Presented by Anton Mannering of Primary Position at EI emarketing event in Limerick March 2012.

1. Anton Mannering
Help people make money in the internet…
www.primaryposition.com
anton@primaryposition.com
Twitter: @primaryposition
Me on Twitter @antonmannering

2. Investing in your digital future
Understanding web services, assets, marketing and value.

3. What am I buying?
 Services
 Maintenance
 Assets
 Branding
 Lead Generation
 Cost Reduction

4. Biggest challenge:
Understanding vendor Business
Models

5. Babelfish
So you can understand us

6. Opportunity Loss
 In a world of scarce
resource,such as time
and money, resources
invested in a project
involves an opportunity
loss where it cannot be
invested in another
project.

7. Hosting
 Hosting in this context is allowing your web
solution, be it a web site or web application to be
accessible on the internet via a hosting company

8. Web design / Web development
 Web design used to be an
umbrella term for both
 Many Agencies or development
companies may refer to them
separately
 N.B. Some development
companies provide high end
development but no graphic
design

9. Web Application
 Largely this means an application that operates
like a website, not an installed application (for
example Microsoft Word)
 Typically, this requires a user account and is
different from a website but is often accompanied
by one
 May also be an “internal” solution that is available
on the cloud/web for access by disparate teams,
clients or suppliers

10. Application Tiers
 Design or Presentation Layer (The bit you see)
 Graphic Design Impact
 UI and UX
 Business logic and application function (The bit
that does the work)
 Development Platform (Coldfusion, PHP, ASP)
 Database – data storage (The place the info gets
stored)
 MySQL, MS-SQL, Oracle

11. Why, Why not
Enough of the definitions what’s next?

12. Why
 We’re not buying product, we’re buying services
shrink-wrapped as a product
 Support
 Design
 Hosting
 Knowledge
 Technical Know-how
 Experience
 Problem solving

13. Biggest mistake: Acting like a
consumer
 When most companies buy a website, they tend
to act like consumers
 Cannot or will not understand “technical” aspects
 Not interested in challenges presented by decision
forks, just want “solutions”
 Try to make new media concepts fit old world
definitions
 Hold steadfastly onto predetermined ideas and
myths

14. Relationship – for the long term?
 Will you need your web designer after your
website is built?
 Do you need to pick a company who is the
cheapest or one that will still be alive?
 What happens when you’re not adding to their
bottom line?

15. Understanding support
 In product terms, we’re used to the price of
support being built in to the product price
 A small number of incidents to a large bulk of
product sales
 Food: damaged packaging, inconsistent quality,
freshness, pricing not matching labels
 Products: car warranty, recalls, built in safety and
oversight/redundancy
Why service packaged as product idea is important

16. Differentiation between consumer
and commercial approach
 Expect that every eventuality is catered for
 That a roll-back or replacement warranty is
available for lifetime of product: 3/5 years
 That if a design or solution is “not acceptable” or
doesn’t produce desired results, it somehow is
the designers fault solely
 That a customer can simply cancel or re-order a
product until completely satisfied

17. What’s wrong with this thinking?
 It doesn’t match the legal foundation of a contract
law
 Consumer law offers protections that push risk to
supplier. Ignorance is a valid argument!
 Contracts are in place between two businesses –
consumer law doesn’t apply
 Both sides should have an agreement that
describes deliverables and tests for measuring
those

18. What (unrealistic) expectations and
presumptions are in place?
 That the web designer will map out all possible
eventualities – complete “future proofing”.
 That the client is qualified to make a decision
about Design element
 That the client’s emphasis on design will impact
positively on existing/prospective clients

19. What is a web developer often
expected to know
 Graphic Design/Logo Design
 Branding
 Development or Programming languages
 Development Plaftormsand Database Technology
 Internet Marketing (all)
 Future progression of internet technologies,
trends, habits and surprises

20. Pricing Models (Wishful
thinking?)
 Typically fixed Price
 All Inclusive
 Based on
 What will I pay company A
 Did John pay less?
 Could I get it done over there for half?

21. Why do we care?
 If your web developer has put a cost of
development on a solution and based this on the
real cost, where is the cost for support?
 What will keep the business afloat for the next 12-
60 months?

22. What often happens?
 Everything goes well – Great
 But in 80% of our recent client survey (April 2011,
100 people, by a London based company):
 Customer – Vendor Relationship hits a wall
 Customer feels angry: time and money wasted
 Blames Supplier
 Supplier feels conned, wasted effort and opportunity
loss – blames client for lack of understanding

23. What’s the cost?
 Brand and reputation
 Leads
 Opportunity cost – wasting time to market
 Malinvestment of time in developer relationship
 Lost product – complete write off
 Start again

24. Back to basics

25. What are digital assets?
 Domain Value
 Brand and domain link
 Inherits brand value – e.g. Coke.ie
 High demand, single or short words
 Pizza.com, flights.co.uk
 SEO Value
 Consistent, high or valuable traffic generated from a search
engine
 “SEO Goodwill”
 Age, wording, history, investment

26. Website
 Ability to generate enquiries
 Built-in special features or technology
 Brand Ambassador
 Content – User Generated, Blog or insightful
content
 No? Then maybe it has no inherent value

27. Existing User Base
 Forums, Blogs and Chat Rooms
 Clients and Subscribers
 Web App users
 Account management system (acts as a link to
another system – doesn’t provide functionality
directly)

28. Business models
Background to valuing and appreciating internet assets

29. Online Retail
 Ebay
 Amazon
 Next
 Tesco

30. Internet Service
 iTunes
 Blacknight
 Godaddy
 Amazon S3
 Microsoft
 Google Apps

31. Advertising
 Google
 Youtube
 Facebook
 Irish Times
 CNN
 Fortune

32. Affiliate
 Argos Car Rental
 Booking.com
 Expedia

33. Marketing
 Us guys in the room
 PrimaryPosition.com

34. Contribution (Not for Profit)
 Wikipedia
 Many Open Source Coders

35. Anton Mannering
Help people make money in the internet…
www.primaryposition.com
anton@primaryposition.com
Twitter: @primaryposition
Me on Twitter @antonmannering