cute fuzzy bunny
Give me a museum and I'll fill it. (Picasso) Give me a forum ...
I've seen bits and pieces of this over the last few years, but its really hitting me in the head this past week.
Rotten and incomplete data on web sites.
For example: I'm looking for sources for several specific high end pet foods. The web sites for some show no distributors in my area. The web sites for others list a handful in my area.
Here's the problem. In the former case, there are several who do in fact distribute locally, the manufacturer just doesnt have a system for their tiered distributors to put in THEIR retail channels (and their local store locations) on the manufacturers site. In the latter case, many of the listed distributors no longer carry the product, and in one case the retailers address was an empty field with a scorched slab. The weed growth indicates that this distributor stopped distributing anything at least a couple of years ago.
This runs to marketing as well. I found one web site with a half dozen links to favorable stories written about their product; none of the links worked anymore. Another had links to product reviews; half of them didnt work and the other half wanted me to pay a subscription to read their review of the product. Booooo!
The cost to the manufacturer in the first instance was that I wrote them off of my evaluation because it appeared I couldnt buy their products, with a secondary cost of improving their system to fix this. The cost in the second instance is going back and validating and refreshing every piece of information regularly enough to maintain confidence with the average user.
We've all seen web rot; in fact may of the personal ER web sites are full of links that dont work anymore, go to unrelated sites these days, or have documents and spreadsheets for versions of software that were obsolete 5 years ago.
Improving the data detail gives you more fodder that has to be verified and reverified at a cost of time and money.
So...do web presences sock in the cash to identify their products and services, along with availabilities and details down to the local level and then put in the cash to keep that fresh, or do they start withdrawing data to force you back into the yellow pages and retail stores?
I note that some big box outfits like Home Depot dont list everything they sell or let you buy much on their web sites.
As someone who likes to do their investigation work and comparison shopping in their living room, and only get in the car when I already know what I want, where I can get it, and how much I'm willing to pay, the implications of this are disconcerting...
Rotten and incomplete data on web sites.
For example: I'm looking for sources for several specific high end pet foods. The web sites for some show no distributors in my area. The web sites for others list a handful in my area.
Here's the problem. In the former case, there are several who do in fact distribute locally, the manufacturer just doesnt have a system for their tiered distributors to put in THEIR retail channels (and their local store locations) on the manufacturers site. In the latter case, many of the listed distributors no longer carry the product, and in one case the retailers address was an empty field with a scorched slab. The weed growth indicates that this distributor stopped distributing anything at least a couple of years ago.
This runs to marketing as well. I found one web site with a half dozen links to favorable stories written about their product; none of the links worked anymore. Another had links to product reviews; half of them didnt work and the other half wanted me to pay a subscription to read their review of the product. Booooo!
The cost to the manufacturer in the first instance was that I wrote them off of my evaluation because it appeared I couldnt buy their products, with a secondary cost of improving their system to fix this. The cost in the second instance is going back and validating and refreshing every piece of information regularly enough to maintain confidence with the average user.
We've all seen web rot; in fact may of the personal ER web sites are full of links that dont work anymore, go to unrelated sites these days, or have documents and spreadsheets for versions of software that were obsolete 5 years ago.
Improving the data detail gives you more fodder that has to be verified and reverified at a cost of time and money.
So...do web presences sock in the cash to identify their products and services, along with availabilities and details down to the local level and then put in the cash to keep that fresh, or do they start withdrawing data to force you back into the yellow pages and retail stores?
I note that some big box outfits like Home Depot dont list everything they sell or let you buy much on their web sites.
As someone who likes to do their investigation work and comparison shopping in their living room, and only get in the car when I already know what I want, where I can get it, and how much I'm willing to pay, the implications of this are disconcerting...