For many people, Social Media (particularly Twitter and Facebook) is the way they find lots of new and interesting sites and experiences on the Internet. This can be friends posting links to interesting info, celebrities promoting sites, columnists pushing up their readership numbers or increasingly businesses using SM to promote their goods and services.
Many ways now exist for websites to generate Twitter or Facebook links directly from their pages. This enables the public to quickly and easily share their discoveries without faffing around with link shorteners and separate SM logins etc. This can generate significant traffic and hopefully business for websites as they are effectively co-opting their readers into being free Publicity and Marketing agents for them.
So what does this mean for webdesign?
When I first started in the Internet business, web sites had to be designed to suit the lowest common denominator of viewer. This meant 640*480 screens 16000 (or even 256) colours and designs that could be transmitted over a 9.6kbit/s phone connection. Now websites can be stuffed with millions of colours, huge screen resolutions flash animation and need Megabit sized broadband speeds to download acceptably.
This, of course, assumes everyone is sitting in front of a high spec, large screen PC able to run all this stuff when in fact many people will be viewing sites via iPhones, Blackberries other smartphones or iPads each with their own capabilities and limitations. Anyone trying to view websites on a tiny Blackberry screen using GPRS will understand what a limitation this imposes and what a struggle it can be.
This represents both a challenge and an opportunity for web designers. They need to use the opportunity of having viewers promote content via SM to increase their readership, but also recognize the audience out there using mobile devices and offer lighter, simpler and smaller web experiences that can be used on these devices.
This could be via intelligent systems which recognize these devices and deliver adapted content (the bbc site is a notable one for this) or perhaps the use of specific micro-sites able to deliver cut-down content.
Either way designers will need to adapt to the changing landscape of delivery systems and networks.
Those designers brought up in the first generation of web design may have a lot to teach the new mobile, SM aware Internet.
Karl Meyer
www.spice.co.uk
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Thursday, 25 November 2010
What will Twitter do to Web Design?
Wednesday, 10 November 2010
Will Twitter split in two?
Previously I posted on how twitter can start to make money from its increasingly popular service
http://rand-musing.blogspot.com/2010_07_01_archive.html
and all those ways still apply but now it seems possible that the best way for twitter to become profitable is to divide itself into two separate businesses.
This might seem strange when the history of IT in general and the Internet in particular has been one of endless mergers and acquisitions resulting in gigantic businesses like Microsoft, Google etc but I really think that Twitter may be an exception to this rule and for a number of reasons
Twitter is structurally very different from every other Social Media site around and different in its model to every other website that I can think of in that its website is largely irrelevant. If you scan through your own twitter feed you'll find that the vast majority of posts aren't coming from twitter.com they're emerging from iphones, blackberrys, literally dozens of third party applications, APIs from news providers etc etc etc. In my own (unscientific) stream I would guess that no more than 10% of the content I read on twitter actually originates via twitter.com.
Myself, if I'm watching The Apprentice or Xfactor (under protest in the later case I hasten to add) I'll be reading twitter not on my laptop but on my blackberry and will post comments via that device simply because its easier to use and doesn't burn my lap in the process!
The key conclusion from this is that Twitter(ing) the service is much much more popular than twitter.com the website and so the two can, and should, be considered separately.
If you then start to look at revenue opportunities it becomes clear that some of the existing revenue plans that have emerged within twitter are therefore not likely to produce the expected returns.
Promoted trending topics will only be seen by around 10% of twitter users and therefore could be seen are being worth only 10% of what they would based on twitter user numbers certainly the click-through numbers will be dramatically lower - even less than 10% of expected if the .com site users are the less active portion of the twitter membership.
Any site based advertising will therefore be viewed by a smaller and potentially less active sub set of the whole membership making it much less attractive (or lucrative).
On the other hand in service revenues could be extremely attractive - either paid for insertions (tricky to square with the audience), or pay per view subscriptions (an area I think has lots of legs).
Twitter, the service provider, could also offer its services into closed user groups (either Business to Business or Intra Company) to provide rapid messaging delivery inside a company. This could provide a very interesting revenue stream and earn cash to fund future developments.
Based in this I would expect to see some announcements regarding Twitter's business structure very soon..
Karl Meyer
www.SPICE.co.uk
http://rand-musing.blogspot.com/2010_07_01_archive.html
and all those ways still apply but now it seems possible that the best way for twitter to become profitable is to divide itself into two separate businesses.
This might seem strange when the history of IT in general and the Internet in particular has been one of endless mergers and acquisitions resulting in gigantic businesses like Microsoft, Google etc but I really think that Twitter may be an exception to this rule and for a number of reasons
Twitter is structurally very different from every other Social Media site around and different in its model to every other website that I can think of in that its website is largely irrelevant. If you scan through your own twitter feed you'll find that the vast majority of posts aren't coming from twitter.com they're emerging from iphones, blackberrys, literally dozens of third party applications, APIs from news providers etc etc etc. In my own (unscientific) stream I would guess that no more than 10% of the content I read on twitter actually originates via twitter.com.
Myself, if I'm watching The Apprentice or Xfactor (under protest in the later case I hasten to add) I'll be reading twitter not on my laptop but on my blackberry and will post comments via that device simply because its easier to use and doesn't burn my lap in the process!
The key conclusion from this is that Twitter(ing) the service is much much more popular than twitter.com the website and so the two can, and should, be considered separately.
If you then start to look at revenue opportunities it becomes clear that some of the existing revenue plans that have emerged within twitter are therefore not likely to produce the expected returns.
Promoted trending topics will only be seen by around 10% of twitter users and therefore could be seen are being worth only 10% of what they would based on twitter user numbers certainly the click-through numbers will be dramatically lower - even less than 10% of expected if the .com site users are the less active portion of the twitter membership.
Any site based advertising will therefore be viewed by a smaller and potentially less active sub set of the whole membership making it much less attractive (or lucrative).
On the other hand in service revenues could be extremely attractive - either paid for insertions (tricky to square with the audience), or pay per view subscriptions (an area I think has lots of legs).
Twitter, the service provider, could also offer its services into closed user groups (either Business to Business or Intra Company) to provide rapid messaging delivery inside a company. This could provide a very interesting revenue stream and earn cash to fund future developments.
Based in this I would expect to see some announcements regarding Twitter's business structure very soon..
Karl Meyer
www.SPICE.co.uk
Wednesday, 3 November 2010
Why Car Manufacturer Websites are rubbish
Having just been through the hell that is buying a new car I feel compelled to vent my frustration at their useless websites.
If you haven't been to one recently then I suggest giving them a go - they are all the same so pick anyone you fancy. But first get a large mug of tea and a few valium ready first.
The biggest gripe is their obsession with using flashy flash animations to do virtually everything. The amount of time spent watching a little circular "loading" icon going round and round and round is just endless. You go on their home page and unlike every other web site around which loads pretty instantly (even on a 500kbit/s 'broadband') they sit there loading endless widgets and slidey animations and active controls for this that and the other. The processing power to advertise a Fiesta must be 20 times that required to launch a shuttle.
And it doesn't end with the home page. Every separate vehicle has its own animation sequence (or three) with revolving cars, zoomy in and out pictures of the interior and the ability to paint each car in any of the colours available. Why this can't be done with a range of static image galleries and some fancy navigation I don't know.
Then once you've done all this you can go to the "configurator" where you can add options to your vehicle and get a price. Now forget tick boxes or radio buttons - this has to be done with custom animations and graphics.
Not to mention huge abuse of the mouse-over function which makes trying to do any of this virtually impossible if your mousepad is a bit oversensitive (as an aside http://www.Royalmail.com is another big villian in the mouseover abuse stakes and as I use that site daily I know!)
I realise that car firms spend millions on fancy brochures and TV ads but trying to replicate these experiences on the Internet simply isn't the way that its done and they need to consider the Internet to be a separate distinctive media.
For any examples of the villany try www.citroen.co.uk www.ford.co.uk as some of the worst of the bunch
Karl Meyer
Associate ww.Spice.co.uk
If you haven't been to one recently then I suggest giving them a go - they are all the same so pick anyone you fancy. But first get a large mug of tea and a few valium ready first.
The biggest gripe is their obsession with using flashy flash animations to do virtually everything. The amount of time spent watching a little circular "loading" icon going round and round and round is just endless. You go on their home page and unlike every other web site around which loads pretty instantly (even on a 500kbit/s 'broadband') they sit there loading endless widgets and slidey animations and active controls for this that and the other. The processing power to advertise a Fiesta must be 20 times that required to launch a shuttle.
And it doesn't end with the home page. Every separate vehicle has its own animation sequence (or three) with revolving cars, zoomy in and out pictures of the interior and the ability to paint each car in any of the colours available. Why this can't be done with a range of static image galleries and some fancy navigation I don't know.
Then once you've done all this you can go to the "configurator" where you can add options to your vehicle and get a price. Now forget tick boxes or radio buttons - this has to be done with custom animations and graphics.
Not to mention huge abuse of the mouse-over function which makes trying to do any of this virtually impossible if your mousepad is a bit oversensitive (as an aside http://www.Royalmail.com is another big villian in the mouseover abuse stakes and as I use that site daily I know!)
I realise that car firms spend millions on fancy brochures and TV ads but trying to replicate these experiences on the Internet simply isn't the way that its done and they need to consider the Internet to be a separate distinctive media.
For any examples of the villany try www.citroen.co.uk www.ford.co.uk as some of the worst of the bunch
Karl Meyer
Associate ww.Spice.co.uk
Thursday, 23 September 2010
Why the Twitter cock-up could be the making of the service
Tuesday's very public exposure of the twittter.com website was seen by some as a demonstration that Twitter isn't really up to running a 'proper' service and an indication that Social Media and Twitter in particular is really not a business ready activity.
However I think that it demonstrates both a lot of the strengths of Twitter and may points everyone in the direction of where Twitter might want to position itself....
The hack on the twitter.com website was really just a demonstration that its possible to drop a very small piece of malware code into even the 140 character limit of twitter messages. Its something that a paranoid security person might have picked up on when examining their site but in reality it simply shows that no single web site can ever be 100% protected against attacks. But most importantly it showed that the vast majority of twitter users who access Twitter via third party PC apps and mobiles were almost totally unaffected by the problem.
People saying that the problem on twitter.com means that twitter and Social Media are dangerous are actually missing the point. Twitter and Twitter.com are effectively two separate things just like email and outlook express are two separate things. Just because outlook express has a problem doesn't mean that email is bad.
The fact that the majority of twitter users weren't affected shows that twitter has grown beyond being a web site and is now a communications service (just like email). Twitter.com has given birth to tweeting and tweeting is (largely) separate from the twitter.com website.
This has two fundamental efffects.
1) It gives Twitter a potential revenue stream to licence the "tweeting" technology to third parties either for public services or (most probably) internal company messaging services
2) It means that any revenue streams twitter hopes to make from its current service need to be planned around the fact that the majority of its users won't be viewing its home page very often and so revenue has to be found inside the twitter stream rather than wrapped around it.
All this makes the new front end to twitter.com simultaneously very important to do properly (to remove these potential security issues) and largely irrelevant (as most people won't be using it!)
However I think that it demonstrates both a lot of the strengths of Twitter and may points everyone in the direction of where Twitter might want to position itself....
The hack on the twitter.com website was really just a demonstration that its possible to drop a very small piece of malware code into even the 140 character limit of twitter messages. Its something that a paranoid security person might have picked up on when examining their site but in reality it simply shows that no single web site can ever be 100% protected against attacks. But most importantly it showed that the vast majority of twitter users who access Twitter via third party PC apps and mobiles were almost totally unaffected by the problem.
People saying that the problem on twitter.com means that twitter and Social Media are dangerous are actually missing the point. Twitter and Twitter.com are effectively two separate things just like email and outlook express are two separate things. Just because outlook express has a problem doesn't mean that email is bad.
The fact that the majority of twitter users weren't affected shows that twitter has grown beyond being a web site and is now a communications service (just like email). Twitter.com has given birth to tweeting and tweeting is (largely) separate from the twitter.com website.
This has two fundamental efffects.
1) It gives Twitter a potential revenue stream to licence the "tweeting" technology to third parties either for public services or (most probably) internal company messaging services
2) It means that any revenue streams twitter hopes to make from its current service need to be planned around the fact that the majority of its users won't be viewing its home page very often and so revenue has to be found inside the twitter stream rather than wrapped around it.
All this makes the new front end to twitter.com simultaneously very important to do properly (to remove these potential security issues) and largely irrelevant (as most people won't be using it!)
Thursday, 26 August 2010
Why Critical Mass is Critical for your Business Website
Imagine a high street shop selling nothing but four inch high fuchsia pink stilettos - hardly a recipe for success (except maybe in Chelsea) but its a problem faced by virtually every start-up website - lack of content.
No matter if your website is selling shoes or motor tools or is an information only website you need a critical mass of content before your site will be attractive. The reason for this is simple - you need to ensure customers stay as long as possible on your site and, more importantly, come back time and time again and the only way to do this is to continually refresh and increase the amount of content on your site. If you're a blogger or video producer people will want to see more of your excellent work but if you only have two or three pieces on show they have no reason to come back for more. Everyone knows the "difficult second album" problem faced by bands (all the good stuff on the first one and only the leftovers on the second) and this problem is worse for on-line content providers.
The problem is even worse for on-line retailers. After a success on EBay selling a couple of lines the shop owner decides to launch their own site only to find very very few customers despite all the SEO and Adwords they can afford to throw at it. In these cases the problem is almost certainly lack of products.
One reason why business owners don't put up enough content (or products) on their site is because they don't think like the customer. You may have been hugely successful selling fishing reels on EBay but try setting up a website with only fishing reels (or 4 inch pink stilettos) and you'll only have a fraction of the success because customers buy in a different way to the way you're trying to sell to them.
If you're into fishing you'll maybe buy a couple of reels a year but you'll buy hooks, weights, line, bait etc etc etc time and time again and you'll have a favourite place to buy these bits. Whilst you're in the the shop buying bait you'll spot a new reel and maybe pick it up (maybe not straight away but eventually) and you'll probably pay £1-£2 over the odds just for the simplicity of buying everything from one place. Unless Reels-R-Us.co.uk are extremely cheap you may never bother going there. Reels-R-Us are failing because they don't have the critical mass of products to make them the go-to place for all fishing accessories (not just reels).
This is why the Bemoths of on-line news content (bbc.co.uk, cnn.com etc) attract such a huge proportion of the on-line viewers - they have the mass and range of content allowing users to browse virtually endlessly.
So how do you build critical mass?
Answer: With great difficulty. The huge web sites are often an offshoot of an established brand and so can easily access large amounts of content and stock whereas a start-up doesn't have the legacy (or cash) to do the same. But what you can do is focus and be targeted in your content. Don't spread yourself too thin in a scattergun approach but equally don't fixate on a single product range. Think of what other things your customers will or might need at the same time when they're buying your core product and try to fill in around those core items. Then, over time, expand carefully into other areas, each time trying to ensure the range of content or products offers your customers the right mix of stuff to retain their interest.
Karl Meyer
Associate www.spice.co.uk
No matter if your website is selling shoes or motor tools or is an information only website you need a critical mass of content before your site will be attractive. The reason for this is simple - you need to ensure customers stay as long as possible on your site and, more importantly, come back time and time again and the only way to do this is to continually refresh and increase the amount of content on your site. If you're a blogger or video producer people will want to see more of your excellent work but if you only have two or three pieces on show they have no reason to come back for more. Everyone knows the "difficult second album" problem faced by bands (all the good stuff on the first one and only the leftovers on the second) and this problem is worse for on-line content providers.
The problem is even worse for on-line retailers. After a success on EBay selling a couple of lines the shop owner decides to launch their own site only to find very very few customers despite all the SEO and Adwords they can afford to throw at it. In these cases the problem is almost certainly lack of products.
One reason why business owners don't put up enough content (or products) on their site is because they don't think like the customer. You may have been hugely successful selling fishing reels on EBay but try setting up a website with only fishing reels (or 4 inch pink stilettos) and you'll only have a fraction of the success because customers buy in a different way to the way you're trying to sell to them.
If you're into fishing you'll maybe buy a couple of reels a year but you'll buy hooks, weights, line, bait etc etc etc time and time again and you'll have a favourite place to buy these bits. Whilst you're in the the shop buying bait you'll spot a new reel and maybe pick it up (maybe not straight away but eventually) and you'll probably pay £1-£2 over the odds just for the simplicity of buying everything from one place. Unless Reels-R-Us.co.uk are extremely cheap you may never bother going there. Reels-R-Us are failing because they don't have the critical mass of products to make them the go-to place for all fishing accessories (not just reels).
This is why the Bemoths of on-line news content (bbc.co.uk, cnn.com etc) attract such a huge proportion of the on-line viewers - they have the mass and range of content allowing users to browse virtually endlessly.
So how do you build critical mass?
Answer: With great difficulty. The huge web sites are often an offshoot of an established brand and so can easily access large amounts of content and stock whereas a start-up doesn't have the legacy (or cash) to do the same. But what you can do is focus and be targeted in your content. Don't spread yourself too thin in a scattergun approach but equally don't fixate on a single product range. Think of what other things your customers will or might need at the same time when they're buying your core product and try to fill in around those core items. Then, over time, expand carefully into other areas, each time trying to ensure the range of content or products offers your customers the right mix of stuff to retain their interest.
Karl Meyer
Associate www.spice.co.uk
Friday, 30 July 2010
Where now for Twitter?
With the latest user numbers being announced for Social Media sites and Facebook reaching 500,000,000 members against twitter's 200,000,000 its interesting to think about where twitter is heading and when (and how) it will start to make money.
With the growth in its user numbers slowing its clear that Twitter is heading towards maturity and will start to have to consider where the money will come from. One aspect of Twitter that makes it very different to its competitors/compatriots is that it is more like a service rather than a site. The majority of its users rarely actually go to www.twitter.com instead using third party applications like tweetdeck or smartphone apps. This makes some of the obvious money making ventures such as sidebar and banner ads irrelevant but does open up a whole range of opportunities.
Essentially there are three ways a service like twitter can make money...
Pay to Post
Twitter has always said that membership will always be free and that it will be free for members to post but words and deeds can always change over time. Though I doubt personal members will ever be charged to join or tweet the same may not always be the case for businesses. This could take two forms... Membership charges where businesses are charged to join and tweet or tweet insertion charges.
The first is fairly simple and non-contentious but unlikely to earn a huge amount of money. The second however could earn huge amounts but would be a very tricky sell.
Businesses could be charged on the basis that their tweets would be inserted into the stream of users say 1 tweet in every 50 in your stream would be an advert. At the most basic level these could be shotgun tweets advertising everything from coffee to burgers but with a bit of clever search engine work it would be possible to envisage context sensitive tweets being inserted into your timeline based on the content and members you follow. Google already do this with your googlemail account by analysing the content of the mail and sticking 'relevant' ads into the sidebar.
Would you object to one tweet in 50 or one in 100 being a 'relevant' advert? - how much would advertisers pay to have their ads viewed? What kind of click through rate would be expected? All these questions (and more) would need to be asked but this I think could be a major earner for Twitter. After all we accept ads on ITV and Channel 4 in return for 'free' programmes. I'm sure google would be interested in being able to get its hands on the content of 200,000,000 timelines and insert tailored ads.
Pay to Read
Why on earth would people pay to read tweets? After all the vast majority of Twitter is pointless noise - surely nothing is worth paying for?
Where this option has legs is the service not site nature of twitter. Most twitter users use their mobile phones to access the service or use it as a background app on their desktop when they should be working and this gives an opportunity for paying to read.
If you're a football fan (of either flavour) or indeed any kind of sports fan. What value would you put on having live score updates in your twitter timeline? £1 a month? Less? More? Travel updates? News streams? Financial Data?
In fact anything which is short, and time sensitive could be seen to have a value and a system where you can subscribe to have this information sent out to you, aggregated via your twitter app (or even a specific app tailored to the data but plugged into the twitter service could have a market. Twitter then becomes a messaging platform for third party data.
Click Through Fees
A lot of tweets (both personal and increasingly business ones) are actually links to extenal data (images or other sites/services) This again is a big difference between Twitter the service and Facebook the site. Facebook is largely a destination site whereas Twitter is more of a portal to other content. Of course where there are external links and external content there is the opportunity to earn click-through/referral fees. Within the 140 character limit there is limited scope to insert the relevant tracking codes but this isn't insurmountable and again could generate significant fees - particularly from business accounts.
The benefit of all these income streams are that they play to Twitters strengths as a messaging platform and are not mutually exclusive.
The next year could be a very interesting and possibly profitable time for Twitter
Karl Meyer
www.spice.co.uk
With the growth in its user numbers slowing its clear that Twitter is heading towards maturity and will start to have to consider where the money will come from. One aspect of Twitter that makes it very different to its competitors/compatriots is that it is more like a service rather than a site. The majority of its users rarely actually go to www.twitter.com instead using third party applications like tweetdeck or smartphone apps. This makes some of the obvious money making ventures such as sidebar and banner ads irrelevant but does open up a whole range of opportunities.
Essentially there are three ways a service like twitter can make money...
- Pay to Post
- Pay to Read
- Clickthrough fees
Pay to Post
Twitter has always said that membership will always be free and that it will be free for members to post but words and deeds can always change over time. Though I doubt personal members will ever be charged to join or tweet the same may not always be the case for businesses. This could take two forms... Membership charges where businesses are charged to join and tweet or tweet insertion charges.
The first is fairly simple and non-contentious but unlikely to earn a huge amount of money. The second however could earn huge amounts but would be a very tricky sell.
Businesses could be charged on the basis that their tweets would be inserted into the stream of users say 1 tweet in every 50 in your stream would be an advert. At the most basic level these could be shotgun tweets advertising everything from coffee to burgers but with a bit of clever search engine work it would be possible to envisage context sensitive tweets being inserted into your timeline based on the content and members you follow. Google already do this with your googlemail account by analysing the content of the mail and sticking 'relevant' ads into the sidebar.
Would you object to one tweet in 50 or one in 100 being a 'relevant' advert? - how much would advertisers pay to have their ads viewed? What kind of click through rate would be expected? All these questions (and more) would need to be asked but this I think could be a major earner for Twitter. After all we accept ads on ITV and Channel 4 in return for 'free' programmes. I'm sure google would be interested in being able to get its hands on the content of 200,000,000 timelines and insert tailored ads.
Pay to Read
Why on earth would people pay to read tweets? After all the vast majority of Twitter is pointless noise - surely nothing is worth paying for?
Where this option has legs is the service not site nature of twitter. Most twitter users use their mobile phones to access the service or use it as a background app on their desktop when they should be working and this gives an opportunity for paying to read.
If you're a football fan (of either flavour) or indeed any kind of sports fan. What value would you put on having live score updates in your twitter timeline? £1 a month? Less? More? Travel updates? News streams? Financial Data?
In fact anything which is short, and time sensitive could be seen to have a value and a system where you can subscribe to have this information sent out to you, aggregated via your twitter app (or even a specific app tailored to the data but plugged into the twitter service could have a market. Twitter then becomes a messaging platform for third party data.
Click Through Fees
A lot of tweets (both personal and increasingly business ones) are actually links to extenal data (images or other sites/services) This again is a big difference between Twitter the service and Facebook the site. Facebook is largely a destination site whereas Twitter is more of a portal to other content. Of course where there are external links and external content there is the opportunity to earn click-through/referral fees. Within the 140 character limit there is limited scope to insert the relevant tracking codes but this isn't insurmountable and again could generate significant fees - particularly from business accounts.
The benefit of all these income streams are that they play to Twitters strengths as a messaging platform and are not mutually exclusive.
The next year could be a very interesting and possibly profitable time for Twitter
Karl Meyer
www.spice.co.uk
Tuesday, 20 July 2010
Sometimes its better to stay silent – Lessons from Gillian McKeith
Now that the twitter storm around Gillian McKeith has died down, it's probably a good time for Social Media experts to reflect on the lessons we can learn from the whole episode.
For fairly obvious reasons, we won't go into detail about the details of all the allegations and counter allegations but in summary this is what happened…
Someone said something about Gillian on Twitter – this was a fairly innocuous phrase said by a private individual with only 50 followers
The person managing the @gillianmckeith account took exception to this and fired off a volley of messages insulting the original poster and accusing a well known journalist of lying. At this point the messages came to wider attention.
Sensing that the @gillianmckeith messages may be seen in an unfortunate light they were not retracted but simply deleted then the account was disowned as not being the official Gillian McKeith account (despite being linked to from "official" websites and Facebook pages) These links were then erased.
In the end a single tweet from a very small twitterer resulted in Gillian McKeith trending behind only Raoul Moat on Twitter for a couple of days and a very large number of influential tweeters railing against her.
Hardly a glittering PR coup.
So what can we learn from this?
Silence can be Golden
Clearly whoever runs the @gillianmckeith account regularly monitors twitter for any mention of Gillian. This makes perfect sense. Any business needs to know what people are saying about their company or their brand. However what doesn't make sense is reacting to every comment.
Firstly reading and responding to every comment would be too time consuming and at best irrelevant or at worst counter-productive. Few people would like to know that major companies are tracking their every step on-line and being cyber-stalked is an uncomfortable experience (hardly likely to make you want to buy from the company stalking you is it?).
If you feel it's necessary to keep track of someone who is regularly talking about you then it may be worth following them just in case they stray from idle chatter into active complaints but be subtle.
When I first started in selling I was told "you have two ears, two eyes and one mouth. Use them in that proportion" and that applies equally for Social Media.
Once anything is published on-line it can't be removed
Twitter has a delete button for any tweets, its handy if you've made a spelling mistake or put a broken link into a tweet but don't for a minute imagine it can magically turn back time on that huge mistake you made. Just like delete on a PC doesn't actually delete anything then deleting a tweet will leave traces of those messages in dozens of places.
After the storm hit, @gillianmckeith first deleted the tweets, then switched to third person writing (to presumably distance @gillianmckeith the account from Gillian McKeith the individual) then tried to delete any linkage between the account and the rest of the company. With the benefit of Google Caching and some sixth form level HTML work all these activities were gleefully tracked and reported on - making the situation worse.
There is a reason it's called "quick and dirty"
The great thing about Twitter and Facebook is the immediacy of the medium. You can comment on (and follow other people's comments on) TV programmes whilst you are watching them – it's like having all your mates on the sofa simultaneously.
But Business Marketing campaigns aren't like that. They may start with a drunken chat around a pub table but before they see the light of day they have a lot of sober, considered planning.
This sober filtering of the drunken brainstorming ensures that all the really daft and possibly illegal stuff is thrown away before the public sees anything (though looking at some campaigns you do often wonder!)
All this reminds me of that wonderful 1970's Green Cross Code – Before Crossing the Road. Stop, Look and Listen. For Social Media this should be
Before Posting a Message. Look, Listen, then Stop (and Think)
Basically when using Social Media to promote your business there is a single maxim to follow…
Don't use Social Media for anything you wouldn't be prepared to print in a newspaper
If you follow that then hopefully your Social Media Marketing campaign won't fall off the rails!
Karl Meyer
Associate, Spice
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Wednesday, 14 July 2010
Social Media - Never mind the quality, feel the quantity?
Social Media Marketing will probably become the buzzwords for 2010 for the majority of advertising agencies and many businesses without a 'social media strategy' will be seen as terribly 'last year' in their thinking. Virtually all fashionable companies are gleefully announcing their entry into the social media scene with varying degrees of commitment and success. So how do you succeed with Social Media?
Certainly Social Media tools like Facebook and Twitter are great ways to make sure you can proactively relate to your customers. They give you the power to tailor your promotions on an hour by hour (or even minute by minute basis) depending on the trends that are emerging from your followers.
Many businesses see this immediacy as an opportunity to contribute (and benefit from) keeping up with the public. However unless it is done well it can backfire horribly.
New Promotion – Old News
If you are going to direct people to your website you need to make sure that not only is the message relevant and up-to-date but also that the content you are linking to is equally relevant and up-to-date.
As part of my job, I have the joy of following lots of business who are trying to use SM as a promotional tool and one of the worst problems I see is businesses who endlessly post exactly the same message and links to the same tired old content on their website.
Promoting your website then delivering the same old (literally) content time after time is not only pointless, it's counterproductive. Your followers rapidly get fed up and ignore your messages. Meaning when you do finally provide new stuff they'll ignore that too!
So the quality of the message is key - if you're going to try to speak to your customers then you need to make sure what you're saying is worth reading.
Identify your Audience
Some businesses seem to focus almost exclusively on the number of followers or friends they can sign up with little thought as to what to do with them. Are 500 genuine followers better than 5000 idle button pushers? The ease of following/friending makes a pure numbers game irrelevant. This is similar to the early arguments in pay per click advertings. Companies solely focused on capturing names with little clue about conversion will focus on to raw number, others who have a little more foresight will of course concentrate on conversion rate. The true test of any marketing is working out how many people actually spend money with you. Until a follower becomes a customer they have little or no value at all.
You also have to recognise what kind of people are following you. Are they existing customers who you are trying to retain or are they new potential customers who you are trying to capture? Just as in traditional marketing each group is different and needs handling differently.
Are you 'talking' to a small clique where jokes about the football or Big Brother would go down well or are you attempting to capture a more generic audience? The intimacy available through Social Media can be a double edged sword so treat your tweets with care. If you're running the campaign for a men's mag then twitpiccing your stag night exploits might work – do the same on the nappy Facebook page and you'll be in trouble!
Quality not Quantity is Key
Social Media in 2010 is rather like email in 1995. Its fashionable, quick, easy and most of all cheap but just like email it can be abused so its essential you moderate the sheer quantity of communications and make sure each one is really worthwhile.
Users of Social Media sites are very savvy and in my experience extremely cynical so don't abuse them or the system. Remember whilst it only takes 10 seconds for a 'friend' to follow you it also only takes 10 seconds to unfollow you.
Never lose sight of the bottom line
As with all marketing, until a customer actually hands over their cash for your product they have very little real value but any Social Media campaign has real costs so make sure your SM is more than just vanity publishing.
Provided your messages are relevant, timely and useful to your audience then Social Media can be a great way to gain and retain customers but doing it badly is a great way to annoy potential customers and in this economic climate annoying customers is never a good idea!
Karl Meyer
Associate Spice.co.uk
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Tuesday, 6 July 2010
What Would Mary Do? Learning on-line lessons from the Queen of Shops
As a small business owner in retail I've been fascinated by the Mary Queen of Shops series on BBC2 and I'm sure many of you have too even if your business (like mine) is 100% on-line
But what can on-line businesses (not just retailers) learn from Mary? Well two common themes seem to run throughout all the programmes (excluding Ms Portas' appalling taste in tights)
- Mess
- Lack of Customer Focus
Mess
Almost all the shops were messy with years of neglect and 'make do and mend' patching up their tired layouts and facilities. This is equally true of huge numbers of websites. How many sites do you visit in January or even April which still have 'Last date for Christmas orders' displayed or comments about bad weather and strikes delaying the post? (I saw one site last month apologising for snow causing delays in deliveries – Snow, in June?)
It's all too easy for a site to drift away from the designers vision with the owner deciding to save money by chucking up their own logos and pictures hacked together in MS Paint. After all why pay £100 for a decent update when I can do it from the comfort of my sofa in front of the footie.
It's always a good idea to take a long hard look at your site every couple of months to make sure its still as fresh and shiny as it was and if necessary get the pros in to have a tidy up and sort out for you.
Lack of Customer Focus
The second problem can afflict all sites all of the time and is the one where Mary really comes into her own and is simply caused by the owner thinking like an owner and not like a buyer.
All sites have customers. It doesn't matter if the site is an on-line store or a free social media site, all people who arrive are customers and the site needs to be set up and arranged to suit them rather than set up for the convenience of the owner.
This means that the simple conventions of navigation, checkouts, searching etc etc have to fall into line with the rest of the world. It's no good shunting the checkout function to the very bottom right corner of the page because its "better for your design vision" if the customer is expecting it in the top right corner where it is on 95% of all sites. It's pointless laying out your products alphabetically because "it makes stock checking easier" if your customer wants them grouped by age range because they're looking for baby toys.
Don't let your vision of how your site should look and be operated cloud the view your customer sees. You use your site daily so you know its foibles and quirks, your customer sees it once and any quirks, foibles or unfriendliness are a recipe for them to get fed up and check out your competitor.
Whenever Mary goes into a business she asks the simple question
"What does the customer want?"
And this is something we should all ask ourselves all the time.
At Spice we have experts not only in developing beautiful design visions but can call upon experts who actually run on-line businesses for a living ensuring that we can make sure that the answer to "What does the customer want?" is "your website".
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Making sure you have content worth promoting – Why Content Management Systems are vital to your business
Social Media tools like Facebook and Twitter are great ways to make sure you can proactively relate to your customers. They give you the power to tailor your promotions on an hour by hour (or even minute by minute basis) depending on the trends that are emerging from your followers.
Many businesses see this immediacy as an opportunity to contribute (and benefit from) keeping up with the public. However unless it is done well it can backfire horribly.
New Promotion – Old News
If you are going to direct people to your website you need to make sure that not only is the message relevant and up-to-date but also that the content you are linking to is equally relevant and up-to-date.
As part of my job, I have the joy of following lots of business who are trying to use SM as a promotional tool and one of the worst problems I see is businesses who endlessly post exactly the same message and links to the same tired old content on their website.
Promoting your website then delivering the same old (literally) content time after time is not only pointless, it's counterproductive. Your followers rapidly get fed up and ignore your messages. Meaning when you do finally provide new stuff they'll ignore that too!
How Content Management is Key
Of course generating new content is much harder than writing on a Facebook wall or posting a tweet. This is why a decent Content Management System (CMS) integrated into your site is virtually essential.
With the new immediacy of the Web it is vital that you can update and refresh your content in hours or even minutes rather than the days or weeks it can take with a 'web team'. CMS will allow you to keep the content fresh whilst removing the burden of layout, style and HTML from your day-to-day work.
This is where SPICE can help. By having both Social Media experts and web professionals in the one team we can deliver a total solution combining SM promotion with the tools to generate engaging new content quickly and easily. Ensuring your content is as good as your promotion which can only benefit your business.
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Friday, 2 July 2010
Integrating Content Management Systems with Social Media
Making sure you have content worth promoting – Why Content Management Systems are vital to your business.
Social Media tools like Facebook and Twitter are great ways to make sure you can proactively relate to your customers. They give you the power to tailor your promotions on an hour by hour (or even minute by minute basis) depending on the trends that are emerging from your followers.
Many businesses see this immediacy as an opportunity to contribute (and benefit from) keeping up with the public. However unless it is done well it can backfire horribly.
New Promotion – Old News
If you are going to direct people to your website you need to make sure that not only is the message relevant and up-to-date but also that the content you are linking to is equally relevant and up-to-date.
As part of my job, I have the joy of following lots of business who are trying to use SM as a promotional tool and one of the worst problems I see is businesses who endlessly post exactly the same message and links to the same tired old content on their website.
Promoting your website then delivering the same old (literally) content time after time is not only pointless, it's counterproductive. Your followers rapidly get fed up and ignore your messages. Meaning when you do finally provide new stuff they'll ignore that too!
How Content Management is Key
Of course generating new content is much harder than writing on a Facebook wall or posting a tweet. This is why a decent Content Management System (CMS) integrated into your site is virtually essential.
With the new immediacy of the Web it is vital that you can update and refresh your content in hours or even minutes rather than the days or weeks it can take with a 'web team'. CMS will allow you to keep the content fresh whilst removing the burden of layout, style and HTML from your day-to-day work.
This is where SPICE can help. By having both Social Media experts and web professionals in the one team we can deliver a total solution combining SM promotion with the tools to generate engaging new content quickly and easily. Ensuring your content is as good as your promotion which can only benefit your business.
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Are Paywalls a step forward to a new dawn or a step backward to isolated content?
Content needs paying for but is a paywall the best solution?
With The Times' paywall coming down today, its an interesting time to see if 'paying for news' will pay for publishers.
At the moment there seem to be two camps...
In the red corner the journalists complaining about the free nature of the Internet which is removing the value (and money) from their profession.
In the blue corner (which seems to be quite a lot bigger) are readers who say - why should I pay someone when I can get news for free?
So in my role as being stuck in the middle here's my pennyworth.
It is very clear that if humans are spending their time and using their skills to produce something then they need to be paid. A journalist cannot pop into Tescos and attempt to pay for the weeks shopping with a list of twitter followers and a few #ff mentions. There needs to be a way of converting these ephemeral things into cold hard cash which means someone (i.e. me and you) are going to have to pay.
Therefore it makes sense for a newspaper which is used to charging for the production of its news in the physical world to want to start charging for news on-line.
We need to find a way to monetise the content of publishers so that they can continue to pay journalists, reporters and their entire empire of staff and so maintain production of this content.
If getting paid is the problem is having a paywall the solution?
The main problem I see is that of understanding what 'news' is. Just as not everything on the Internet is free, not everything in a newspaper is actually news. Equally not a great deal of the 'news' bits of a paper are even written by that newspaper with lots being agency copy, or mildly rehashed copy from other places. In fact a large percentage of actual original copy in a paper isn't really 'news' at all it being columnist material and this is where the paywall arguments become interesting.
Articles written in-house by experts who understand their field provide 'exclusive' content but most of the content of your average paper is available from so many other places I can't see the point in paying for it.
So, if there are only 2-3 unique bits of The Times I want to read today and Mr Murdoch is going to charge £1 then each article is costing me 50p. The fact there are 100's of other bits 'available' is irrelevant. If I don't want them they are worthless.
So, has The Times got it right?
In my view, no. The problem with the paywall system is that it trying to impose the Newspaper model of selling onto the Internet. The Times assumes that people want to buy the whole paper and read it cover to cover – just like they do with their normal daily paper. But on the Internet everyone can be much more picky. If we don't like Robert Peston's view on the economy we can find someone else we prefer. If we don't like A A Gill's reviews we can read someone else's. The Internet gives us the freedom to be promiscuous with our reading habits and The Times' paywall is trying to stop us.
Take for example the interview with
This is a huge waste of money and resources and the current paywall model seems to be trying to translate this waste onto the Internet.
So what is the solution?
I feel what we need is a system allowing us to pay on a per article basis (probably around 10-20p) per article and for us to get a nice monthly bill itemising what we had read and charging us accordingly – A bit like oh, our mobile phone bill!
Papers could then sell individual articles at 10% of the cost of the paper rather than try to sell an entire paper. Given the reduction in manufacturing and distribution costs a consumer reading 2 articles at 10p will probably generate as much profit as the buyer of a whole paper.
The best analogy I can think of would be the 'Now that's what I call music' albums. Why on earth would you pay £9, £10 or even £5 for a 2 CD pack which had 4 tracks you wanted and 34 you couldn't care less about when you can already download the four tracks for 99p each from iTunes and leave the rest of the rubbish alone?
Journalists whose articles were sold in this way would be able to measure (and be measured on) how popular they are and how much they actually contribute to their paper. Maybe a meritocracy amongst journalists will be the result?
The main advantages I could see would be;
1) I can read one article from The Times, one from The Guardian and maybe one or two others for less than a single subscription to any one paper
2) The papers will know which of their contributors are paying their way
3) Contributors can promote their content on blogs, twitter or facebook and actually be helping themselves and their employers to earn a living.
4) If there was a referral system (like adsense or similar) then other sites and blogs would actually have incentives to link to the original content rather than attempt to steal the content and republish it - If you make linking to content profitable then why steal it? Funnily enough this ability to link to content rather than have to duplicate it everywhere was the original point of the web protocols!
5) Just as iTunes has increased the number of tracks sold and the amount spent on music, then a pay per article system may actually increase the amount spent by consumers on news.
What about the poor 'news' team who's content is available anywhere and therefore 'worthless'
Well it does seem strange that any pay-per-read system might actually switch the priorities around. Instead of being news first and columnist padding second this system probably reflects a switch of priorities in supply and demand. There are many ways to find out what the FTSE100 is doing but only one Jeremy Clarkson (thankfully) so the paper that 'owns' him has a commodity that no-one else can replicate. Any paper needs both but instead of the news team subsidising expensive columnists it'll be the expensive columnists who'll be expected to draw readers towards the 'public service' news element.
Will The Times Succeed?
Well I hope not. Not because I don't like Mr Murdoch or because I don't like paying for content but because I think the paywall system is bad in the long term for content payment in general and we need to find a model that best matches the way the Internet user actually uses the Internet.
The paywall systems seem to me to be a step backward towards the old AOL, Compuserve models of private content and if the Internet shows us one thing it is that backwards is rarely the best direction to be heading.
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Friday, 28 May 2010
Paywalls: Good for columnists but bad for news?
With The Times' paywall coming down very soon its an interesting time to see if 'paying for news' will pay for publishers.
At the moment there seem to be two camps...
In the red corner the journalists decrying the free nature of the Internet which is removing the value (and money) from their profession.
In the blue corner (which seems to be quite a lot bigger) are readers who say - why should I pay someone when I can get news for free?
So in my role as being stuck in the middle here's my pennyworth.
The main problem I see is that of understanding what 'news' is. Just as not everything on the Internet is free, not everything in a newspaper is actually news. Equally not a great deal of the 'news' bits of a paper are even written by that newspaper with lots being agency copy, or mildly rehashed copy from other places. In fact a large percentage of original copy in a paper isn't really 'news' at all it being columnist material and this is where the paywall arguments become interesting.
Take for example last week's interview with Lady Ga Ga by Catlin Moran which was in The Times. My wife who is a big fan of both people decided to actually buy the entire paper (£1.50 I think) solely on the basis of this single article. The vast majority of the paper was left unread (and indeed still folded). Had this article been available via some itunesy type system then she would have been happy to spend 99p simply to download this one piece and save a tiny bit of Finnish Forest in the process.
On the other hand the carefully crafted/rehashed content in the rest of the paper was 'worthless' as any news can be read on multiple free sites or, heaven forbid, even on the TV or Radio.
The Times would, I'm sure have been happy to sell this one article and Catlin would have been happy as she could then have directly measured her worth to Mr Murdoch and charged accordingly!
Other columnists who sold articles in this way would be able to measure (and be measured on) how popular they are and how much they actually contribute to their paper. Maybe a meritocracy amongst columnists will be the result?
The best analogy I can think of would be the 'Now that's what I call music' albums. Why on earth would you pay £9, £10 or even £5 for a 2 CD pack which had 4 tracks you wanted and 34 you couldn't care less about when you can already download the four tracks for 99p each from iTunes and leave the rest of the rubbish alone?
So perhaps The Times and other papers might consider configuring, in time, their paywalls to allow people to view and 'download' articles on a pay per view basis. The main advantages I could see would be;
1) I can read one article from The Times, one from The Guardian and maybe one or two others for less than a single subscription to either paper
2) The papers will know which of their contributors are paying their way
3) Contributors can promote their content on blogs, twitter or facebook and actually be helping themselves and their employers to earn a living.
4) If there was a referral system (like adsense or similar) then other sites and blogs would actually have incentives to link to content behind the paywall rather than attempt to steal the content and republish it - If you make linking to content profitable then why steal it?
What about the poor 'news' team who's content is 'worthless'
Well it does seem strange that any pay-per-read system might actually switch the priorities around. Instead of being news first and columnist padding second this system probably reflects a switch of priorities in supply and demand. There are many ways to find out what the FTSE100 is doing but only one Jeremy Clarkson (thankfully) so the paper that 'owns' him has a commodity that no-one else can replicate. Any paper needs both but instead of the news team subsidising expensive columnists it'll be the expensive columnists who'll be expected to draw readers towards the 'public service' news element.
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At the moment there seem to be two camps...
In the red corner the journalists decrying the free nature of the Internet which is removing the value (and money) from their profession.
In the blue corner (which seems to be quite a lot bigger) are readers who say - why should I pay someone when I can get news for free?
So in my role as being stuck in the middle here's my pennyworth.
The main problem I see is that of understanding what 'news' is. Just as not everything on the Internet is free, not everything in a newspaper is actually news. Equally not a great deal of the 'news' bits of a paper are even written by that newspaper with lots being agency copy, or mildly rehashed copy from other places. In fact a large percentage of original copy in a paper isn't really 'news' at all it being columnist material and this is where the paywall arguments become interesting.
Take for example last week's interview with Lady Ga Ga by Catlin Moran which was in The Times. My wife who is a big fan of both people decided to actually buy the entire paper (£1.50 I think) solely on the basis of this single article. The vast majority of the paper was left unread (and indeed still folded). Had this article been available via some itunesy type system then she would have been happy to spend 99p simply to download this one piece and save a tiny bit of Finnish Forest in the process.
On the other hand the carefully crafted/rehashed content in the rest of the paper was 'worthless' as any news can be read on multiple free sites or, heaven forbid, even on the TV or Radio.
The Times would, I'm sure have been happy to sell this one article and Catlin would have been happy as she could then have directly measured her worth to Mr Murdoch and charged accordingly!
Other columnists who sold articles in this way would be able to measure (and be measured on) how popular they are and how much they actually contribute to their paper. Maybe a meritocracy amongst columnists will be the result?
The best analogy I can think of would be the 'Now that's what I call music' albums. Why on earth would you pay £9, £10 or even £5 for a 2 CD pack which had 4 tracks you wanted and 34 you couldn't care less about when you can already download the four tracks for 99p each from iTunes and leave the rest of the rubbish alone?
So perhaps The Times and other papers might consider configuring, in time, their paywalls to allow people to view and 'download' articles on a pay per view basis. The main advantages I could see would be;
1) I can read one article from The Times, one from The Guardian and maybe one or two others for less than a single subscription to either paper
2) The papers will know which of their contributors are paying their way
3) Contributors can promote their content on blogs, twitter or facebook and actually be helping themselves and their employers to earn a living.
4) If there was a referral system (like adsense or similar) then other sites and blogs would actually have incentives to link to content behind the paywall rather than attempt to steal the content and republish it - If you make linking to content profitable then why steal it?
What about the poor 'news' team who's content is 'worthless'
Well it does seem strange that any pay-per-read system might actually switch the priorities around. Instead of being news first and columnist padding second this system probably reflects a switch of priorities in supply and demand. There are many ways to find out what the FTSE100 is doing but only one Jeremy Clarkson (thankfully) so the paper that 'owns' him has a commodity that no-one else can replicate. Any paper needs both but instead of the news team subsidising expensive columnists it'll be the expensive columnists who'll be expected to draw readers towards the 'public service' news element.
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Wednesday, 5 May 2010
Pt 3 - Your own website
So if Ebay is good for clearing junk or selling unbranded cheap stuff and Amazon is a fairly effective way of selling brand name stuff where would your own website fit?
Well quite simply in the niche between those two fields.
Our own personal experience over the past 5-6 years is that a Website is pretty good at selling stuff that simply doesn't fit into those two broad categories for one (or more) of the following reasons...
1) It doesn't actually have barcodes - i.e. is handmade, custom made or made by such small enterprises that they can't afford to go down the barcode registration route. (we sell craft kits made and sold by a 3 person company they have no desire to sell millions of them)
2) It is a very unusual thing in your region - so lots of imported goods would fit here (Polish language DVDs would probably be quite successful on a UK website offering quick UK shipping!)
3) It has a small dedicated following - so the potential customers are able and willing to search out stuff (Manga back issues spring to mind)
4) It isn't too price sensitive - if only 3-4 sellers are selling the item then the sellers not buyers set the price and so price comparision (the Amazon way) is irrelevant.
5) The distributor or manufacturer has actually banned sales via EBay or Amazon - getting more common for high end products.
So if you're thinking of your own website, score your products against the 5 items above. If you score 3 or more then a website is probably the best/only way to go. But first do some research...
Go to google and (thinking like a buyer) type in a search looking for your product. Try not to use part numbers or industry terminology but really use language or words that a first time buyer might try.
If in the first page of results, 5 are for amazon (and actually end up in the right place) then give up and sell on Amazon. If any Amazon/EBay ones end up at the wrong product and/or 5 of the results are for overseas sites or for discussion threads then you have a decent chance of getting good results selling through your website.
So summary
EBay - good for unbranded and or secondhand or clearance lines (we all make mistakes) getting a reputation for cheap tat
Amazon - think of it as a price comparison site rather than a shopping mall and focus on mainstream brands
Own Website - specialist stuff where competion is fairly low or your stuff is so specific no-where else will do.
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Well quite simply in the niche between those two fields.
Our own personal experience over the past 5-6 years is that a Website is pretty good at selling stuff that simply doesn't fit into those two broad categories for one (or more) of the following reasons...
1) It doesn't actually have barcodes - i.e. is handmade, custom made or made by such small enterprises that they can't afford to go down the barcode registration route. (we sell craft kits made and sold by a 3 person company they have no desire to sell millions of them)
2) It is a very unusual thing in your region - so lots of imported goods would fit here (Polish language DVDs would probably be quite successful on a UK website offering quick UK shipping!)
3) It has a small dedicated following - so the potential customers are able and willing to search out stuff (Manga back issues spring to mind)
4) It isn't too price sensitive - if only 3-4 sellers are selling the item then the sellers not buyers set the price and so price comparision (the Amazon way) is irrelevant.
5) The distributor or manufacturer has actually banned sales via EBay or Amazon - getting more common for high end products.
So if you're thinking of your own website, score your products against the 5 items above. If you score 3 or more then a website is probably the best/only way to go. But first do some research...
Go to google and (thinking like a buyer) type in a search looking for your product. Try not to use part numbers or industry terminology but really use language or words that a first time buyer might try.
If in the first page of results, 5 are for amazon (and actually end up in the right place) then give up and sell on Amazon. If any Amazon/EBay ones end up at the wrong product and/or 5 of the results are for overseas sites or for discussion threads then you have a decent chance of getting good results selling through your website.
So summary
EBay - good for unbranded and or secondhand or clearance lines (we all make mistakes) getting a reputation for cheap tat
Amazon - think of it as a price comparison site rather than a shopping mall and focus on mainstream brands
Own Website - specialist stuff where competion is fairly low or your stuff is so specific no-where else will do.
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EBay vs Amazon vs Own Website - Part 2 Amazon
On the face of it the Amazon E Commerce offering for thrid parties doesn't seem to offer sellers very much at all.
Effectively what you are doing is stocking Amazon's shelves with your own goods at your own risk and paying them quite high fees for the privilege. (circa £30 a month plus 10-15% of the sale price).
Certainly its a great way for Amazon to offer a huge range of slow moving lines with absolutely zero risk to themselves and should a seller hit upon a great new product then it wouldn't take a genius to realise that Amazon will quickly find out and start stocking it themselves.
Another downside to the Amazon offering is its reversal of the EBay process of each seller listing products separately. On Amazon, everyone selling the same item (defined by the barcode) is listed as a competing sellers on the same product listing - using the same photo and product details. This has a great advantage for both Amazon (reducing product database issues) and the buyer (they see one product description per product rather than the 100's on EBay) but the big problem for sellers is that the only differentiator between sellers is now the price. This can lead to dutch auctions where competing sellers progressively cut each others throats to be the cheapest (and therefore successful) seller of the product.
So, with all these problems (highish fees, cut-throat pricing, doing Amazon's market research for them) why would anyone sell there?
For some sellers dissolutioned with EBay its pretty much the only place to go. If you are selling brand new, brand name items which are easily available on the highstreet or in lots of on-line stores then your chances of getting high visibility in Google (without paying a fortune in adwords) are pretty close to zero. Google and to a greater extent customer behaviour are working against you and so you need to get your stuff visible somehow.
For a minute think like a buyer. If you are looking for a, say, Barbie townhouse by Mattel you have a few options....
1) You can try EBay- type in a few words on their search engine and get swamped with thousands of options 99% of which are useless or broken or secondhand or for unbranded 'dolls house/townhouse suitable for Barbie' rip-offs (EBay's search system is a byword for completely useless and impossible to use rubbish)
2) You could search in Google and get 105,000 results (most of the first page which are with Amazon anyway) and spend ages looking and comparing or
3) Go to Amazon and find it almost instantly and be able to compare 4-5 sellers straight away on a single page.
After a while customers quickly work out the best thing to do.
Therefore having an Amazon shop isn't really like having a Shop on Amazon. Its more like signing up to an Amazon branded shopping/price comparison site and getting them to do the SEO and adwords campaigns for you.
When you stop thinking of Amazon as a storefront and consider it more to be a comparison site where you are paying a success fee then its system starts to look a little more sensible. (particularly if you are careful and can persuade customers to bypass Amazon the next time)
Certainly its fees begin to compare nicely to a potentially expensive adwords campaign where conversion rates are almost always single digit.
So what is Amazon good for selling?
I would say (based on my experience) that it is great for mass market, mainstream stuff that otherwise would be too expensive to market effectively via adwords. Amazon is starting be become a byword (just like google did) for shopping searches for new items.
So now we know that
EBay is good for unbranded, clearance and secondhand bargains
and
Amazon is good for new, branded mainstream products
Where does a website fit into the pattern?
Well that will be part three
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Effectively what you are doing is stocking Amazon's shelves with your own goods at your own risk and paying them quite high fees for the privilege. (circa £30 a month plus 10-15% of the sale price).
Certainly its a great way for Amazon to offer a huge range of slow moving lines with absolutely zero risk to themselves and should a seller hit upon a great new product then it wouldn't take a genius to realise that Amazon will quickly find out and start stocking it themselves.
Another downside to the Amazon offering is its reversal of the EBay process of each seller listing products separately. On Amazon, everyone selling the same item (defined by the barcode) is listed as a competing sellers on the same product listing - using the same photo and product details. This has a great advantage for both Amazon (reducing product database issues) and the buyer (they see one product description per product rather than the 100's on EBay) but the big problem for sellers is that the only differentiator between sellers is now the price. This can lead to dutch auctions where competing sellers progressively cut each others throats to be the cheapest (and therefore successful) seller of the product.
So, with all these problems (highish fees, cut-throat pricing, doing Amazon's market research for them) why would anyone sell there?
For some sellers dissolutioned with EBay its pretty much the only place to go. If you are selling brand new, brand name items which are easily available on the highstreet or in lots of on-line stores then your chances of getting high visibility in Google (without paying a fortune in adwords) are pretty close to zero. Google and to a greater extent customer behaviour are working against you and so you need to get your stuff visible somehow.
For a minute think like a buyer. If you are looking for a, say, Barbie townhouse by Mattel you have a few options....
1) You can try EBay- type in a few words on their search engine and get swamped with thousands of options 99% of which are useless or broken or secondhand or for unbranded 'dolls house/townhouse suitable for Barbie' rip-offs (EBay's search system is a byword for completely useless and impossible to use rubbish)
2) You could search in Google and get 105,000 results (most of the first page which are with Amazon anyway) and spend ages looking and comparing or
3) Go to Amazon and find it almost instantly and be able to compare 4-5 sellers straight away on a single page.
After a while customers quickly work out the best thing to do.
Therefore having an Amazon shop isn't really like having a Shop on Amazon. Its more like signing up to an Amazon branded shopping/price comparison site and getting them to do the SEO and adwords campaigns for you.
When you stop thinking of Amazon as a storefront and consider it more to be a comparison site where you are paying a success fee then its system starts to look a little more sensible. (particularly if you are careful and can persuade customers to bypass Amazon the next time)
Certainly its fees begin to compare nicely to a potentially expensive adwords campaign where conversion rates are almost always single digit.
So what is Amazon good for selling?
I would say (based on my experience) that it is great for mass market, mainstream stuff that otherwise would be too expensive to market effectively via adwords. Amazon is starting be become a byword (just like google did) for shopping searches for new items.
So now we know that
EBay is good for unbranded, clearance and secondhand bargains
and
Amazon is good for new, branded mainstream products
Where does a website fit into the pattern?
Well that will be part three
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Wednesday, 24 March 2010
Ecommerce Channels, EBay, Amazon and Websites Pt1 - EBay
Well lets restart this blog thing again - I must confess to have been spending too much time on twitter (more on that later) as I prefer the immediacy of the medium to a blog but a blog does allow a more considered (and lengthy) muse.
As an ECommerce seller (www.laughingbear.co.uk) I've spent the past 5-6 years selling on-line and currently sell both on my own website, on EBay and for the past 2 years on Amazon so have been able to get some real world experience of how each channel works for us.
Firstly EBay.
EBay is still the huge elephant in the jungle of ECommerce. Until recently its been populated largely by small business sellers (like us) and private sellers clearing their attics but now with the Outlets moving in it has become a place where big names like Tesco are selling.
EBay has always had a feeling of a bit of a car boot sale with plenty of tat and dodgy 'back of the lorry' stuff but an increasing number of small businesses do use it as a 'proper' sales channel. As a channel it has a lot of pros and cons....
Pros
Sellers trying to sell high end, high street items often find they are swamped by either the outlets or by sellers offering cheap copies.
It would appear from the way EBay is going that it will become the bargain basement of the Internet ECommerce market. Which is fine as long as you know what you're getting into.
In Part 2 Amazon
As an ECommerce seller (www.laughingbear.co.uk) I've spent the past 5-6 years selling on-line and currently sell both on my own website, on EBay and for the past 2 years on Amazon so have been able to get some real world experience of how each channel works for us.
Firstly EBay.
EBay is still the huge elephant in the jungle of ECommerce. Until recently its been populated largely by small business sellers (like us) and private sellers clearing their attics but now with the Outlets moving in it has become a place where big names like Tesco are selling.
EBay has always had a feeling of a bit of a car boot sale with plenty of tat and dodgy 'back of the lorry' stuff but an increasing number of small businesses do use it as a 'proper' sales channel. As a channel it has a lot of pros and cons....
Pros
- It has huge footfall. The number of people using the site is frankly enormous much larger than all but the Amazons of this world could hope for. It is likely that a lot of potential buyers of your products will eventually wander through the EBay portal.
- Its possible to offer a very limited range of products. If you're starting out and only have 1/2 product lines then a dedicated site would be a) expensive and b) look rather empty. On EBay people will largely be looking for a particular product and provided they find yours they won't care if its the only thing you have in stock.
- You need virtually no skills and no upfront investment as EBay take care of all of that for you
Cons
- The huge number of sellers means your products (and prices) will be on show on the same page as your competitors' products. This results in vicious price wars. There will always be some idiot who thinks making 10p profit on a £20 sale is worth doing which of course either trashes your margin or means you make no sales.
- In many categories there are either more crooked sellers than genuine ones or more dodgy buyers than real ones (more on dodgy buyers later). These sellers will either have fake goods or no goods at all and will be trying to rip off as many customers as possible before they get caught. If you're not intending to actually send out any stuff its no skin off your nose to 'sell' at less than cost price meaning these guys can soon swamp parts of EBay and rely on the seemingly endless stream of buyers who think they can get something for nothing. On EBay it seems there are usually 100 born every minute to be victims of these con artist sellers.
- These fake sellers of course then result in all other sellers being tarred with the same brush. The adage that if you're happy you'll tell one person if you're unhappy you'll tell 20 people holds true and the number of stories of buyers being conned into buying concert tickets, mobile phones, cheap laptops etc etc abound.
- Its not only sellers that can be crooks on EBay. Many multi-channel sellers report that parcels to EBay buyers get lost 5-10 times more frequently than parcels from web sites or Amazon. Assuming Royal Mail don't actually identify EBay parcels and just chuck them in a skip its fair to say that there is a small but significant number of buyers who will happily buy stuff on EBay, get the goods then put in an "Item Not Received" (INR) claim with EBay/Paypal and get their money back. The temptation to get free stuff from EBay seems to be high (and in the current climate getting higher)
- EBay tend to create rules for sellers virtually on a whim. This wouldn't be so bad if the rules were consistent and followed a logical train of thought. Many seem to do exactly the opposite of what you would imagine would be sensible. For example there is a lot of fraud on EBay around selling non-existent concert tickets. Previously a seller could sell tickets that he did not have in his hands up to 30 days before he was due to receive them. This resulted in a a lot of cons with the sale of non-existent tickets. However because you can make a paypal claim up to 45 days after the purchase buyers had some chance of getting their money back. Now EBay has increased the time in advance of ownership a seller can sell a ticket to 90 days therefore making it much easier to con a buyer and much harder for them to claim the money back!
- EBay seems to be caught at a crossroads. When it first started it was an on-line carboot sale with mainly private individuals selling to and buying from each other. It now seems to want to be both a car-boot sale (free listings for private sellers) and to attract large sellers (like Tescos). It is finding it hard to be a venue for all the different types of seller and it would appear that at least two different groups inside EBay are trying to develop its seller profile in two different directions at the same time. Confusion for both buyers and sellers!
Sellers trying to sell high end, high street items often find they are swamped by either the outlets or by sellers offering cheap copies.
It would appear from the way EBay is going that it will become the bargain basement of the Internet ECommerce market. Which is fine as long as you know what you're getting into.
In Part 2 Amazon
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