XCAST MEDIA

Internet consumers have embraced online access to products, information and customer service in great numbers. But, with the exception of a relatively few wildly successful websites, the overall benefits for most websites have not been as clear as they are for Internet customers. The problem most websites face is their inability to capture adequate customer-share. Most Websites constantly struggle for greater customer-share, and constantly seek methods to attract and retain online customers.

The reason customer-share is such a chronic problem for most websites is that the dominate access paradigm used by the web today - browsing – does not take advantage of online presence to capture customer-share. Browsing is inherently a passive response to a website customer’s presence, in fact its no response at all. No brick-and-mortar retail store would allow their customers to just walk in, look around, and walk out. No e-retail store should allow this either. But, that is all that the browsing paradigm permits. When web users can’t quickly find what they want they simply go to another website and buy it there. And, there are plenty of other websites only a click away.

XCast Media’s Solution

XCast Media (XCast or Company) sells a monthly subscription service to website owners that provides them with an innovative tool for augmenting the simple browsing paradigm, and attracting and retaining more online customers. The tool is called a Virtual Web-Guide, or VGuide. Essentially, a VGuide is a digital representation of a human sales person. It performs the same function for a website that a human sales person does for a brick-and-mortar store; that is, it helps customers search the site and find what the want, and it helps the merchant sell more products or services. The purpose of a VGuide is to engage the online customer in human-like dialog, giving the online merchant the same kind of opportunity to guide the sale, as human sales persons give a brick-and-mortar merchant. The benefit to website owners is that by giving their online customers a more effective way to find product content quickly and by engaging them in a directed sales process, VGuides drive customer-share; they convert more website visits into sales, increase customer retention, and enhance competitive differentiation.