Tag Archives: web traffic

Agile London at Thomas Cook

Business, Technology, , , , , , , ,
Agile London - worth attending if you work in software development
Agile London – worth attending if you work in software development

This evening I went to the latest Agile London event, hosted at Thomas Cook, at a supremely convenient location about quarter of a mile away from the Endava office.

Our host for the evening was Jesus Fernandez, the Development Manager at Thomas Cook. In a concise introduction he described how Thomas Cook has been consolidation pretty much everything – from its management team to the brands it was selling, to its technology platforms.

Thomas Cook is an £8bn ($13bn) public company which has recently gone through a Digital Transformation programme. Continue reading Agile London at Thomas Cook →

Happy 5th Birthday!

Site review, Trends, ,
A fifth birthday!
A fifth birthday!

It’s true… as you get older, time seems to accelerate. It feels like only a few weeks ago I was writing last year’s Happy Birthday post.

I started this blog because I found myself telling several people the same piece of news and opinion. I took their advice and created this blog.

Last year I said that there had been “a step change in traffic, with pretty much double the level of traffic as two years’ ago”. This year, traffic almost doubled again, with almost 20,000 sessions on the site over the last year.

Continue reading Happy 5th Birthday! →

11 lessons about innovation from the New York Times

Book review, Business, Trends, , , , , , , , , , , ,
The BBC Newsroom. Currently peaceful. And sometimes less peaceful.

Whilst doing some research at work on innovation within the Publishing industry, a colleague of mine found a leaked report from the New York Times from March this year (the full article is at the end of this page).

At 94 pages, it’s a must-read for anyone within Publishing. I took 11 key points from the document:

  1. (page 16) Hallmarks of disruptors… number 4: “Initially inferior to existing products.” This is so true. Almost every time we work on a new innovative project, there will always be someone criticising that product A does things better, or product B is more comprehensive. The answer is twofold – firstly, you can have something more superior, but it will take a lot longer and cost a lost more money; and secondly, it’s part and parcel of developing something new. Remember Twitter’s outages? Remember how basic Facebook looked?
  2. Only a third of NYT readers visit the homepage. Just think of the effort in designing the homepage! Google is great at providing users links directly into articles, and users share articles not homepages. This is the proof. Continue reading 11 lessons about innovation from the New York Times →

Apple & Facebook’s staggering results

Business, , , , , , ,

We keep hearing stories about young people leaving Facebook in their droves. And how consumers are buying Android phones in multiples to Apple. Or how China’s growth is stuttering.

Don’t believe the hype.

Facebook and Apple have released their quarterly results, and both are staggering. Continue reading Apple & Facebook’s staggering results →

The licensing business model

Business, , , ,

This is the eighth part of the monetisation series. We started discussing advertising and marketing monetisation techniques, and now we’ve moved on to other areas. This post deals with licensing.

Licensing is a specialist area and requires a particularly strong brand. In the past I’ve used football teams as good case studies of licensing, but nowadays I use Angry Birds. Continue reading The licensing business model →

The Advertising business model

Business, , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

In today’s Western digital businesses, advertising is the main source of revenue for websites, mobile sites, mobile apps and anything in between:

In the first quarter of 2013, Google advertising revenue was $11.9 bn. Advertising revenue was 92% of Google’s revenues for the quarter.

For the fourth quarter 2012, Facebook’s revenue from advertising was $1.33 billion, representing 84% of total revenue.

Personally, I believe the advertising industry is in a bubble which is ready to burst. It is a semi-self-fulfilling industry that has been growing at a rate out of proportion to the businesses revenue which support it.

Organic revenue growth of the big four advertising companies, 2010-2012
Organic revenue growth of the big four advertising companies, 2010-2012. From Statista

Continue reading The Advertising business model →

The Sponsorship business model

Business, , , ,
LA Lakers digital sponsorship in action: The Hublot watch in the top right is a sponsor, Verizon is a banner ad
LA Lakers digital sponsorship in action: The Hublot watch in the top right is a sponsor and Verizon is a banner ad

This post is the third of a multi-part article on methods to monetise large digital audiences. The sponsorship model can be used for any size audience, and varying levels of content quality – it all depends on the organisations the website is attracting as sponsors.

Sponsorship is essentially a fixed promotion. Whether it’s putting a logo on a section of a website or a Formula 1 mirror, it’s a longer term arrangement than an advert.

Continue reading The Sponsorship business model →

The Freemium business model

Business, , , , , , , , ,
The Freemium business model works for Spotify
The Freemium business model works for Spotify

This post is the second of a multi-part article describing methods to monetise large digital audiences. The freemium model is one of the most modern monetisation methods in the series.

The concept of freemium is to offer a free service, and if users want more content or functionality, they must buy a subscription.

One of the most common freemium products is the music service, Spotify. Users can download Spotify and immediately listen to music. If users want to be able to listen to the music when an Internet connection is unavailable, or they want to listen to ad-free music, they need to pay a monthly subscription.

Continue reading The Freemium business model →

The Content Subscription model

Business, , , , , ,

PaywallThis post is the first of a multi-part article on methods to monetise large digital audiences. The subscription model itself requires high quality content more than a large digital audience.

The digital subscription model is similar to a paper magazine subscription – users periodically pay to keep receiving content, whether it’s daily, monthly or annually. The digital version is often called a paywall.

In order to implement a paywall, the website owner requires a registration mechanism and a payment system. The registration system can range from Facebook Login to a proprietary implementation.

For the payment system, there are systems which can be tailored, to third-party providers such as Apple’s App Store. The issue with the latter, is the commission can be as much as 30% of the value of the subscription. The upside of course, is that the content owner doesn’t need to worry about the billing, the integration is often easier, and the third-party (such as Apple of Google) handles chargebacks and user support.

Continue reading The Content Subscription model →

11 ways to monetise large digital audiences

Business, Site review, , , , , ,
The Mail Online homepage - it's ain't pretty, but it attracts a huge audience
The Mail Online homepage – it ain’t pretty, but it attracts a huge audience

The UK’s Mail Online newspaper website now has 189.5 million monthly unique visitors, that’s two and a half times the population of the UK.

Working on a month of 22 weekdays plus 4 weekends, the Daily Mail sells 52.1 million newspapers, read by 129.4 million people. Whilst it’s difficult to compare those readership figures with the website’s monthly unique visitors, there’s probably the same level of inaccuracy in both figures, which can make them ballpark comparable.

Back to the website for a moment – how can a monthly readership of almost 190 million users be turned into revenue?

Continue reading 11 ways to monetise large digital audiences →