset. “From a technical standpoint, that means it is necessary to use optimized 3D models with the right technology to deliver the digital experiences.”

Incorporating product visualizations into an overall story being told about the product and the company is another way to make sure they have a positive impact on consumer experiences and buying decisions.

“Good storytelling adds a lot, as it drives the consumers through the main assets of a product,” explained Emersya’s Vaysset.

The Future of Interactivity

Going forward, interactive product visualization’s evolution likely will parallel technical developments in 3D rendering, augmented reality and virtual reality, with the ultimate goal being to put consumers in ever-more-realistic touch with products.

“Experimenting with the products in your own space, using augmented reality, is a major next step,” said Vaysset. “This was done in apps for some time but with limited success, because consumers had to install the app and leave the e-commerce site. We are about to release a game-changing new concept based on our own algorithms which allows switching from the usual Emersya 3D product experiences to the augmented reality ones without leaving the e-commerce shopping page.”

Virtual reality and augmented reality technologies have been allowing consumers to visualize not just the product itself, but how the product will fit into their particular lives, homes, cars and other personal spaces.

“We will see more use of virtual reality and augmented reality as it relates to product visualization,” said Keith. “Amazon recently released a video where you can use augmented reality to see how products would look in your house before buying them.”

Interactive product visualizations increasingly are coming to the mobile space, and technologies that allow for the exploration of these visualizations via mobile devices also will be key to the field’s success.

“The immediate future is all about mobile,” said Krambeer. “Consumers are likely to research a product on their mobile device prior to purchasing through their laptop or in a physical store. Changes will come with emerging devices and channels.”

Vivian%20Wagner Online Shopping Gets Real: The Rise of Interactive Product Visualization
Vivian Wagner has been an ECT News Network reporter since 2008. Her main areas of focus are technology, business, CRM, e-commerce, privacy, security, arts, culture and diversity. She has extensive experience reporting on business and technology for a variety
of outlets, including The Atlantic, The Establishment and O, The Oprah Magazine. She holds a PhD in English with a specialty in modern American literature and culture. She received a first-place feature reporting award from the Ohio Society of Professional Journalists.
Email Vivian.

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4 Advanced Ways Brands Use Data to Increase Online Sales

May 12, 2019 CRM News and Info

Data is one of the biggest advantages e-commerce brands have over their brick-and-mortar counterparts. Brands that sell products online can glean insights not only from sales figures, but also from impressions, click-through rates, bounce rates, and numerous other data points. They have a constant stream of visitors to help them optimize every image, ad and product description.

However, most brands are just scratching the surface of what they can do with e-commerce data, because they’re focusing exclusively on their own data. Manufacturers that want to maximize sales need to look beyond their own websites and tap into data from retailers that sell their products.

It sounds daunting, but without data from retailers, you’re missing the big picture of how people interact with your products online. As technology continues to evolve, the gap will only grow between brands that leverage the full potential of e-commerce data and those that don’t.

Right now, brands can use data from online retailers to improve their customers’ shopping experience, learn from buying behavior, monitor branding, and optimize their campaigns — all of which help you increase sales.

Following are four advanced tips for using e-commerce data to increase sales.

1. Streamline the Path to Purchase

No matter how good your product page looks on your own website, some consumers prefer buying from their favorite online retailer. Their loyalty to your brand shouldn’t be at odds with perks like these:

Free two-day shipping
Hundreds or thousands of verified reviews and ratings
Rewards programs
The convenience of buying online and picking up in store (BOPIS)

You can fight to keep people on your own website and risk losing sales, or you can embrace the diversity of the e-commerce ecosystem, and let your visitors decide where and how they want to buy your products.

What happens if someone goes to a retailer’s website, and your product is out of stock? Or the price is higher than what you listed on your website? They’ll probably either decide not to buy, or worse — they’ll buy a competing product.

That’s why more and more manufacturers have begun using software that automatically pulls pricing and stock information from their retail partners in real time, so they can display the data on their product pages. This lets consumers choose to buy your products in the way they prefer, while also ensuring that you don’t send them to a dead end.

By reducing the number of clicks and searches it takes to get to their products, these manufacturers have been capitalizing on people’s intent to buy. There’s less opportunity for their visitors to fall through the cracks or change their minds. Since these brands send people to retailers where they can actually purchase their products, they’re increasing dramatically the number of visitors who become customers.

2. Follow the Entire Customer Journey

Say someone clicks your Google ad or opens your email and clicks through to your product page. After doing some research about your product, say that individual decides to buy it. So the shopper hops over to Walmart.com and… what happens next?

Does the shopper buy your product?
Does the shopper ditch your product for a competitor’s?
What else goes into the shopper’s cart?
What complementary products does the shopper purchase?

Without data from online retailers, manufacturers can’t be certain how well — or how poorly — their marketing campaigns are doing. All you can see is what happens in the bubble of your own website, even though consumers might be buying from retailers as a result of your campaigns.

Manufacturers can remove the mystery by using tools that pull data from retailers’ websites. These tools allow you to follow a consumer’s path from your marketing assets to your website, to your retail partners, to checkout — so you actually can see how your campaigns are performing. This helps you focus your efforts on the campaigns that give you the biggest return on investment.

Additionally, some tools dgive manufacturers cart-level data, so you can learn what your customers are buying alongside your products, and how much they’re spending. Are consumers buying your drill with a competitor’s drill bits? Are they buying your home security cameras along with cribs, diapers, and other baby supplies? Insights like these can lead to bundling opportunities or even new product lines, diverting more sales from your competition.

3. Unify Your Brand Across Storefronts

Suppose someone is very interested in your product, but wants to purchase from a retailer to take advantage of a rewards program, or to read reviews. The shopper researches your product for a while on your website and then they goes looking for it on Amazon. Or Target. Or wherever. When the shopper reaches those other product pages, the images may be a little different. Or the name is displayed differently. Or the description isn’t quite right.

These might seem like minor discrepancies, but if there’s doubt that a page is displaying the right product, the consumer is going to click somewhere else. No one wants to pay for a knockoff or get stuck with an outdated model. All of a sudden you’ve lost a sale — not because your product wasn’t what the shopper wanted, but because your retail partner didn’t upload the new branding assets you sent a month earlier. Or — oops — you updated your own branding and forgot to send the new assets to your retail partners.

With the sheer number of products you sell and the many online retailers you work with, brand monitoring might sound like an impossible task — but it doesn’t have to be. Again, many brands today leverage data from online retailers to solve this problem and increase sales.

Using advanced technology, manufacturers can see all the copy, images, videos and other assets that appear alongside their products. More importantly, they can aggregate the data and see how well their retail partners are following their current brand guidelines.

By ensuring that your brand and products look and feel consistent wherever they appear, you help relieve any friction created by old images, incorrect copy and other discrepancies.

4. Prioritize Your Highest-Converting Retailers

Obviously, you don’t want to send people to a retailer that is doing a terrible job representing your product online or whose product page simply isn’t converting.

Maybe there are some abysmal reviews on your product page from people who had a bad experience with the retailer, or who objected to things that had nothing to do with your product. Sending shoppers there doesn’t just lose the sale on that page — it dissuades those consumers from considering you elsewhere.

Or maybe a retailer is promoting your competitors’ products on your product page.

On the other hand, some of your retail partners probably are doing an outstanding job. They have stellar reviews and current branding, and they always promote your relevant add-ons. Most importantly, they make sales.

You can use this information to decide which retail partners are worth investing in and promoting — and who you need to drop. If you have a “where to buy” widget on your website, you can elevate the retailers that convert and demote the ones that don’t. This ensures that you have the best shot at converting visitors who hit your product pages — and ultimately, at increasing sales.

Use Data to See the Big Picture

When you sell multiple products with multiple online retailers, the data you collect from your own website can take you only so far. If you can’t see which retailers have your product in stock, which represent your products the best, or if visitors even convert, you’re losing sales.

Conversion optimization platforms are developing new, more robust data solutions every day, and tech-savvy brands are finding more ways to leverage data and increase sales. In the world of e-commerce, the data revolution is far from over.

Anthony Ferry is CEO of
PriceSpider.

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Online Shopping Gets Real: The Rise of Interactive Product Visualization

The Benefits of Interactivity

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The Future of Interactivity

4 Advanced Ways Brands Use Data to Increase Online Sales

1. Streamline the Path to Purchase

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4. Prioritize Your Highest-Converting Retailers

Use Data to See the Big Picture

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