Tag Archives: services

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Pitney Bowes Online Postage

It’s easy for agencies—especially smaller ones—to overpay when mailing and shipping. There are steps agency owners can take to prevent overspending and improve productivity.

Pitney Bowes pbSmartPostage

Pitney Bowes pbSmartPostagePitney Bowes has a new online postage stamp service called pbSmartPostage that allows small business owners to buy and print postage stamps online, print exact postage when combined with a postal scale (so you don’t overpay), get discounted USPS rates on certain services, ship and track packages online, automatically verify addresses to reduce undeliverable mail, and save time and gas by not having to drive to and from the post office.

The service is cloud-based, so there’s no software to download. Office managers can log in and manage shipments from any computer, anytime and anywhere. The cost for the service starts at $15 per month. A free 60-day trial is available.

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Test Your Website Usability

Big companies almost always have someone test websites under development for usability prior to going live. Most agencies never think about this option. It is similar to companies hiring hackers to test the Internet security of their business website or IT devices.

UserTesting.com

UserTesting is a company that pays consumers or customers to pick through your website with the goal of addressing and correcting problems and challenges that consumers are confronted with on the site.

UserTesting is a crowd-sourcing service of sorts that provides fast and affordable usability testing for companies all over North America. UserTesting.com gives companies access to a large panel of users—not experts—who test the sites and make a video testimonial on their experiences (good and bad) while they are navigating through the site. Companies get to “look over the shoulders” of these users while they perform common tasks on the company’s website, to see and hear where they get confused and frustrated, what they love, and what they hate. This dramatically decreases the cost and hassle of traditional user testing.

UserTesting.com arranges for consumers to provide companies/corporations with video feedback about their sites and online services. Not only is this interesting from an owner’s perspective in getting solid, first-person, hands-on consumer feedback—but on the other end, UserTesting.com pays consumers to get onto client websites and find glitches, errors, anomalies, etc.

For $39 per user you get 1) a flash video of a user speaking their thoughts as they browse your website, and 2) a written summary that includes what the user liked, disliked, and what would have caused them to leave your site.

UserTesting.com

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Helping Agents Stay Ahead in the Technology Game

As I travel across the country talking to agents, the question I hear most often is, “Can you just give us a couple quick tips on the top things we can do right now to make our agency more profitable and effective?”

The answer is, YES!

As an insurance technology consultant and editor, I’ve been able to discover the cool new tools, websites, gizmos and gadgets that can make your life easier, more productive, and more competitive.

I have created a new, weekly emailed newsletter — Steve Anderson’s Tech Tip — that will highlight one new “thing” that will help an agency increase productivity and effectiveness: Tech Tip is short, to the point, and quick to read.

After working with literally hundreds of agencies of every shape and size, I’ve come up with what I believe are the best agency technology resources available anywhere.

Is there a charge for Tech Tip? The answer is: NO!

This is my way of supporting agents in these trying economic times — not to mention that I really do love finding the latest gizmos and gadgets that can increase productivity — just ask my wife!

All you have to do to sign up is go to www.SteveAnderson.com and complete the simple Tech Tip subscription form on the right sidebar. Once you verify your email address, you will begin receiving the newsletter every Thursday morning. And, of course, I will never give your name out to anyone and you can unsubscribe at any time.

One more thing: As you begin to get my Tech Tip newsletter, always feel free to email me with comments, new ideas or products that have worked for you. I’ll check them out and spread the word!

Question: What technology tools do you use to gain a competitive edge and increase profitability?

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Meeting Scheduler: TimeBridge

Have you ever tried to set up a meeting with people who use different calendars? At best, it can be a challenge.

TimeBridge, a PC Magazine Editors’ Choice, helps you set up meetings for those with unrelated scheduling systems. You’ve got Outlook; she’s got Google Calendar; he’s got Thunderbird, and so on. Instead of playing phone-tag and worrying about time zones, you just send out the invites, and TimeBridge handles the confirmations and reminders. You only need to know the e-mail addresses of each person you want to invite. Each person receives a message with the options for a meeting time; they don’t need a TimeBridge account to reply. As the originator, you get a message if your various invitees can’t make it at the proposed times.

Once the meeting is set, everyone gets an e-mail confirmation with links to import the info into various calendars, including Google, Outlook, Yahoo!, and Apple’s iCal. Currently, the service is free but TimeBridge has plans to charge for premium services in the future.

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Google Adds Social Networking Tool

Google has released a new service called Google Friend Connect that makes it possible for Web sites to easily add social networking features that don’t require visitors to join a new social network. Google Friend Connect lets any Web site operator easily add functionality to a site that lets visitors join the site, see other users of the site, and participate in social networking activities such as commenting on and rating content.

From a strict feature standpoint, there isn’t much in Google Friend Connect that seems all that new. There are many other services already available that offer these types of services. What does make this service stand out is its extreme openness and potential for near-unlimited extensibility. That’s because, rather than using proprietary technology, Google Friend Connect heavily leverages open technologies such as OpenID, OpenSocial, and OAuth.

To get the service up and running on your site, you simply need to enter the site information on the Google Friend Connect site, download two files that need to be uploaded to your site’s root directory, and choose the gadgets you want to add to the site. For the gadgets, Google Friend Connect generated code that I then needed to add to my Web site templates and pages.

Gadgets include a Members gadget that displays visitors who have joined the site. This makes it possible for visitors to sign in, join the site, and utilize other social networking gadgets. Other gadgets include a Wall gadget that lets visitors comment on and link to a site, a ratings gadget, and a couple of demonstration gadgets. There is also a code snippet provided to aid developers in creating their own custom gadgets.