Should you outsource your website conception, creation, development and production?

All startups, and businesses need websites, in this digitally driven marketing world. If you do not invest in a website, there is no reason why your customers, and partners will ever contact you. Whether you are selling products or services, whether you are an offline brand or an online brand, your website is the first destination that customers will go to.

We all know websites are must haves.

Now should you create an in-house department or outsource the project to an expert? To answer that question, ask yourself these first.

What type of a website do you need?

The best place to start answering this is to understand what your core business is. How often will you be updating your website, and what will your needs be for this website? If you are going to create one website once a year with almost zero change in content, and your website is merely a placeholder, then you should be downloading or purchasing a ready template from the numerous well designed website template developers and aggregators like WIX.

Anything else though, and you will seriously need to consider having a dedicated team of experts. If you need to develop and produce a website that attracts traffic, drives engagement on your website, and promotes your brand, then you should be relying on a professional who understands the nuances, and helps you drive the bottom line. If your website is an ecommerce site, a conceptual, and a production mistake might quite literally be criminal. Such a website will need to have a well thought out SEO strategy and much higher degrees of professionalism. Now if you can’t hire people for those jobs – full time – outsourcing to an experienced team will guarantee you top quality and professional service. Which leads me to my next question..

What resources can you commit?

Having an in-house team to conceive, create, and produce a website, requires more than just hiring the right people. There are a multitude of expertise that goes into conceiving, creating, developing, and producing a website. Starting from the strategy, through usability, UX design, creative design, technologies, and eventually to coding. The more professional your website is, the more talent and depth of understanding will be required for the best possible work. You might even, in some extreme cases, need to build your own creative agency and your own studio.

Always be mindful that time is also a resource. To build, and manage a facility like that will require enormous amount of time, dedication, and a relentless effort in managing such highly motivated, creative, and techno geeks under the same roof. Outsourcing to experts like Activeoo means you have a team of experts focused on your website, and only your website; managing it end-to-end, all the year round.

How flexible do you and your website need to be?

Website creation, and development is exploding as a corporate tool as costs come down, and expertise becomes more widely available. But that is a double-edged sword, because it raises the question of just how flexible you and your website need to be and is your website up to that league. Does it need to offer a seamless, unique experience not just on the web but also across all devices? Do you need to create a website that can be displayed on device, no matter what technology you are using or what the technology platform limitations are?

All these need special, varied expertise from a team of dedicated professionals. Digital studios like Activeoo offer such expertise that allows you more flexibility, ease of managing your own businesses, thorough professional service, and yet helps you reap higher economies of scale.

In the end, it comes down to your needs. If you can afford, and need a full-time team of website development experts creating, and managing your corporate or brand or ecommerce website, then it’s time for you to start building them. But if you need more flexibility, and need to focus more on your business goals, outsourcing the project will be the best option.

Slice, dice, abuse, recommend - Open videos is the new treat to enjoy: But beware marketers!

Now this new kid is bound to cause a revolution! The revolution is bound to impact the marketers as well as the users or who consume online platforms voraciously. How that will impact the supply side and the demand side, I will tell you in a bit. Before we deep dive, here’s a peep into what we are talking about.

This new application that is already available on Firefox 3.5 browser allows users to post comments on videos and even use tiny parts of the videos elsewhere on blogs, documents. However the video edit facility is available on a much smaller scale even now on websites like www.hulu.com and http://www.gorillasports.net.au/. But what’s most interesting is that no longer will you have to depend on a video playing format like Flash Video Player to view a video. The Firefox 3.5 browser can play videos on the HTML browser itself, using the HTML file video. Further you can interact with the video using tool available therein. Here is the DEMO (Play it only on Firefox). I must however say here that the video player is not highly robust. I will give that to the fact that it will still go through numerous rounds of enhancements and version modifications.

Now let’s come back to the possible impact that this new tool may have on the supply and the demand side.

It’s certainly a wonderful tool for the users. They move one notch up from mere viral-ing a video or Youtube link to friends to actually commenting on the videos right on the video itself. They can even slice and chop portions of the videos that they do not wish to circulate and may even add videos from other sources, relevant or not relevant to the original video. No more will a user need to use often cumbersome video editing tools (whose usage more often than not is a mystery to most users). The user can now create a video mashup, comment, spread the new produce on the websphere.

All these sound interesting and fun to do. But can you imagine the plight of the marketer.

A marketer may soon find that a new video or a television commercial or a brand speak or a brand launch or a sales event promo may have gone horribly wrong moments after it left the brand managers safe tables and landed on the websphere. And before the brand manager could know or even do anything about the situation, the new reconstructed video about his brand has reached millions. What different does a brand manager do now?

I reckon this would set a new dimension to the world of brand management. Suddenly the scope of brand management will be expanded. Brand manager not only builds the brand and manages it; he now manages the conversations on the brand, interactions and also takes care of the negative publicity and users’ negative comments not just to learn and grow but also builds counter strategies. That is the new scope of the management called brand management, something that needs now to be well brushed up long before the brand manager launches a brand (especially on the web). Sure, Public Relations agency is the brand manager’s best friend now. They work 24x7 all 365 days, hand in hand, more than they did before.

Second – we have already seen an unprecedented upsurge of marketing dollars being pumped-in for online advertising. A recent study on the UK online advertising market speaks for itself - http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/8280557.stm. If predictions are ripe, then soon video advertising or advertising through videos will be norm in advertising and social media forays. Even brand ads on other channels and mass media exposures will be governed by online user generated content ported through television. Hence with this new tool at the hands of the users, it’s imperative that the brand manager is really savvy in understanding the online social media stratosphere and is adept in handing the user requirements thereby not undermining their egos and preferences.

Overall, it’s a wonderful tool in the hands of the users and does a world of good to democratization of the web.

Non conflict, out-of-sector takeover @ $1.8B

A suave move to create a lateral expansion of software development business model to harness key user behavioral parameters and offer a built in service to the market - Yes, I am referring to Adobe’s acquisition of San Jose and Orem based analytics powerhouse Omniture Inc.

Since the announcement of the acquisition over a fortnight ago, there has been a lot of talk on the merits of the buy-out etched at a premium and what could be the real strategy that Adobe may be hatching to counter its competition like Microsoft in the years to come. Sure! Some of these Qs do get answered in WebAnalytics Weblogs posted here http://blog.webanalyticsdemystified.com/weblog/2009/09/thoughts-on-adobe-omniture.html

Yesterday at a networking forum, I was asked a similar Q by the APAC Managing Director of one of world’s top Internet companies. The Q had more to do with Dell, on how the acquisition could impact Dell who has been a client of Omniture for a couple of years now. My answer was as below.

Historically, Dell flourished on sales through the web medium. Today, they spend millions of dollars in integrating their online marketing vehicles via a number of tracking platforms, tagging, ad serving and the works. Further they spend another fortune to understand and dissect user behavior on Dell.com pages with critical emphasis on their store pages across all country markets. Simply put, I see a convergence of the service delivery from the unified entity to Dell. Thereby elimination some of the redundant, arduous and possibly expensive sync ups between ad delivery to actual conversion and to sharper and refined revenue tracking. The possible ability to assign each dollar earned to every dollar or part spent thereby, along with a more consorted understanding of the user behavior will be the pivot for brand and business managers at Dell to make intelligent marketing strategies in the future.

My unflinching support goes out to the two fabulous partners in the making. They are bound to set new rules to the game of superior ROI measurements.

Let’s watch these two partners closely and hope that we have a new world of better tracking of dollars spent and reduce the drain of ill targeted dollars by most brands.

Paid professional content on the web and mobile medium - courtesy Mr. Rupert Murdoch

If Mr. Rupert Murdoch has his way, the vast expanse of FREE news content on the web will soon be available at a price. BBC recently reported his plans and an extract of that story can be read @ http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/8186701.stm.

Let’s investigate the threats and possibilities!

Historically professional content was always been available at a price, irrespective of whether the brand paid for its broadcast or consumers paid to receive them. With the advent of new medium especially the web medium, content broadcast has been democratized and the share of voice is longer limited or localized. Well! We all are aware of that paradigm shift. Today professional content in small fragments of various sizes and shapes are available on the web on multiple locations beyond the control of creators / publishers or even the content aggregators.
They now lie on private pages and domains purely at the mercy of the user to be either exploited in whichever form or let free in pure original shape.

Now if look at the channel of content flow and the multiple hands that a professional content goes through is growing exponentially by the day. So no recipient at any time will ever know the number of twists the content may have undergone before it reached him. Surely, the veracity of a so called virgin professional content is now under big doubt. It’s like playing ‘Chinese Whisper’! There is a hell and heaven difference in the original word spoken and the actual word that the last player gets to hear from his immediate neighbor.

Hence for a revolution of that sort where News Corp’s efforts to bear fruits in terms of charging a fee can work, only if.

- The content is rich, unique, well researched and well presented. Hence it needs to rank high on the index of differentiated content
- Truth always wins over something that is preposterous or blown out of proportion
- It’s extremely necessary to ensure that first layer of subscribers are solid personalities or enterprises who help spread positive word about paid professional content on the web
- Most important is to have a solid knock back strategy to negate repulsions from the intermediary channels and its carriers

Well! Having said that, however there seems to be a strong predisposition towards Mr. Murdoch new strategy and here it is why! UK’s weekly political magazine, The Spectator has already created an iPhone app to download its news at a cost. Read the story @
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/technology/2009/09/the_spectator_app_paying_for_p.html

Google's own Funnel

Google’s Sidewiki has kicked up some storm recently as many users feel that it is a blatant infringement to user privacy. Some feel that the forced deep insight into user behavioral information is unwarranted and that users are caught unawares as the terms and conditions seem to be one sided. Some users feel that Google has mis-sold the product for their advantage.

However the die-hard fans of Google are split between two ends. Those who are addicted to Chrome feet that they are left out as the Chrome version is yet to be launched. While those who are willing to converse (aka Contributors) have been totally enthralled by this new wiki. While for those brands / websites who are not so social media savvy or those who are not so willing to open up their websites to unwarranted comments may feel challenged. They may even turn their backs to Google for some time but will very soon wake up to omnipresence of the wide and deep ‘black hole’ called social media which will eventually gobble them up unless they bide with it.

The push cum penetration strategy however, is a master piece, as far as Google is concerned as this provides them with hitherto unexpected flurry of conversations teeming with pure first hand user preferences and dispositions. This information will go a long way in their efforts to know the web users more and more.

Simultaneously, Google launched something called Google Caffeine. Google Caffeine is touted to be a much more refined and robust search engine with more specific user focused results, optimized, sharper and better. It’s something that all marketers look for when they pledge their money on Google. Surely, it’s another wonderful concept to rake in the Dollars for the Kings of the Search World.

The two new properties from Google seem to meet the demand and supply quite smartly in the customer delivery funnel. Google Sidewiki on the wider side and the Google Caffeine on the narrower side.

Dell India - Take your own path...

We recently launched a SMB website for India called www.takeyourownpath.in where we have tried to showcase some of the successful Indian entrepreneurs who with the help of Dell products have ventured into careers that are considered to be dangerous and futile especially in these trying global economic conditions.

Please visit, comment and contribute at various corners and in social media.

Cheers
Saurav

Mockumentary called Flutter

Here it is! A nano-sized Twitter - new app for micro-blogging! As simple as Twitter with 26 characters almost without using vowels.

Enjoy the mock up video from the stable of SlateV.

This makes Social Media Marketing look so simple and easy. Isn't it?

However do not yet fall for the iPhone application and the spiel on diode enabled mind reading. That might freak you out!

Hold your drink, Ladies and Gentlemen!!

Cheers