Gene Alvarez

A member of the Gartner Blog Network

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How do you rate reviews?

June 24th, 2009 · 1 Comment

An interesting story on a court ruling that enabled students to rate teachers sparked an equally interest discuss discussion around reviewing people performance.
As the e-commerce person here, I have been talking with clients about product rating for years. It has been my belief that with all product review ratings the reader should apply the [...]

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Tags: Uncategorized · Web and CRM

Will Your Organizations URL Outlive Your Organization?

June 5th, 2009 · No Comments

An interesting phenomenon that I am seeing is that a company can go bankrupt and yet its online store can outlive the physical business. Take for example Linen – N – Things (www.lnt.com) and Circuit City (http://www.circuitcity.com/) both who filed for bankruptcy and closed their stores in 2009 have new owners of their website [...]

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Tags: Uncategorized · Web and CRM

When is $10 worth it? Moreover, how a representative can save the day.

May 29th, 2009 · No Comments

Ok, I have been swamped with client inquiries, research and the upcoming Internet Retailer Conference (Come to my session if you are there it will be quite interesting. http://www.internetretailer.com/IRCE2009/session_detail.asp?sess_id=76 ). Anyway, I was up late last night planning my much-needed vacation and being a web person I used an online booking service that I [...]

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Tags: Web and CRM

What is Amazon?

May 12th, 2009 · No Comments

In a discussion on social software and online selling, Amazon is one of the most often used examples.
However, in the examples used in these discussions Amazon’s perceived image is different to each person. So as beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Amazon’s business model is in the eyes of the user. For example, [...]

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Tags: Web and CRM

Results from my little Twitter vs. Blog experiment.

May 8th, 2009 · No Comments

The other day in my blog, I asked my followers to vote. The vote was for me to tweet or blog. Additionally, I posted a link that asked my Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin, and Plaxo friends to “Please read my blog”. What I found out from this little experiment was interesting. Putting aside people saying I [...]

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Tags: Web and CRM

Consumerization in a down economy

April 3rd, 2009 · 4 Comments

What a week! As the economy goes up and then back down, I am finding that more clients are concerned about thier web sites customer experience. I am not just talking about business-to-consumer (B2C) organizations. I am seeing business-to-business (B2B) organization looking to the web as a way to improve sales, build brands, work well [...]

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Tags: Web and CRM

Don’t ask for input if you’re not ready to answer the unexpected.

March 26th, 2009 · No Comments

In between all that I had to do today; I couldn’t help but watch the Whitehouse online “Open for questions” voting. Although some question such as health care were no surprise. One topic I didn’t expect as the top question was the legalization and taxation marijuana. Moreover, I was surprised that is ranked the highest [...]

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Tags: Web and CRM

Check out your checkout process

March 21st, 2009 · No Comments

Ever wonder why e-commerce sales for your organization aren’t as high as you think they should be? Well I can tell you one possible reason the shopping to check out process could be harder than just driving somewhere to buy the item. For example, I own two GPS devices for my cars and I wanted [...]

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Tags: Web and CRM

Back on the beat

February 24th, 2009 · No Comments

Well after a bout with laptops that were either stepped on by a fellow traveler or died while in front of a client. I’ve finally back online with yet another loaner until my laptop reachs full health. Anyway, I’m at our mobile and wireless show and one of the keys words on attendee lips is [...]

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Tags: Uncategorized · Web and CRM

The iPhone, BlackBerry Storm and holiday shopping

December 16th, 2008 · 2 Comments

Well I finally got my new laptop after my old one died, so I’m back to trying to catch up with everything including my blogging.
I know we all have been hearing about the slow holiday sales but I couldn’t help think that there are shoppers out there using their smart phones for price [...]

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Tags: Web and CRM