[Seaside] RSS and Seaside

[Jim Benson]

Nevin,

There are a couple of points here. First, the RSS movement is real ; ignore it at your own peril. 

If you look at where RSS started in the web log world you see how that mechanism fits in that domain. I'm sure you've also noticed how different organizations are adapting it to their model, e.g. Yahoo. You've also correctly noted how driving the traffic directly to your site can be circumvented.  There are a different ways and strategies to deal with this. 

One view is to look at it as a marketing tool, a direct connection to your customers. So from that perspective, a lot of companies are using RSS / weblog / newsletter types of things as guerrilla marketing; write up a blurb every day or two for distribution to the market. This gives the customer a feeling that they're "inside" of the company or product, a sense of community if you will with a direct conduit to the company.

 I'll point out that once someone has signed up for your RSS feed, you've already captured them. It's probably not necessary to drive them to the site everytime you make an announcement, you're preaching to the choir as it were. At the same time, you may want to give the customers reason to go to the web site. You can do this in several ways, one strategy of which is to place teasers in your RSS announcements that you broadcast. This basically consists of just a simple title plus a small blurb with a pointer to your website. For example: "We have a new brunette hair doll out, check it out at: http://www.bountifulbaby.com/pastwork/Casey.jpg or some such. The link would take you to a detailed description of the product.

It's not an either/or type of situation, you can give your customers glimpses of what is on your website from your RSS feed and invite them to visit if they are interested. It's can be like a newspaper headline, something to grab your attention so that you read further. Or you can give them the whole blurb. The RSS feed is independent from the content of the website.  For example, a lot of wikis just send out the 'this page has changed' as a headline in a RSS feed, and let the user stumble thru by clicking to bring them to the real content. 

Most of this  depends on what your marketing strategy is for your product. RSS is a tool, appropriately applied it can add value. At the same time, it can be like a stone around your neck with no value. I would suggest that if you're asking the question "is this something I should do?", what you should really be thinking about is "Can this technology generate benefit to my customers, and if so how?". Write down some simple use cases on how someone might use it, examine your customer base to see if they fit the profile of people who use that technology, all the marketing 101 stuff. It's not really a technical issue, it's more of a marketing one.

Jim

  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: Nevin Pratt 
  To: The Squeak Enterprise Aubergines Server - general discussion. 
  Sent: Wednesday, December 24, 2003 10:23 AM
  Subject: Re: [Seaside] RSS and Seaside


  Cees de Groot wrote:



I am using BottomFeeder since a couple of weeks now, and I don't want to
go back. In around a minute, I can scan the updates of a dozen sites;
try that with a browser. I love RSS, and installing BottomFeeder is
really worth a try. 

  
  Yes, but that means you don't visit those sites as often, now.  So, for an ecommerce site, is that a good thing (from the perspective of the site)?

  Of course, at least the RSS aggregator (ala BottomFeeder) has the user visiting at least a portion of the site on a regular basis (they "visit" the RSS feed), and I suppose there are some users where without that, they wouldn't "visit" the site at all.  But is that the norm?  What about "most" users (if there is such a thing)?  Would an RSS feed mean they would visit the site more?  or less?

  I suppose the answer depends a bit on the target marget for the ecommerce site.  But, for Bountiful Baby, I'm starting to have real reservations on whether it would be worth the trouble.  But I'm *very* curious about thoughts that others might have, and I appreciate Cees' comment.

  Nevin


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