Source: Feedicons.com/Starting with blogs and dynamic websites to consumer focused video products, online content has evolved considerably over the past few years. Along the way, companies have developed technologies to deliver this content in a variety of different ways to the end user. However, are these technologies too complex? And, is that one reason why there is limited subscription based premium content on the web? In this post, we’ll take a look at various delivery technologies to determine their challenges and effectiveness.
- RSS: RSS has been around for a long time and is a core component of every frequently published site. This allows users to sign-up to a particular feed and as the site is updated, new information is delivered via a feed reader. However, feed readers are not intuitive. In fact, a large number of people don’t know how to use feed readers and go directly to various sites, a process which is highly inefficient. So, how can this be resolved? Every consumer oriented site that publishes a feed needs to have a ‘What is RSS?‘ button on their page, which then points to video tutorial. If RSS was to be adopted by consumers, delivering premium subscription based content would become easier.
- Podcasts: Similar to RSS, many people don’t know what podcasts are and how to subscribe to podcasts. Some people loosely associate podcasts with owning an iPod, when that is not the case. Any site that publishes a podcast, needs to clearly define the term podcast and provide a detailed walk-through process.
- Email: For publishers that utilize Feedburner, it provides a great solution of emailing people regarding new posts. This works well for podcasts and for dynamically updated sites. However, given that a large portion of the interactive web focuses on communication, email communication becomes a one way street. The publisher becomes the broadcaster and the email recipient becomes a reader/viewer. How can this be solved? Having instructions in the email for viewers to contribute to the comments. Many sites lack a call-to-action. Lack of engagement today could mean lack of success.
- Web: There are too many video formats for the general consumer. While a large number of sites have standardized with Flash, Microsoft and Apple are still driving forward with their respective technologies. There should be one standard, which is updated, at most, once per year. Not only are the frequently published updates un-necessary, but they provide little value to the consumer. Furthermore, downloading multiple updates from Adobe, Microsoft, and Apple is not a pleasant task.
- Mobile: In terms of multimedia, every mobile device has different requirements. As with web publishing, there should be one format. Having X number of formats for Y devices is a problem. Content on the mobile web is not big enough yet, but as the number of people transition from standard phones to PDA type devices, this will become an issue. Before it reaches that point, it’s important to define a mobile standard.
While choice is good, many of the problems have generated not because of complex technology, but because of too many options and too few explanations. As content on the web continues to increase, it’s essential to provide users with educational content regarding how to use these technologies.
