3 half-assed thoughts on activation, engagement, monetization

(note: this is pretty loose, but thought i'd jot down some stuff anyway.  really have to get a link blog / tumble blog setup for my crappy half-assed ideas.  not that my blog isn't already half-assed, but i digress)

aside from bumming out over Kenya & Pakistan blowing up lately, i've been taking some time off here in Tokyo to visit with my wife's family, catchup with the kids, eating lots of good food, and doing a little reading.  had the pleasure to read 2 books sitting on my shelf awhile, both of which jogged my brain around:

• The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable, by Nassim Nicholas Taleb
• On Intelligence (ref site), by Jeff Hawkins (founder of Palm Computing & Handspring)

the thoughts below aren't about these books per se, altho the books maybe helped bump a few neurons together.  even if my ideas below suck, the books were great, so read them.  well here goes.

1. Activation
2. User Engagement
3. Monetization

Idea 1: getting user activation to happen is important first step… is there a simple way to use “site animation” to get the user to take first step by default, or at least help them move further in that direction?  not exactly talking about a site tour, altho those help.  this is more of a "if the user doesn't do anything, could i animate a click / user action by default, after perhaps 10-15 seconds"?  not really that amazing concept, and i'm sure it's been tried somewhere.  just trying to increase activation.

Idea 2: how could you apply the concept of “viral" to user engagement rather than distribution?  basically trying to increase site usage, either in a particular session or over multiple visits.  maybe this is just optimizing one user action to lead quickly to several others -- perhaps you could each action to lead to 1-3 other actions? maybe this is like applying game design / behaviors to websites (see Amy Jo Kim's amazing preso from Etech 2006, also Raph Koster's Theory of Fun). probably other folks like them who've defined this better, altho i don't think i've seen an explicit framework for this (if others have, please note in the comments).  same ideas applied across sessions = retention, perhaps via periodic or event-driven email marketing reminders.

Idea 3: this is more about monetization than engagement, but if we extend the idea above about “viral” applied to monetization, what would that look like?  possibly something like affiliate marketing?  or cross-sell / up-sell?  concepts would be around driving expanded monetization from previous actions / monetizations.  could be from same user to same user (cross-sell / up-sell, followup purchase offers at a later date), or from one user to another (multi-customer discounts / coupons, affiliate marketing).  i guess this presumes monetization = purchasing, which isn't the case with a lot of advertising-driven sites. again, i'm sure other folks have better frameworks / references here... please link in the comments if you don't mind.

ok, so like i said i don't really have these ideas well defined yet... sorry, need to develop these better for them to make much sense.  again maybe commenters will point me to other better treatises & examples (i hope?).  along with amy & ralph, i'm sure andrew chen or jeremy liew have some good stuff i've missed on these topics.

anyway if none of this makes much sense, go back and buy one of the 2 books i mentioned and enjoy those instead of my wandering mindless craptology.

oh and yeah: akemashita omedeto!  (happy new year :)

Comments

[Sean Tierney]

Dave, on the "viral monetization" idea- MacHeist did a genius promo last holiday season where they sold a suite of various mac software and the subscription unlocked progressively more apps as more people bought into it. They donated some portion of the proceeds to charity and people convinced friends to purchase because it would ultimately unlock the higher tier items for everyone like Textmate (which it ultimately did- i think we figured they did like 250k in sales from that one promo).

this idea reminded me a lot of the Mercata site from back in the day where (through the power of group buying) people would commit at a certain price and the final price would inevitably be lower.

sean