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Scratches, chips, and rusts lower the value and aesthetic appeal of your car. When you touch up paint on the area with the mess, you mask and prevent the damage from extending. Touchupdirect.com, an experienced paint touch up agency recommends doing it, especially if you don’t plan to repaint the whole car so you can preserve its value.

Finding the right company for this service isn’t an easy task, though. To get the best services, it’s essential that you do good background research so you can avoid potential investment risks. Here are the factors to consider when looking for the best paint touch up services.

1. Location

Location is an essential factor to consider when looking for touch-up services. Ideally, it’s crucial that you go with a locally based company because it’s easy to gauge their reputation in the area. Besides, you also get quick services in your region and you can get recommendations from their local clients easily.

2. Experience

Experienced service companies know the right paint to use to match your needs. They will also give you smart tips on how to keep safe from elements which may scratch or break your car’s paint. Finally, you’re 99.99% sure of excellent service if they also have a good track record.

3. Reputation

How do other customers view the services of the company? It’s critical that you also go an extra mile and check out reviews for their services. You can find reviews of your preferred company on review platforms like Google or Yelp or simply check out their social media pages to read through past client testimonials.

4. Customer service

It’s vital that the company you trust with touching up your car’s paint has excellent customer service. They should be willing to pay attention to your needs and respond to them in the best way possible. A reliable company will also be willing and readily respond to all your questions, so you don’t leave with any doubt.

5. Your budget

Budget is another critical factor you should never overlook when on the search for a company that will help give your car that original beautiful appearance. This is mainly important because different companies have different pricing structures, and what may work for one firm may not work for another. A reputable firm will discuss all the fees upfront with no hidden charges.

Having served in the car painting, and TouchUp services for a long time, Touchupdirect.com is a company you can trust with any of your car touch up painting needs. It doesn’t matter whether it’s rock chips, chipped paint or scratches that damaged your car’s beautiful coat. We’ll generously fill up the broken area to prevent further damage, rust, and revive your car’s dimming glory.… Read the rest

The system you use to transact your credit card payments is only as good as its security features. Take preventive action now to ensure that both your customers’ sensitive data and your business’s reputation are protected.

EMV COMPLIANCE

In October of 2015, the credit card industry rolled out a new, more secure type of credit card. Instead of having customer data on an easily cloned magnetic stripe, the information is contained in an imbedded chip that enables it to be encrypted. Because this credit card reader is used by the customer and not touched by the merchant, data is much less likely to be compromised. Now that EMV technology is the standard, it is the merchant’s responsibility to upgrade equipment to take these cards. If anyone were to transact a payment on a system that you had not updated and it turned out to be fraudulent, you would be liable for all costs incurred. That could amount to hundreds and perhaps thousands of dollars in avoidable expenses.

SSL COMPLIANCE

If you have an e-commerce component to your business, you should also be SSL compliant. Secure Socket Layer is a method of securing a customer’s transaction data before it gets to your website. Savvy online shoppers generally look for an SSL certificate in the form of a padlock or a green address bar, and sites that feature them have web addresses beginning with the prefix “https.” You can get an SSL certificate by obtaining a unique IP address, generating a certificate signing request, purchasing one from an authorized SSL certificate provider, verifying it, installing it and updating your site.

PCI COMPLIANCE

The Payment Card Industry Data Security Standards (PCI DSS) are a set of guidelines that were designed by an independent counsel of the credit card industry to prevent fraud and data breaches by protecting customer data. The standards the PCI has developed are accepted throughout the industry, and you are required by most processing companies to adhere to them as well. Displaying signage advertising your PCI DSS compliance is an excellent way to foster an environment of trust with your customers.

TOKENIZATION

When reviewing the capabilities of your payment processor, be sure that the system to which you entrust your customers’ online payment data uses payment tokenization. This cutting-edge technology encrypts credit card data before it is stored on the server, replacing those numbers with a randomly generated series of letters and digits.

USE SMARTPHONE PAYMENT PROCESSING

With every passing month, it becomes more necessary to accept Apple Pay, Samsung Pay and other transactions that customers conduct through the digital wallets built into their smartphones. By upgrading your processing system to take these near field communication (NFC) transactions, you do more than make people happy by accepting their payment method of choice. NFC contactless payments can often be just as secure or even more so than their plastic credit card counterparts. In addition, they allow people to buy products and services even if they have neither cash nor plastic on hand.

Of course, there will never be a way to absolutely guarantee that the payments you process are 100 percent secure. However, taking these steps can make it exponentially more difficult for criminals to take advantage of your vulnerabilities. In this day and age, the more careful and proactive you are, the safer you and your customers will become.
… Read the rest

Ulcerative colitis (UC) is characterized by a set of symptoms that includes intense cramps, an urgent need to use the bathroom and abdominal pain. These can come and go, but ulcerative colitis is a chronic condition for which there is no cure. Nevertheless, being treated regularly by a gastroenterology west hills practice can reduce this disease’s effects on your life.

Surprisingly, there are several kinds of ulcerative colitis. Which one you have depends on where the associated inflammation is located. The condition is not caused by anything you have done or failed to do; it is an autoimmune condition in which your body launches an attack against your intestines. Genetic factors can increase your chances of having ulcerative colitis, especially if someone in your immediate family has UC or another inflammatory bowel condition called Crohn’s disease.

Treatment of your UC by a gastroenterology west hills practice is also important for another reason. Symptoms are often not limited to stomach pain, cramps or diarrhea. It can also lead to bone thinning, skin sores, joint pain, kidney stones and even liver problems such as hepatitis and cirrhosis.

Researchers are working every day to find a cure for UC. Until then, your best option is to consult a gastroenterology specialist, who can provide you with information, lifestyle suggestions and powerful medications that are helping many men, women and kids with UC to go into remission from their often debilitating symptoms. An estimated 700,000 Americans have been diagnosed with UC. You are not alone, and you don’t need to put your life on hold.… Read the rest

With the growing number of medical spas, it is good to use a unique Medical Spa marketing for your spa. Since most medical spas offer fundamentally the same medically supervised skin improvement procedures, you should create a marketing plan that will improve your lead generation. How can this be achieved? Simply, follow the following medical spa marketing tips.

1. Evaluate your Existing Marketing Program

The first thing you need to do is evaluate your current marketing program. Evaluate what is working and what is not. Figure out the actual cost versus the benefit of each best marketing ad you are doing. Did the postcards work better than the radio ads? Did the free media attention from the grand opening get you lots of new customers?

2. Leverage your Current Information

When you take your customers information, you should be taking not only their mailing address but their e-mail address as well. You may want to start a monthly e-newsletter about your MedSpa. Highlight an employee or a new procedure. Remind everyone that summer is coming and they should get in for hair removal medications quickly. An occasional “Daily Specials” e-mail will allow you to respond to a lull in bookings by sending out a treatment special for the time slots you have.

3. Cross-market to Complimentary Businesses

The next time you are driving to your MedSpa take a look of who is around you. I am sure you will find many businesses that share the same demographic customer like you and are also looking for new customers. Visit the health food store, jeweler, or the organic wholesale club and create a marketing program with them.

4. Use Technology

When you opened your Medical Spa Marketing, you most likely purchased a bookings management system. Are you using it to its full potential? These systems often allow you to run custom reports where you can see which treatment rooms are being under-utilized, and which clients haven’t been in the medspa in a while. It may be time to check out the software vendors website to remind yourself of other productivity features which can help with your marketing efforts.

Conclusion

Customers are the key to a successful medical spa. To attract them, you have to stretch to the limit in your Spa marketing and come out of the comfort zone. Once customers are satisfied with your exceptional services, they will not hesitate in coming to your medical spa.… Read the rest

Those that live in a solar powerhouse agree that there are plenty of benefits from this environmentally-friendly power source. Many sensible people like yourself are a bit crestfallen to realize they have missed the boat on these advantages, and are turning to solar power systems for their houses. If you were familiar with all of these great benefits, you would at least know if this set up was right for your energy needs.

George Wesley, a representative of Luminous Solar, outlines a few key details “One essential benefit that comes with a solar power house is the obvious energy savings. The amount you save in monthly power costs can easily pay for the initial investment in a reasonable amount of time.” You will notice that each month you save a significant amount – up to eighty percent from your energy bill, which represents substantial annual savings. The other side of the spectrum is that you can sell the excess energy you don’t use back to the utility company. The reason for this is the Federal law that makes this an opportunity for all who are using green energy sources.

You will also be taking part of the environmental movement if you live in a solar powerhouse. Since everyone is concerned about taking better care of the planet, you will rest easy knowing that you’re doing what you can to participate. Solar energy produces absolutely zero waste and has no polluting side-effects, and the energy is renewable and not finite like so many power sources are.

There are plenty of other energy resources to use, but the concern is that these other sources are quickly disappearing before our eyes, making solar power more attractive. There is a need to use sources of energy that do not further deplete the planet’s limited resources, and many turn to the sun’s limitless supply of energy to have a sense of environmental well-being. Solar energy presents a guilt-free way to energize your home without using up what limited measure of resources that the planet has enduring.

Buying or remodeling your home to become a solar powerhouse means that you will also get to enjoy a nice tax incentive come next tax season. Cut yourself some slack, you deserve it! Many do not realize this tax benefit exists, but Congress has passed laws that allow for this tax benefit to be applied to those using solar energy. The hope is that the government will encourage a practice that benefits many people, including the planet itself.

Creating a solar powerhouse will mean you have a source of energy that will be there for the long-term future, unlike finite fuel sources. Solar power means that you don’t need to worry about replacing or maintaining the system that supplies your electricity. There will be news stories about conserving energy, or about power outages – none of this will be your concern with solar sources.

These benefits to your solar powerhouse are just an example of the many benefits that solar energy will afford you. You will require doing some investigation to find other advantages to solar power, and that will make it clear to you why so many are hopping aboard the bandwagon. This energy source will be here for many decades and centuries to come.… Read the rest

France is the world’s number one tourist destination, and within this country of wondrous natural beauty one of the most-visited regions is the area of southeast France known as Provence.

The classic region of Provence, as named by the Romans, was a huge area that stretched west from the current Italian border near Nice to Marseille at the mouth of the Rhône. Nowadays when we refer to Provence we generally exclude the Mediterranean coast, now called the Côte d’Azur (or Côte Varoise near Saint-Tropez), and think of the area that stretches north of the coast a 150 kilometers or so to the vineyards and rolling countryside, dotted with tiny villages, in the area around Aix-en-Provence and Avignon. Provence offers a number of unique attractions not only for a tourist but also for those who would like to buy property and settle down here.

A Mediterranean climate featuring more than 300 days of sunshine per year is a major drawing card. Whether you enjoy swimming at nearby seaside beaches or hiking in the hills, the climate of Provence offers numerous advantages for those who are physically active and enjoy the out-of-doors. And even with its well-deserved reputation for warm and sunny weather, major ski resorts in the Alps are only a drive of two hours or less from most parts of Provence.

While Provence is best known for its warm-weather attractions, many visitors especially enjoy visiting in the winter, when there are few tourists and the days are bright and sunny with mild temperatures. If you purchase property and take up residence in Provence, you will not have to worry about heavy heating bills in the winter, for even in the coldest month of the year, the temperature stays in a comfortable range.

Provence is also rich in history. Aurore Louineaux at Only Provence further elaborates, “Well before the arrival of Caesar’s legions in the first century BC, Greeks and Phoenicians fishermen and traders established villages along the coastline. The region received its name when it became a province of the Roman Empire. Many antiquities from the Roman era remain, as do churches, monasteries and cathedrals dating back to the Middle Ages. Many villages still have their original ramparts constructed in medieval times to ward off invaders.”

While it is best known for its countryside attractions, in recent decades Provence has evolved into one of the most sophisticated regions of France, thanks partially to the fact that many Europeans and North Americans rent seasonally or have purchased homes here. Marseille, France’s second largest city, is a major port and features world-class boutiques, as do Avignon and Aix-en-Provence, both of which are university towns. Orange, north of Avignon, and Aix are also famous for their summer opera festivals, and Avignon for its world-renowned theatre festival in July. Aix hosted a major Cézanne exhibition in the summer of 2006 that drew visitors from all over the world.… Read the rest