My “work life” and “hobby life” rarely intersect. In fact, they have very little in common. There is one instance that arises, however, where they come crashing together – usually amidst much aggravation, angst and frustration.
If you’ve ever placed an order (or tried to place an order) ‘direct’ with a wargame publisher through its web site, then you have shared that singular moment with me.
Weekdays from 0830 until 1730, I am a humble e-commerce and online marketing consultant. Five years in the business – and four years before that building and running news web sites – has taught me a lot about how to attract and keep both online audiences in general and paying customers in particular.
Is it any wonder, then, that so many game company web sites piss me off?
Wargaming has always been a ‘niche’ market of the publishing industry. Even in their sales heyday of the late 70s and early 80s, wargames struggled to find shelf space in mainstream book and entertainment stores. Old Avalon Hill had some success using the ‘standard’ retail distribution sales model, but the majority of game companies have always needed some form of direct sales to fill in the money-making gaps.
Direct sales, plainly, are more profitable for a publisher. Instead of selling to a distributor at perhaps 50 or 60 percent of retail price, they can sell at full retail direct to the end-user and nearly double their take on every unit sold.
Obviously, there are advantages to the distributor-based sales channel. Product exposure to more eyeballs, for example. But as the niche market for wargames has contracted over the years, many publishers have discovered that retail’s advantages barely (if at all) counter-balance their diminished margins.
Modern-day direct sales, of course, have shifted to the Internet and e-commerce. E-commerce, properly executed, offers so many sales and marketing advantages that I am always frustrated when some or another game company’s web site confronts me with a long list of squandered opportunities.
Certainly, some companies get it ‘right’ – or at least nearly so. GMT Games pioneered the ‘P500′ pre-order concept, so as you might imagine their e-commerce system does a good job of handling advanced orders. Front-to-back their site design is not thoroughly integrated – sections of their site are still stuck in the last decade compared to their more recent home page design – but overall the site largely succeeds. Their site navigation could stand improvement and their script-heavy home page doesn’t help them in the search engines, but the e-commerce elements of the site are probably the best among game publishers.
As a company almost entirely dependent upon direct sales, the small publisher Victory Point Games also rates pretty highly in my opinion. Their site is clean and well-integrated, although I think their content elements could be stronger. I think they’re also missing out on some search engine and marketing opportunities, but that’s a different kettle of fish.
I give Avalanche Press a lot of credit for trying really hard, but their site is hampered by a dated design and – most importantly – its use of what may be one of the clunkiest ‘stock’ e-commerce engines available in Miva Merchant. On the other hand, they obviously understand the value of relevant content. They also do a good job pounding the bandwidth with daily marketing e-mails. Some folks may think the ‘daily’ frequency is a bit much, but a number of e-marketing studies show that programs of daily frequency tend to drive a lot more revenue than weekly or monthly programs, at least when the e-mails contain the proper mix of content and deadline offers. That said, I imagine that the site’s Miva engine causes more than its fair share of administrative lost time – not to mention its exquisite user-side clumsiness.
Pretty much everybody else: Back to basic training. While e-commerce is by no means easy or without some expense and committment, the return on investment – especially in a well-developed niche market – can make it all very much worthwhile.
Most game publishers are fairly small businesses with limited personnel and other resources – but so are most of the customers I work with every day. It’s just plain aggravating for me to watch companies I would love to see thrive instead consistently shoot themselves in the head.
