Supernatural Agency: Online business tales

I still don’t own an iPhone but today I’m a lot closer to making the move. I’ll be waiting for the 3G version because with today’s announcement of the Software Development Kit (SDK) and Exchange compatibility iPhone will really be able to benefit from the faster network.

So what does all this mean to a non-techie? It means that Apple just reinvented the way we use the web and devices. Completely reinvented it. They’ve set up a system, with huge incentives (70% revenue share, $100 million VC fund for developers), easy as pie software distribution model, and a very complete kit for building applications fast. That means that the users of iPhones are going to see a flood of cool stuff you can do with the phone including business tools like CRM access, games, VOIP calling capability (free calls on your mobile phone anyone?) and a lot of stuff we can’t even imagine.

The Safari mobile browser has an incredible 70% of all mobile browsing after less than a year of existence and with a fraction of the installed market for mobile browsers. They just blew by the competition because the competition was awful crap. As others have noted, this should kill off .mobi. You simply don’t need it with Safari.

There are a couple of cool new technologies in iPhone that have been underutilized because developers could not access their capabilities without an SDK. These include multi-touch and the accelerator that ‘knows’ which way your phone is oriented. It turns out that this accelerator is a 3D sensor so it can be used as a controller for games and other applications. We’re going to see some wild stuff being developed that uses this. I’m imagining people walking down the street making Wii-like moves with their iPhones or being able to ‘aim’ their iPhone at an ad or building and receive info wirelessly based on geotargeting and motion detection. Multi-touch is a new interface that developers have had a year to think about and now they can get in there and make stuff that uses this UI.

But the big news is Exchange compatibility and a leap past RIM/Blackberry’s server-based sync mode. Corporate IT types now have no reason to object to their people using iPhone in their corporate networks and they may, in fact, have good new reasons for wanting them to. As any Crackberry user knows, you are dependent on RIM’s server farms in Canada to be up and running. If they go down, you go down. Microsoft and Apple worked together (!) to create a system that doesn’t require messaging to go through a dedicated central server which should greatly cut down on downtime while increasing speed.

The other corporate plus with the iPhone is that this thing is a major productivity tool that is just going to get cooler and cooler and more and more powerful as new apps start appearing almost daily.

Finally, anyone with programming skills, an idea and $99 can now start an iPhone software company. The 99 bucks gets you into the Apple AppsStore which automatically gives you a global distribution channel directly targeted at every iPhone user on the planet. And Apple deals with the money, takes a fair 30% cut and you get the rest which, because it’s software, is pure profit. You better believe that a lot of sixteen year-old geniuses are already writing code as I write these words.

Apple is amazingly adept at designing whole systems. The announcements today covered practically every concern the rumor mills were generating in the past few weeks. They will even allow developers of free applications to use the AppStore without incurring any charges. The brilliant thing about this is that there is no reason not to use their channel unless you are doing something underhanded or dirty (they won’t allow porn applications, however the porn business will simply optimise their websites for iPhone content delivery). Like iTunes, which will soon be the largest distributor of music in the US, AppStore will be the conduit that makes owning an iPhone as necessary as owning an iPod a few years ago.

One more thing, then I’ll stop. The same functionality is going to be available for the iPod Touch which is basically an iPhone without the cellular phone. Those who want to make calls without paying cell plan bills may have an option with a VOIP enabled Touch…

Cool stuff.

How much would a domainer think a domain like eBuild.com is worth? $500,000? A million? As a parked domain it might be valued somewhere in those ranges. And if you owned it, as a domainer, you’d probably be pretty happy with that valuation. But what if I told you that its real value is more like $220 million?

Think I’m crazy? Well, what if I told you that, as a comprehensively developed site, it brings in $22 million in annual revenues off of 300,000 unique visitors monthly? Does 10x revenues sound unreasonable?

That revenue number and visitor count are real. The site is a comprehensive source for builders to learn about and source materials and fixtures. So, one more question: Let’s say you invest 2 million into building out a site like this. Say ten full time people working two years and a pretty good PR and PPC budget for promotion. Wouldn’t $22 million in revenues and a big valuation be worth that investment?

Or would you rather sell it for $500,000?

The future of domain valuation is not in type-in, parked, PPC sites, IMHO. It’s development because the stakes, long term, are much higher. This is where the big money is going to go.

If you have sites out there on your domains and you haven’t been adding  Google Site Map code to them now would be the time to do this as the three major search engines have now standardized on this method of adding your site to the index queue.

Here’s a good explanation of how the Site Map protocol works.

There is a big shift in web design going on and it is changing the way I think about web architecture. I was in a client meeting last week discussing the messaging of a  site redesign that covers several product categories, a number of vertical markets and multiple languages. The challenge is that a searcher entering this site is likely to only be interested in one of the options. The client is a language services company. A searcher may be interested in technical document translation for biotech in Mandarin and French. If they come to the site’s Home page seeking this information they are going to have problems because you can’t offer all these options on one page without creating confusion and the resulting likelihood that you will lose them. Or can you?

What happened in the meeting was interesting. Rick, my client, is a good web designer who understands these issues. He put a graphic up on the screen that he had built to help him sort out the way to organize his Home page. It was a Site Map. No marketing message, just a treed outline of the site done in text. It was not his intent that this would be his Home page but as we discussed it, it made real sense to reconsider the whole concept of Home pages- why not use a Site Map as your Home page content?

For the visitor the benefit is obvious: A simple, easy to read guide to the entire site. Just skim and click to get your answer. For the company the benefits are huge: At one glance you see the range of services and experience and you capture the visitor’s attention by making it dead simple to navigate to the exact info they need. No confusion, super usable, great from a SEO point of view.

The next level is where it gets interesting. Each page linked to from this Site Map is now a Home page for that subject matter, the top level of a microsite devoted to Translation> Biotech> Technical Docs> Language Choices. This would be built on a database that pulled the information from each ‘bucket’ into a page customized for the visitor. If it wasn’t exactly what they want they can get back to the Site Map with a single click.

This model, if constructed properly, would be extremely search friendly both for organic and PPC. It changes the static corporate web site into a dynamic information source (with lots of call-to-action sales built in). But what about branding you say?

Who cares? The top level domain has the brand (if it doesn’t then that domain and the brand need to be resolved now). The visitor isn’t seeking a brand experience, they are seeking a specific solution as evidenced by their search terminology. I’d also argue that the breadth shown on the site map is a brand-reinforcing message in itself. As a user I like the direct approach that skips the marketing message on the Home page which is all too often a distraction rather than an enticement.

I’m going to be having a serious discussion with my designer this week about our impending redesign of our corporate site. I think killing the home page in favor of the user might be a very good idea.