Situation: A finance company wants to revise its web portal. The objective is to provide up-to-date specialized financial information to clients for a subscription fee. Currently information is provided directly to clients. The portal will allow clients to manipulate the data provided to gain greater insight into their own strategies and operations. How do you launch an Internet portal?
Advice from the CEOs:
- This presents an opportunity to bring several niche services together under one umbrella.
- The plan is to make money by selling subscriptions. A challenge will be determining how much clients are willing to pay for this service.
- Perform an analysis to determine how much clients can either make or save by utilizing the new service.
- Try a menu approach with varying fees depending upon the number and frequency of services accessed.
- To more quickly gain recognition and credibility, consider partnering with an existing well-established entity such as Bloomberg. Design your portal to integrate your data into their existing traffic flow.
- This reduces the development effort because the partner already has the shell and a well-established market presence.
- As an alternative to partnering, it may be best for the company to develop the portal on its own.
- In this case, if there is a tightly defined target audience and the company already possesses all the equipment and programming required to launch its own portal, it may be best to carefully select initial clients and for the company to do everything itself.
- If the company has the necessary access to key target clients, this will save the need to split revenue with a partner.
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