Zagat's Feasts on Web 2.0 Success

Zagat's, known for its restaurant guides, has successfully integrated Web 2.0 capabilities into its Zagat.com site--boosting subscriber conversions by 14 percent. The company already had a somewhat successful Web presence, with customers paying to read the company's restaurant reviews (and other entertainment-related information) on the site. But Zagat's figured that offering site visitors some free content (that they could obtain from other sites anyway) would help draw them to the paid offerings. It worked.

Zagat's VP of marketing, John Boris, recently shared details of the initiative with MarketingSherpa (www.marketingsherpa.com). Through surveys with existing subscribers, Zagat's determined that it would offer four free features: individual member reviews, member discussions, photographs of establishments and copies of restaurant menus. While these features were developed, Zagat's launched a Web marketing campaign to tout new site features. Visitors had to provide basic contact and demographic information in exchange for a user name and password.

The new community-based features have yielded Zagats.com more free users and more new subscribers. There has been a 45 percent rise in unique users and user sessions and a 20 increase in page views.

If traditional publishers think that the Web 2.0 revolution isn’t for them, they need to think again. Zagat's has shown that even one of the most traditional brand names in publishing can utilize the latest Web technology and generate traffic and revenues in the process. Connecting with customers has always been a challenge for companies; the Internet has gradually reduced the gap.

Many publishers were slow to embrace the Web; they shouldn’t delay this latest technological offering. Web 2.0 has taken customer communication to a new level--this is the best platform of personalization we’ve seen. Publishers who embrace it will undoubtedly build a strong bond with their customers--and it goes beyond just selling more subscriptions at the moment. By continuously gaining insights from customers, publishers will more easily (and accurately) learn what products and services they need to launch in the future to ensure long-lasting customer relationships.

Booking Commerce Opportunities

Bowker and book and music retailer Borders Group last week announced that Borders has extended an agreement to license the Global Books in Print database. The database will become the backbone of information in the bibliographic systems at Borders corporate offices as well as customer computer information kiosks located in Borders stores.

Borders customers looking for specific titles will benefit from the ability to access bibliographic details on more than 14 million books organized according to 30 key search criteria. The agreement between the two companies also gives Borders access to Bowker’s "Publisher Authority" database, which includes company and contact information for more than 200,000 publishers around the globe, and other data modules (containing comprehensive descriptions of books, audiobooks and videos.)

Database publishers can learn a lot from this alliance: it's the perfect example of the powerful combination of information and commerce. Publishers that have good quality databases in their stable really do have endless opportunities to generate revenue. They just need to continue looking past the image of the traditional customer and seriously consider these larger corporate partnerships. Retail organizations such as Borders are always seeking ways in which to improve the entire customer experience and increase sales. (Obviously, this latest alliance is designed, in part, to help Borders sell more books.) Publishers need to understand they could be sitting on a real goldmine; that their databases could be a strong revenue generator for organizations in their segment. They need to seek out partnerships similar to this Bowker-Borders one and stake a claim in that revenue too.

A Taxing Acquisition

Business and professional publishing giant The Thomson Corp. observed tax season this month with its acquisition of CrossBorder Solutions, a tax software company. CrossBorder, which has operations in New York and London, will be integrated into the Thomson Tax & Accounting unit. Thomson officials said the deal will enable the company to expand its presence in the tax provisions market and move into the transfer pricing/tax market.

CrossBorder Solutions is known in its industry for products that enable transfer pricing documentation and FAS 109 compliance. Its customer base includes multinational, publicly-traded organizations in the U.S. and Europe.

Thomson is always on the look-out for acquisitions that will enable the publishing powerhouse to bolster the offerings it provides to current customers and yield a new customer base in the process. This deal is no different. While Thomson certainly isn't afraid to build (over the years, they have launched several innovative products in this market as well as others in which they compete). But they are also not against buying in order to increase their market share. Thomson’s main goal is to provide customers with the best products in the marketplace and the company has always done what's necessary to accomplish that. Look for more acquisitions, both large and small, this year as a result.

Dude, Make Some New Friends

Topix.net, a specialized search engine for news, made news itself this week, announcing it had acquired the domain name topix.com for a hefty $1 million. Why a company that has branded itself around a domain name it does own suddenly feels compelled to spend big money for a variant domain name is a fascinating topic in its own right, but there's a better angle to this story.

In announcing the purchase of this new domain name, company management publicly fretted to the Wall Street Journal that they were afraid of taking a traffic hit by moving from ".net" to ".com," and suggested that Google (which is the source of 90% of the company’s traffic) should somehow assist companies in the same situation so they would not be penalized in search results rankings. That's not a crazy request in this day and age, but consider Google's remarkable response to this idea: websites shouldn't become overly reliant on traffic from search engines!

How does one even begin to respond to a statement like that, especially since Google is right, provided that your website operates in a parallel universe where people discover websites by ... well, how exactly? Google helpfully provides some ideas, suggesting that sites could, for example, set up user forums, which presumably users would learn about by, well how would they learn about them?

Google has earned itself a $138 billion market capitalization because it was instrumental in helping to make search engines everyone's favored entry point onto the web. Now that everyone is so dependent on search engines for both discovery and navigation, and Google has monetized its leadership position in search six ways from Sunday, guess what? Google's new stance is "dude, you need to make some new friends."

Google wants it both ways. It wants the revenue that comes from operating the biggest toll booth onto the web, but not the responsibility. But the reality is that, because of its dominance, its every move has consequences for other businesses, and they are not all positive consequences. Until Google does the math on this simple equation, I guess our only option is to start getting busy with those new user forums.

InfoCommerce Models of Excellence

We're pleased to announce that Oodle Inc. has been selected for a 2007 InfoCommerce Model of Excellence award.

Labels: google, Infocommerce, oodle, topix, topix.com, topix.net, web traffic

A Healthy Dose of Analytics

New Hope Natural Media, a media resource and information provider for the natural, organic and healthy products industry, has partnered with SPINS (an organization that provides sales data for the natural products industry) to offer SPINS' industry-specific sales data to New Hope customers.

The results of the partnership will take shape quickly. New Hope's magazine, The Natural Foods Merchandiser, will feature a "Trendspotting" page beginning with its March issue that will include analysis from SPINS. SPINS will also provide other content in the magazine going forward and SPINS experts will be featured speakers for the magazine's webinar series.

This partnership will help New Hope form a stronger connection with its magazine readers. As we have all known for years, readers want more than plain content. They want the value-added features. They want the analysis that helps them more effectively use that content -- and they expect publishers to deliver. They realize that data is useless if they don't know what it means. And if publishers don't have the analytics capabilities in-house, they have to seek partners that have proven expertise in their given industry.

Convincing potential partners to collaborate shouldn't be very difficult. The benefits are powerful for them as well. For instance, in the New Hope deal, SPINS will gain a connection to the NFM readers who might not be aware of the firm's capabilities; and it is possible NFM subscribers will seek out the firm's services for a more customized analysis.

At the end of the day, it doesn't matter if publishers have their own analytics team or if they outsource this function. In order to be a full-service information provider, the only source of data customers choose, publishers must make analytics a must-have part of the business.

Labels: analytics, data, Infocommerce, new hope natural media, SPINS