Righty-ho!

Coming soon

Well ............... on the Simpsonsmovie website you can make up your own character. Why don't we each make up a version of well known site members and others have to guess who it is! 

 

Yours looks like jandyt !!!

Optical illusions

 

9 LEE:

Yours looks like jandyt !!!

Well that wasn't much of a competition was it ??? First bloke guesses straight away (or was it my character was too good hmmmmmmmm....)

Seriously - Peter's treasure hunt was very good (for those that could spare the time to devote a whole fornight trolling through the site!). Something similar once in a while would keep things bouncing along nicely (although I do appreciate how much time and effort is involved in setting up such things).

britops:

Optical illusions

 

 

Great link, thanks Richard.

 

Craig 

britops:

Optical illusions

 

  The best one is how my money disappears from in front of my eyes at a B&O shop.

Well, the distinct lack of a deluge of suggestions leans me towards thinking things are ticking along pretty well?

9 LEE:

 when i get back from holiday in a couple of weeks or so.

9 LEE:

Yours looks like jandyt !!!

Hmmmmm.
Guess it's time for a new avatar.

Andy T.

Craig:

9 LEE:

 when i get back from holiday in a couple of weeks or so.

 

 

Going Somewhere nice?

 

Craig 

Oh nooooo................ bet you're in the bin next to us!!

9 LEE:

Craig:

9 LEE:

 when i get back from holiday in a couple of weeks or so.

 

 

Going Somewhere nice?

 

Craig 

Lee,

I am getting the feeling reading between the lines that you are concerned about how the forum is running, in particular there appears to be less people regularly participating on B&O topics with several topics going off the core subject. Added to my feeling is the fact that we still have not reached the 500 target for founder members, so for you, this is a problem in meeting your business plan objectives when deciding on the annual fee to charge etc and the impact on the cost of running the web site and forum.

As I write this post I note that there are 45 guests on-line and 22 members, so why do some of these guests apparently not wish to become members ? Lots of people manage to find the forum without problems and they often want help, just this morning I received two PM's from registered members who had never done any posts to the forum, but still needed help with quite a lot of expensive B&O products, so we must assume it was not a matter of money which is stopping them.

So, if my feelings are correct, what is the answer, well one approach may be to have a monthly schedule of 2 or 3 of what are deemed topics which most people are interested in and want help on. A timetable of times and dates for these discussions is published on the web site and as many people who are interested come on line at that set time. For example you could have a topic scheduled on Tuesday 7th August at 9pm GMT on all aspects of DVB-T and so all those people interested can have a real interactive seesion on this subject, it may be there technical questions, how to use it, the cost vs the benefits etc.

You could also makes these special events open to all registered members, but not guests.

Anyway, as I was sitting here drinking my morning coffee I thought I would put my current thoughts on paper and open it up for you to get others to come up with further suggestions.

I actually took LEE's original post to be somewhat the opposite! I thought he was looking for something to draw in those whose equipment is all running Ticketty Boo and who aren't particularly interested in some of the more detailed, technical posts - something perhaps a little more light-hearted and less "dry" where our less technical members may feel less intimidated to join in, start posting and become more active site members.

An improvement I'd like to see, the real integration of Beotech in the Beoworld web site.

In the Forum, there should be less sections, as it dilutes the threads and everything seems less lively.

p.

Which sections would you lose?

Lee,

A few remarks regarding the possibility of making a profit with the site. 

The web sites that are making a profit on the internet are in the following categories...

1/ Free websites with huge traffic (Yahoo, MySpace).

2/ Web sites selling physical goods (Amazon, Argos)

3/ Web site that sell non physical goods (Software downloads, Porn)

4/ Web sites for which the user pays per act and earns more than the fee (eBay)

5/ Subscription Web sites providing info/service that is not available for free and that can be used to generate a profit (Reuter).

----

Regarding point 1/ Beoworld is never going to have a huge traffic, but concentrate on very specific customers, so for the advertising I recommand you get paid a percentage of the sale generated, rather than a fixed price. 

Regarding point 5/ Usually the paying clients are corporate, not consumers. So this is not a good business model for Beoworld.

----

I therefore suggest you develop the buy/sell section of the web site buy adopting an ebay like principle: User pays per ad.

You think you cannot beat eBay, but one of the problem with eBay when you buy some Beo stuff is that you're never sure you're gonna get the goods. That's were you could try to make the transaction more secure by being the intermediate. Maybe you could offer a service where you receive the good from the seller, check it, and the send it to the buyer, for a fee paid by the buyer.

----

I suggest you also merge Lifestyle and Beoworld, making lifestyle more visible and getting the profit on the additional sale generated. (I know this one might be controversial).

----

In a completely merged site, I would very much like a dual organisation. In addition to the current organisation (per function: product, faq, forum, user ad, lifestyle sale), you could have a Product oriented navigation. Under Beovision7, you get the description, the user manuals, specs, lifestyle av ads, user generated ads, forum threads, news, rumours... 

Philippe

Peter:

Which sections would you lose?

 

The Mac section please!

Oh... I had made a long post, but it looks like it has been lost, maybe is has been seen as spam and will reappear later...

So I am going to make a shorter version...

- The only web sites that survive well on subscription are the professional web sites with corporate clients, and the ones offering porn and dating.

beoworld is not in these category so I suggest a few things:

- Develop advertising, with a fee per generated sale, and no fee to display the add. 

- Make the Buy/Sell section a pay per ad service

- Offer a service to act an intermediate in sales, to make them secure, for a fee paid by the buyer.

Merge Lifestle and Beoworld (and Beotech) to add traffic to Lifestyle and get a profit from additional sales.

Offer a dual navigation, vertical (per function: forum, FAQ, Manuals, News) and horizontal (Per product:  ex: for Beovision 7 link to all the related info: specs, price, tech articles, news, rumours, forum threads, manuals, Lifestyle ads, User ads, ...)

Philippe

I really doubt Lee would merge Lifestyle and BeoWorld. Also, I'd like to remind you that Lee is not looking to make money out of BeoWorld!

Alex:

I really doubt Lee would merge Lifestyle and BeoWorld. Also, I'd like to remind you that Lee is not looking to make money out of BeoWorld!

True, but it would be quite nice if it were self supporting!!

I know we've discussed (while some have positively argued) about the thorny old issue of advertising many times in the past and the consensus was "not if we can help it". If it ever did come to the point of having adverts or no site then I would clearly live with adverts but, and here's the point - could it operate with a combination of adverts and subscription whereby subscribers bypass the vast majority of advertising while non-suscribers are subject to limited (and relevant) adverts.

Meanwhile, having been guilty of hijacking many a thread in my time, I notice this is hardly a "spice the site up" subject!

Puncher:

Peter:

Which sections would you lose?

 

The Mac section please!