Posts Tagged ‘Web Service’

Web Conferencing Services should be Easy to Use

Tuesday, November 1st, 2011

Web Conferencing Services have helped companies save millions of dollars and are here to stay.  The use of web conferencing services is expected to continue to grow rapidly over the next 5 years as more and more people adopt them for their own use.  And the inclination of many of the web conferencing services providers is to add more and more features to try and attract customers.  But the one thing that you really need to have in your web conferencing services is their ease of use.  Zip Conferencing has gone to great lengths to create a web conferencing service that is powerful and yet easy to use.  Here are some of the features that make our web conferencing service one of the easiest to use services in the market.

  • Outlook Integrated Invitations- One of the complications of getting a web conference meeting going is inviting your participants.  Different web conferencing services do this in a variety of ways but all offer some type of email confirmation or a web page you can send your participants to in order to join the meeting.  These methods certainly work but why should you have to cut and paste and try to pull together the information for your participants.  With Zip Conferencing you can use our Outlook scheduling tool and integrate your web conference details right within Outlook.  That way you are able to put out a meeting request just like you would any other meeting, from within Outlook.  Invite participants and have them accept the meeting and have the meeting appear on your calendar all using the same steps you would take to schedule any meeting.  Now that is Easy!
  • Intuitive Control Panel – The actual functionality of a web conference is not that different across providers but what is different is that way that you access the functions from within the service.  With all of the different features now packed within the web conferencing services out there you sometimes have to navigate a maze of controls to find what you are looking for.  Zip Conferencing has put the most widely used features front and center using intuitive controls available with the touch of a button.
  • No Software Downloads – One of the hardest things to overcome with a web conference is getting on the meeting.  Many times participants who have not used the web conferencing services before will have to download software in order to join the meeting.  Many times adding software to a computer is prohibited by companies and participants are unable to join.  With Zip Conferencing there are no software downloads for the participants.  Our web conference service uses Flash which is already widely installed on people’s computers so there is no waiting for participants to download software. 

If it isn’t easy to use you probably won’t use it.  So if you are just starting out doing web meetings or you have struggled in the past to have a successful web conference give Zip Conferencing a try.

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No Web Conference Software Necessary

Thursday, August 11th, 2011

Web conference software has been around since the beginning of web conferencing. In fact in the beginning everyone needed the same web conference software on their PCs in order to have a web conference. Not really practical when you think about inviting people who are new participants to a web conference. What are you supposed to do send them the software ahead of time? It is easy to see how a service provider that made it easy could gain so much ground in the providing of web conferencing. But even service providers of web conferencing require that you download web conference software in order to use their service. Zip Conferencing has a web conferencing service that requires no web conference software for the participants which makes it easier on everyone. Here are some of the advantages of using a service provider and not using web conference software.

  • No Up Front Cost – If you buy web conference software there is going to be the up front cost associated with buying the software.  You then need to spend valuable time installing the software on the PCs you intend to conduct your web conferences with as well.
  • No Maintenance Cost – In order to keep your web conference software up to date you will need to buy regular maintenance updates on the software. 
  • Any Participants can Join – If you use a service provider instead of web conference software the participants can join a web conference without having to install software.  Participants generally are going to join your web conference last minute and you don’t want any delays while your participants are downloading software.
  • Full Support – If you purchase web conference software you are not going to get the kind of support you get with a service provider.  With Zip Conferencing you get support 24 hours a day and 7 days a week.  You can even get support while in your conference call by simply pressing the star key followed by zero on your telephone.

These days with any number of web conferencing service providers out there that provide services at very reasonable rates you really have no reason to go out and purchase web conference software.  And the way that the service works with Zip Conferencing you and your participants don’t even have to download any software.  Since our service was built on a Flash platform you just need to have Flash on your PC.  These days anyone that surfs the Internet has Flash on their PC.  So anyone can join our web conferencing service without having to download any web conference software.

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Conference Call and Web Conferencing Free Trial

Thursday, May 26th, 2011

They say that nothing in life is free and I usually agree.  But here at Zip Conferencing we truly let you try our conference calls and web conferencing for free.  There is no better way to convince you about the quality, service and features we offer for our conference call service than to let you try it yourself.  Let me explain how the free trials work and what is included.

Conference Call Free Trial – The conference call free trial provides of 60 minutes of conferencing free to people who sign up for our monthly minute plans.  That way since you are making a commitment to use the service regularly you can first try it for free to make sure it suits your needs.  When you sign up for the free trial you will have access to the full set of features and options as any regular customer of Zip Conferencing.  You can log into your online account and explore the conference options, see how easy it is to add Moderators and conferences and explore the reporting options available online.  Then you can conduct a conference call and test out the quality of the service and the see what Host controls are available during the conference call.  If you are not completely satisfied with the service you can simply cancel your account and you will not be charged anything.

Web Conferencing Free Trial – The web conferencing free trial is available to all subscribers to the Zip Conferencing service and lets you use the web conferencing service for 30 days for free.  When you sign up for the web conferencing free trial you will have access to all of the features we offer including desktop video, chat and application sharing.  The web conferencing service is so easy to use you will be amazed at what you can do during a meeting.  At the end of the 30 days if you are not completely satisfied you can simply cancel the service and you will not be charged.

Zip Conferencing lets you try our services for free and has no contracts because we are confident that if you try our services you will become a customer like the thousands of loyal customers who already enjoy all of the features, service and value that Zip Conferencing offers.

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Online Web Conferencing just got Easier

Thursday, January 27th, 2011

Online web conferencing has been around now for a while.  And online web conferencing of any kind is a whole lot easier than what you had to do before the proliferation of the Internet.  But one of the reasons online web conferencing has not been more widely adopted is because people are reluctant to learn a new application.  Conference calls are very easy because all you need is a telephone and everyone knows how to operate a telephone and dialing into a conference call could no be any easier.  So why does online web conferencing have to be so difficult.  Well, Zip Conferencing does not believe that a web conference should be any more difficult to run than an audio conference call.  And our new web conferencing service has taken the learning curve out of online web conferencing.  It is so easy to use you will not need any instruction whatsoever to be successful with the service right from the start.  In addition to being easy to use our online web conferencing service is packed with features that will allow you to perform amazing things.  Here is a list of some of the features that separate our online web conferencing service from all the others out there.

  • No Software Download Needed – Our online web conferencing does not require you to download any software in order to participant in the web conference.  This makes it much easier for your participants to join a web conference.  You won’t be wasting time waiting for people to connect to the your conference call and you participants won’t be frustrated trying to join either.
  • Dial Me Connections – Instead of having to figure out how to dial into online web conferencing we have made it so the system can dial out to you.  That way you don’t have to figure out a conference call and a web conference they are the same.  Just put your phone number into the system and it will connect you to the web conference.
  • Application Sharing – Like other online web conferencing solutions our web conferencing service allows you to share an application or your entire desktop with your participants.  The difference is we have an easy to find button that starts the process.  You don’t have to try to figure out how to share an application it is very evident from within the tool.
  • Polling – Many online web conferencing sites have polling but it is hard to operate.  Our web conferencing service has an easy to use polling feature that lets you share the results easily with your audience.  A polling feature helps keep your participants engaged in your web conference.
  • Video Sharing- Our online web conferencing solution even allows you to share your web cam feed with your participants.  And your participants can play too.  In fact you can have an unlimited number of web cams in your web conference.
  • Outlook Integration – To make the invitation process with your participants simple our online web conferencing service is integrated with Outlook so that you can invite participants through your email and then save the meeting as a scheduled appointment in your calendar.

The trick to successful online web conferencing is making it easy to use.  Zip Conferencing makes web conferencing as easy as can be.

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Free Web Conferencing

Monday, March 8th, 2010

One of the surest ways to get traffic to your web site is to give something away for free.  But how is it that a service that a lot of people are willing to pay for can be offered by another company for free.  Well, I have gone through free conference calls before and explained how that can happen, but what about free web conferencing? 

A conference call service company that provides web conferencing to its customers has to pay for a number of things in order to provide the service.  Some of those cost items include the following.

  • Software development – If the conference call service company has developed the service themselves then they had to pay to have the software developed in the first place.  And like any software you develop the development doesn’t end there.  There are on going improvements, bug fixes and so forth to fund.
  • Reseller fees- Some conference call services don’t develop their own software, they simply resell someone elses technology.  In this case there is always a cost to the company who is reselling the service.
  • Hosting environment – If you are supporting your own software you need to have a server or servers depending on the number of users to host the software and make it available to your customers. 
  • Internet Connectivity- If you are hosting your own web conferencing service you need to connect it to the internet and the connection needs to allow many users fast access so you will also need a very good and potentially expensive connection.
  • Support Costs – And like any other conference call service you will need to support your web conferencing service with sales and service personnel.

So, if there are all these costs, how does anyone provide free web conferencing?  Well, some conference call service companies will offer a dumbed down version for free hoping you will upgrade because the free version doesn’t do much.  Or the web conferencing service they offer for free is an old version they no longer support and instead of retiring it they simply give it away so you will come to their site and but the other version.  Either way, if you investigate the free web conferencing versions out there you will see that they are not a full version, current representative of what web conferencing can do.  And it just may not have the reliability and capacity you would expect with a service you pay for.  After all it is free so how hard can you complain?

If you really need a good web conferencing service don’t use a free one.  For a low monthly fee you can have access to a web conferencing service that save you time and money wihtout breaking the bank.

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Web Conference Recording

Friday, October 16th, 2009

Being able to record a conference call has been around for a while.  It is fairly simple to press a command on your phone and initiate a recording of a conference call and then allow people to dial into a system to listen to the recording or download a copy of the recording to share with others.  A web conference, however, presents a different set of issues.  The web conference is on one platform and the audio portion of your web conference may be on another platform.  In fact, in the early days of web conferencing, the only way to record the web conference and the audio of that conference was to have a separate recording of the audio portion made using an adaptor that plugged into your PC and fed the audio portion back into the recording for the web conference.  That was fun.  Customers could not believe the gyrations they had to perform to record a web conference.

Today, recording a web conference is very simple and it provides a recording that is full audio and web and can easily be played back for participants.   Zip Conferencing’s web conference service has a one click mechanism to start the recording of both the audio and web conference portion of the conference call.  The recording of the web conference can be stored and viewed by you or your participants or you can download a copy of the web conference recording and distribute it as you see fit.  Like many aspects of web conferencing, as the recording has been simplified there are not only more recordings of web conferences being done, but people are thinking of ways to use the service that we in the industry never thought of ourselves.

Why hold the same seminar over and over again for different audiences?  If the subject matter for your web conference is not going to change you can just record the material once and then invite different people to observe the web conference to absorb the material.  Maybe there is a web conference when the participants were especially intriguing.  Record the meeting and you can share the insightful observations of one audience with another.  If you cannot attend a meeting live, but you still need to present the material you can record the meeting ahead of time and then share with your audience later. 

The ability to easily record a web conference with the audio portion of the call has opened up a world of possibilities.

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