| Introduction:
Go Content: e-commerce for web publishers
This document
examines a new and growing global market: the sale of digital products
and services on the World Wide Web and outlines Go Content, a new
application available from Go Internet.
About Go
Internet
Go Internet
Ltd. is a LondonEngland-based Company and was established in 1995.
The Go team has developed unique depth of experience building hosting
managing e-commerce applications. Content product suite reflects
best-of-breed approach consistently taken by Internet. Since ours
inceptionwe have built customers high-quality 24x7 web businesses
that traded continue to trade profitably.
provide complete
portfolio services for creation management sites. include:
Intranet consultancy
site application
development
Creative graphic
design
Web site hosting
and management
Domain name
registration, managed email and managed Intranet services
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Selling
Content on the WWW
Why sell
content?
The Web provides
a massive opportunity to owners of high-quality content who want
to sell their products online. But isn't the Web free? Most people
see the Web as a massive archive of free information, and currently
this does represent the majority of available content. Content
of all kinds is given away free for a variety of reasons:
1. Many individuals
publish sites for personal enjoyment, as a hobby. However, most
of these sites offer poor-quality or limited content, and cannot
compete with their commercial equivalents.
2. Currently,
banner advertising funds a lot of free content; the more visitors
a site has, the more advertising revenue it can earn.
3. Some content
is provided free by Internet Access Providers, but only to customers
who use their services. 4. In the current battle for market share,
content and services are given away free, at a loss, to gain customers
for future commercial activity.
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Content
is King
The situation
described above represents the early years of the Web, and is
rapidly changing for the following reasons:
Good content
has value; as access to the Net becomes cheaper and cheaper (in
some places free,) users are more prepared to purchase online content
and services which they consider of value.
Some high-value
content only appeals to a small niche market, and so cannot generate
revenue by banner advertising alone.
There is a
glut of available banner space on the Net.
The value of
banner advertising is falling. Recent surveys have shown that users
are becoming less responsive to banner ads than in the early "novelty"
days.
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Who
sells content and services on the Web?
Content-based
commerce has taken off in a variety of markets, and will impact
new ones very quickly. Some examples of current sites include:
Membership
to sites providing online entertainment (notably the adult and gaming
industry have lead this market early.)
Sites selling
Greetings "E-cards" for delivery by email.
Financial and
business information such market reports and forecasts.
Online share
dealing.
Online Casinos.
Expected
new entrants into the market include:
Music shops
selling digital tracks (and as technology progresses, online sale
of digital movies.)
Government
organisations that are required to provide information on demand.
Many providers
of surveys, reports and studies which are relevant to business or
individuals.
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How
can I sell content?
A web solution
for selling digital products needs a few essential ingredients:
Focus
on the product
Too many
web site developments devote too much effort to solving technical
problems, and as a result the content suffers. Successful publishers
must focus on publishing top-quality site content: that is their
unique offering. Technical architectures that are unreliable,
slow, or force the publisher to compromise their product will
reduce the success of a content-based business.
Good customer
service is essential
The web is
a double-edged sword for businesses; while it opens new, global
markets, it also gives customers more choice. Your competitor
is only a click away! Visitors to a web site are valuable, and
every effort must be made to convert them into customers, and
then repeat customers. Customer service is the cornerstone of
a successful business. A successful web business must:
Know the customers'
behaviour, likes and dislikes.
Automate where
possible. Allow customers to help themselves; for example, by giving
customers access to their account history.
Allow easy
interaction with the customer by web and email. Find their account
details and access all available customer information.
Powerful
Content Management
Writers,
designers, producers, musicians and editors are skilled in creating
the products for sale to customers; too many content creators
are forced to gain technical knowledge of the web in order to
publish their creations. A good software system will allow publishers
to easily add, remove and modify web content without becoming
technical geniuses.
Comprehensive
Management Information
Oncea site
is running and earning revenuemany questions inevitably follow
including: How customers visited/registered/purchased yesterday/last
monthWhat are our most/least popular products? ratio of visitors
to paying customers? proportion credit card payments rejected
by the bank? administrative side web must be able provide rich
answer these support effective business decisions.
Flexible
Product structure
There ways
grant access content. technology different types products in order
sell content most appropriate ways. For example selling downloadable
music may offer any following products:
1. Play track
(or maybe twoor three times) $1.00.
2. 10 tracks
$8.00 3. Purchase one-month particular $5.00.
4. 24-hour
unlimited Rock section $50.00.
5. One-year
$1,000
Immediate
payment processing
Payment processing
is the area where Content Shops differ most from any other shop;
before the user can access Content, they must have paid in advance.
Unlike, for example, a clothing shop, there is no breathing space
before shipment to receive payment; payment must be guaranteed
immediately before the user can gain access to the product.
Most online
payments today are conducted by credit card, so web sites must
be able to clear credit card payments immediately. However, there
are many potential customers who don't own cards, or refuse to
use them online, so alternate methods of payments should also
be supported to maximise revenues.
Powerful marketing
tools
The value
of a web business is in the volume of (good) traffic it can attract.
The relationship of web surfers to revenues is shown in the following
chain:
Surfers (click
a banner ad) --> Visitors (browse the products) --> Potential
customers (purchase) --> Customers (return later) --> Repeat Customers
In many real-life
e-commerce web sites, the ratio of Customers to Casual Surfers
may be as much as 1:5,000. The job of web site marketing has two
basic parts:
1. Maximise
site awareness in the marketplace.
2. Maximise
the ratio of Customers to Visitors.
Achieving
these two goals requires effective tools. The key to success in
goal number 1 above is to make it very easy to recruit and manage
advertisers who have web traffic to sell. The key to goal 2 is
to identify which advertisers are sending "good" traffic, and
rewarding them, while ending contracts with advertisers who send
low-volume or low-quality traffic. The marketing tools should
also support many types of advertisers: Web, Email, Fax/Post,
Magazine, etc.
Security
and fraud-prevention
Ofcourse,
there is an overhead in making content easy to purchase and access;
many Internet-resident fraudsters will seek to gain access without
paying. For example, a site offering paid membership can't stop
users sending passwords to their friends and families, or even
posting such information publicly on the Net.
Content Shops
therefore need methods to ensure that access to content isn't
being abused.
Go Content
delivers!
Go Content,
from Go Internet, meets the requirements in this section. The
following sections explain in more detail how this is achieved.
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Go
Content Feature Overview
Security
Architecture
At the heart
of Go Content is a powerful security system which is purpose built
for selling access to content. The security system introduces
a number of concepts for powerful access management:
Each Content
item is accessed through a Content Security Wrapper (CSW.) Each
CSW decides whether the Content is available to the User before
it allows access.
Each Content
item belongs to a logical grouping called a Content Group (CG.)
CGs allow access privileges to be applied at group level as well
as individual Content level.
Different
modes of access can be applied to a CG or an individual Content:
Read, Publish and Delete.
Access privileges
can be set to automatically expire by creating a Termination object.
Counter Termination objects expire after the User has accessed a
Content or CG a given number of times. Timestamp Termination objects
expire after a given interval of time has elapsed.
Three types
of security can be applied to Content. Private content is owned
by an individual user (an email message is an example of Private
content.) Shared content can be accessed by users if they appear
in its access list (an example is a track on a jukebox application.)
Public content is accessible by anyone, as long as they have access
to its CG.
Security access
can be purchased by the User if there is a Product available to
do so. See the Products section later on for details.
Content
management
Go Content
allows easy, flexible management of web site contents. Content
managers can, provided they have necessary privileges, create,
modify, delete and view content items of all types. Additional
management features include:
A Java content-explorer
Content versioning
Time-based
publishing (e.g. publish a page which will automatically go public
at midnight.)
User registration
and tracking
Go Content
provides site developers a simple mechanism for registering users.
Once a customer has registered (by choosing a username and password
and entering their email address) they can begin purchasing content.
However, it is not essential for users to register before surfing
the site - it is the job of the site designer to decide which
content is accessible to anyone, which content requires registration,
and which content must be purchased. Upon registration, each user
is created an account that will track any financial transactions
for that user.
Accounting
Each user
can view the transactions made on their account via their account
statement. There are various types of entries in a user's accounts,
primarily:
Credits, which
are usually created by the user with a credit card or other form
of payment.
Purchases,
which debit the user's account.
Accounts
support three different currencies which can be configured differently
on each site. The currencies are as follows:
1. The Public
currency; this is the currency used to quote pricing on the web
site. This is usually dollars, given the high proportion of US
surfers on the Net. It has been noted that prices quoted in dollars
will increase the chance of a sale compared to other currencies.
2. The Bank
currency; this currency is the one which is actually used to bank
income. For example, for a UK site, this would be in Pounds, even
if the public currency is in dollars.
3. The Internal
currency; This is used for purchasing products within the site.
A third currency exists to allow the creation of new currencies
- for example "Credits". This mechanism allows a sliding scale
of exchange rates; so that $5 may buy 5 credits, whereas $10 may
buy 12 credits.
Products
Go Content
products provide a bridge between the Accounts system and the
Security system. When a user purchases a product, the following
actions take place:
1. The user's
account is checked for enough credit (if not enough, they can
be asked to credit their account using their credit card or some
other method.)
2. The account
is debited by the value of the product (products are priced using
the Internal currency.)
3. The access
rights associated with the product are granted to the user.
All of these
actions are taken immediately, so that the user gains instant
access to the resource they are after.
To support
various business models, there are several types of products available
to the site designer:
Content Products
allow the user to purchase individual access to items of Content.
This allows each user to build their own collection or "Album" of
Content items.
Membership
Products allow the user to join a group which may have access to
various Content Groups. For example a site may have two Membership
products, Standard and VIP, which allow different levels of site
access.
Renewal Products
are based on Membership Products, and allow the user to be regularly
billed for membership until they choose to cancel.
Trial Membership
Products allow cheap or free access for a limited period, and are
automatically followed by a regular Membership product, unless the
user cancels their trial.
Traffic
Management
No web business
is successful without visitors. Go Content's unique traffic management
model makes it easy to recruit, monitor and reward promoters.
The facilities available include:
Allow promoters
to sign-up online, automatically. Promoters can then send traffic
to the site and watch their visitor statistics change in real time.
Sign up "promotion
managers" and allow them to sign up promoters (and be rewarded for
doing so.) Promotion managers can access real-time visitor statistics
for all of their promoters.
The site traffic
manager can view current and historical statistics for all promoters
and promotion managers.
Promoters can
be measured and rewarded in three ways: 1) based on the number of
visitors, 2) based on the number of registrations, 3) based on a
percentage of sales.
A cost/benefit
analysis can be produced for each promoter; poor performers can
be removed, while good performers can be rewarded.
A regular payment
report shows how much money is owed to each promoter and promotion
manager.
Anti-fraud
Measures
Go Content
includes industry-leading protection against potential frauds
which can be carried out on the Net. This includes:
Use of fake
credit cards
Piracy by transfer
of usernames and passwords from the customer to other Internet users
Faked traffic
from advertisers
Web-based
Administration
Go Content
is managed online, so that a Go Content site can be run as a distributed
business. Many functions are available including:
Customer search
engine and support functions
Content management
operations (search, publish, delete, view security, and others)
Promoter management
functions
Financial reports
and statistics
Extensible
Content Architecture
Go Content
currently support three broad forms of content:
1. Textual
content - files of text including HTML, plain text, etc.
2. Binary
content - any non-textual file (e.g. sounds, images, videos)
3. SilverStream
pages - active, Java-based pages developed within the SilverStream
programming environment
The Content
architecture of Go Content is uniquely extensible. Java programmers
can add new, rich content types to support the most complex types
of content. For example, for a music application, a content type
might be created which returns a sound file in low, medium or
high-quality formats by processing the sound file in real-time.
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