Need clarification on "No Retailer Links" rule
- Thread starter HinterWelt
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lmpjr007
Explorer
Personally I have to say that I am not a big fan of what your are doing, BUT this is your site and you can do what ever you want to with it.
Now with all this going on, This new "rule" has given me a great marketing/advertising idea for my next Podcast on the RPG Publishing Gauntlet. I think a lot of people will like and use this idea. Thanks.
Now with all this going on, This new "rule" has given me a great marketing/advertising idea for my next Podcast on the RPG Publishing Gauntlet. I think a lot of people will like and use this idea. Thanks.
Steve Conan Trustrum
Explorer
You may want to ask some how their sales have since been doing before speculating how well it's worked out for them so far. You're also forgetting that this change was still done on the industry's largest storefront--THE place to go for RPG PDFs. It's a statistical certainty that the change has caused sales reductions, but it's also likely that it's spread across the various publishers enough this early on to not be affecting anyone too badly. EnWorld doesn't have that benefit.Ghostwind said:
Because it's not a Chicken Little situation. Part of my day job is web usability testing (in other words, checking out the effect of this very thing on customer online purchasing habits) for companies with online services and products. Something that comes up with EVERY such study is the amount of clicks the average online consumer tolerates before saying "this is too much trouble" and moving on. The ideal number of clicks is 3, with each additional click beyond that creating a compounding reduction in the chance of a purchase being made. Amazon.com's sales rose dramatically as soon as it introduced one-click purchasing forthis very reason. That's a fact, and EnWorld users are typically going to be no smarter than any of these other consumers, nor are they any more willing to put up with things that slow down their online purchases (if you keep in mind that the main reason for online purchasing is speed and convenience.) Adding a redirect to the mix creates a minimum of one additional click--that's 33% of the ideal allotment--and doesn't account for design issues on the publisher's side.
That's not speculation.
That's not Chicken little.
That's not a matter of giving EnWorld users too little credit.
That's nearly a decade of hard facts gathered during thousands of studies designed around determining just how far an online customer is willing to put up with a round-about sales process online. Now, I'm not going to put words in any other publisher's mouth, but even losing one or two sales over this because some customers find it too annoying not to have all the relevant information immediately on hand is one or two more than I'd care to loose.
By that logic, Steve, I really should just redirect www.enworld.org to point to www.rpgnow.com. Surely that would be the most convenient thing?
Steve Conan Trustrum
Explorer
If sales was the ONLY purpose, yeah, it actually would be. However, the previous purpose (as was made clear in the rules about posting links) of the forum was a middle ground: news was posted but press releases were also able to contain direct links. Just as making enworld entirely redirect to rpgnow is contrary to a site that suits all members' needs the best (and by "members" I mean the customers as much as the publishers), taking those links away entirely and forcing a publisher-end redirect is equally contrary to those best interests. This is why I proposed the vendor account--I recognize that you have other business interests as well, Morrus, but I also have available years of hard data on what the effects of such policies are. Ignore that or take advantage of it as you like--it's your site--but ignorning it won't change the fact that companies a LOT larger than EnWorld have already learned this lesson the hard way and spent millions researching and developing ways around it (again refering you to Amazon's one-click and the lawsuits that have surrounded protecting that valuable process.)Morrus said:
As you and numerous other people have mentioned earlier - sales, for the publishers, are the only purpose for their presence here. I don't think that's true. If I'm proved wrong, Steve, I'll gladly admit to it.
Because I don't think that's true, I don't think that an extra click before the sale is a big deal. And let's be clear - despite the massive hyperbole in this thread, we are only talking about an extra click. It's only a big deal if publishers are here only to make sales.
What publishers can still do is tell people about their products, and they can send people to their own websites which should have info, news, previews and so forth about their stuff. Again, assuming that they're not only posting here for the sole purpose of making direct sales - if they are, then, well... yes, it's bad news for them.
Umm, excuse me Morrus, but I wonder if, in all the flurry you might have missed a question I asked on page 2 of the thread. It is in regard to pointing to a company website that might also be a store site. Please read my previous post, as it goes into a bit more detail. Thanks!
sjmiller said:
Sorry, I did miss it! The CafePress question? That's fine.
Generally speaking, if you only sell your own products at your website (this goes for everyone), I don't regard you as a retail outlet in this context - I see that as a function which I think every publisher should offer, to be honest, although I recognise the difficulties involved.
If you're selling products from other publishers, though, you're a retail outlet.
Steve Conan Trustrum
Explorer
I've not said it's the ONLY reason--I have said it's a big part of their incentive to hang around here. Without that incentive, what does EnWorld offer them that any number of other sites with comparable memberships don't offer? Making the site only desigend towards sales is an absolute. Only making the site about news is an absolute. What I'm commenting on is the middle ground between those two absolutes that suits customers and publishers alike in both respects. Remove one or the other and the site's usefulness IS diminished and its appeal lessened.Morrus said:
"Massive hyperbole"? I'm afraid not. Among other things, I'm a market research who deals primarily in online studies and other aspects of technical research. Yes, just ONE additional click means hundreds of thousands of dollars in lost revenue to some of our clients. That's why they're willing to spend $35K a pop to research the matter and find out ways to compensate when such additional clicks are absolutely necessary (usually as a matter of a new security process added to online ordering software.) Reducing their purchasing process to a single click has indeed alone earned Amazon tens of millions of dollars and they've also spent millions protecting their patent on it from the competition because it does indeed have that great an effect. This isn't me spouting hyperbole, this is me being able to look at web sites of some of the largest companies in the world and being able to say "hey, I remember the study that helped design that!" and passing what they spent lots of money learning on to you and anyone else reading this thread at no cost, to be taken or forgotten as you will.
The online world is all about instant gratification, or as close as you can get. Granted, the effect is worse for larger companies, but even if you're only losing one in 50 potential sales or even one in a thousand because of that extra click, do the math on how much that can add up to in a year when you consider how many people visit EnWorld every day.
You lose sight of the fact that most publishers were already doing this to begin with--what you're proposing in the above is little different than the links I already have in my signature. It's not like the above is anything new that the publishers don't already have working for them. What IS happening is that the convenience to the customer, not the publisher, is being removed and that will end up hurting the publisher through the round-about. If that is so, I again state that you're reducing the reasons why publishers vest time and energy in EnWorld when they'd be better off leaving token information here and investing themselves in sites that aren't enforcing such policies.What publishers can still do is tell people about their products, and they can send people to their own websites which should have info, news, previews and so forth about their stuff. Again, assuming that they're not only posting here for the sole purpose of making direct sales - if they are, then, well... yes, it's bad news for them.
Out of self-interest, sure I'd rather Misfit Studios not lose those sales, but in the bigger picture I'd rather not inconvenience my customers, which means putting more energy into promoting in places where that is less likely to happen and less energy into EnWorld. I'd be shocked if I'm the only publisher who feels this way, and with good reason.
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DSC-EricPrice
First Post
I for one know I don't come here just to post press releases. I dont have nearly enough to make it even worth doing, and perhaps more importantly, I'm addicted to LazyBones Shackled City storyhour, and to the daily posts of what is going on in the industry. 
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