Remember the days of Atari and Coleco? You’d buy a game cartridge or a hand held game like Pac Man and play it, no more complicated than that. Since those days Sony among others has taken the next step in creating a new gaming experience for the user, in return for added revenue opportunities.
The internet and onboard memory offer an opportunity to further capitalize on gaming enthusiasts’ desire to answer the question “what if”. Through its PlayStation Store, Sony offers additional outfits for characters; additional cars for your favourite racing game; and if you don’t have the time, skill, or interest in mastering each level of a game it’s no problem because for just $5.99 you can unlock those challenges and play your way through the game.
One popular PS3 game, “Little Big Planet”, which features a character known as “Sackboy” has 106 add-ons available; only a handful of which are free. These add-ons are mostly costumes which your Sackboy can wear and virtual stickers which you can collect. These range from $0.99 – $2.99. The more costly add-ons such as level packs at around $5.99 add extra levels to the game.
Cross promotion of games is pervasive throughout the PlayStation online store. The day ModNation Racers was released, the store offered a $1.99 ModNation Racers costume and stickers add-on pack for Little Big Planet!
Coming from a generation where buying the game cartridge meant that you owned the whole game, I can’t help but feel that this new generation is getting ripped off. But in a way, it’s like being able to find out what happened next after a movie ends and perhaps even write the next chapter.
Sony’s PlayStation systems are an example of what additional revenues can be achieved when you view a product not as an end result, as the beginning of a longer term relationship with its user.
What impression does your website make? Does it imply credibility and quality? Is it up to date?
It amazes me how many small businesses aren’t making their website work for them. I find this particularly true of restaurants. Websites are such an easy way to tell potential customers about your business. If a customer drives by your restaurant or someone recommends it, they will probably want to check out the menu or location by visiting the website, only to fine that it either doesn’t have a website, it’s hard to find, or it isn’t up to date.
Here are some handy tips to help customers find your site, and keep it current.
Seek inspiration from websites that you admire
Take a good look at your website and compare it to others in your industry, or websites you really like. Once you’ve found a few, look at their code to see how they achieved it. To see the code, in MS Explorer click on “view”, “source”. The key here is inspiration not plagiarism. Make your website your own.
Keep true to your brand
What colours and font styles have you chosen for your logo, signage, menus, etc? They should be consistent across all mediums including your website to keep your brand consistent and easily recognized by your customers.
Meta data – a search engine’s best friend
What is metadata? Metadata is data about data. It lets search engines such as Google, Yahoo and Bing understand what your website is about. This is important because not everyone who is interested in your product or service will know your website address. You will want search engines to be able to display your website to those searching for it.
The key pieces of code you want at the top of your website’s home page are as follows, with examples from our website:
Webpage title: The title is more than just metadata, in that it appears at the top of your web page. This should be the name of your website, and the purpose of the page they are on. For example: <title>Economic Insights Consulting Inc.| Pricing Specialists</title>
Keywords: These words are indexed and used by search engines and compared to search criteria entered by users. For example, our keyword meta tag is: <meta content=”Pricing Strategies, Billing Strategies, Strategic Management Consulting, Management Accounting, Health Services Consulting, Canadian, Toronto, Oakville, Ontario, Economics”/>
Description: This is the information provided about the website that is returned to the users. Ours is as follows: <meta content=”Economic Insights Consulting Inc. is a Strategic Management Consultancy located in Oakville Ontario Canada which offers Pricing Strategies and Strategic Management Consulting Solutions.”/>
Let search engines know you exist
Don’t wait for search engine robots to find you, tell them where you’re at! Submit your site to Google and other search engines. After all, you want potential customers to find you, right? Here are the links to the pages that you can submit your web address to. After a few days, the search engine will index your website and your customers will have an easier time finding you.
There are also sites that will do the submission to multiple search engines for you. Just do a search on “submit URL”.
Keep it current
Nothing says out of date like a copyright at the bottom of your website from 1999. Updating this section of code is as simple as changing the year on an annual basis. It is even simpler if you have a php footer file. Click here for code that you’ll never have to revisit.
Resources
Web designers come from both coding and graphic design disciplines. The following resources tell the website development story from both of these perspectives.
Clark, Andy. “Transcending CSS: the fine art of web design”, Berkley: New Riders, 2007.
Castro, Elizabeth. “HTML, XHTML & CSS Sixth Edition”, Berkley: Peach Pit Press, 2007.
Once you have a website, maintenance doesn’t take much time at all, but you do need a few pieces of software.
If tinkering with your website isn’t your cup of tea, by all means hire someone to maintain your site. Now you know a few more ways to ensure your site is working for you.
When the Ontario government hands them lemons, Loblaw will make lemonade.
Loblaw has crunched the numbers and anticipates that they can still come out on top despite the low margins on generic prescription sales resulting from government reforms.
A new strategy
Loblaw announced on May 4th that they will extending their hours and services at most of their 500 in-store pharmacies, and more than double the number of onsite medical clinics to capture customers who are shopping around for a provider that offers the service they seek.
This is thanks to the droves of customers they predict will come their way from smaller non-diversified pharmacies who can no longer make a go of it, and larger players such as Shoppers Drug Mart, who have driven their customers away by cutting their hours and service.
Their strategy assumes that the customer will drop off their prescription at the Loblaw pharmacy and then browse the rest of the store, picking up higher margin items such as health and beauty products, or other grocery items. They are betting that these sales will more than make up for any losses on the prescription side. To minimize costs, Loblaw will be instituting automatic pill counting machines.
At what cost?
This development raises broader questions. If Loblaw is correct it points to a fundamental change in how we as consumers will be able to purchase prescription drugs. We are shifting from a market of many players of different sizes with varying levels of service to a few large players who control the dispensing of drugs in Ontario.
Will oligopolistic behaviour ensue? Will these larger players raise their dispensing fees to increase their margins, and if so will private insurance companies react? Or will they exercise their market power towards the generic drug manufacturers, to get a better price in return for exclusivity?
Health Minister Deb Matthews is reportedly pleased with Loblaw’s plans, but is the Ontario government sacrificing service in the name of cost? What will become of small pharmacies? Or underserviced areas where there is no Shoppers or Loblaw?
Pharmacies of all sizes are fighting back with an aggressive campaign against Liberal MPPs including radio ads, mailings and a website portraying the elimination of professional allowances as “cuts to frontline healthcare”. It will be interesting to see what the public and government response is to such an overtly negative campaign.
One thing is for sure, we will see some innovative pricing strategies resulting from the reforms.
For more background on this issue, see my post “Generic drug manufacturers are the key to solving pharmacy woes”.
Someone’s ears must be burning! Since my last post (Consider exchange rate risk when contemplating foreign investments), RBC announced that it is now offering a US dollar-denominated RRSP account through its online brokerage, RBC Direct Investing, with several other banks looking to do the same. (See the last page of their Spring 2010 Newsletter)
The advantage of these new accounts is that you only need to do the conversion from Canadian to US funds once. Then you can buy and sell US dollar denominated stocks, bonds, etc. without worrying about exchange rate fluctuations, because your US dollars will remain US dollars until you decide to convert them back to Canadian.
RBC will also be offering such opportunities in its Registered Retirement Income Funds (RRIF) and Tax Free Savings Accounts (TSFA) as well.
No word on other currencies being considered for this type of account, but given our proximity and knowledge of the US economy the US is a logical first choice.
For more information on these developments see Rob Carrick’s article “Online brokers lower cost of U.S. stocks in RRSPs.”
0
Back to top