Software Hinders Online Learning

Joanna Cabot has been taking online courses for the last seven years. In a blog post for TeleRead, she claims they haven’t gotten much better over that span.

Her biggest complaint is how the courses are implemented. A check of the gradebook function for her latest online study required a variety of clicks and scrolling, then waiting and more scrolling, before the function was accessed.

“It would be like driving to the grocery store and finding that all of the fruits and vegetables had been taken out of the bins and replaced with paper copies of a map you can use to drive to the farm,” she wrote. “Why on earth would somebody design a forum software this way?”

She also had issues navigating the digital content, the course readings, and library databases that were not integrated into the software.

“I understand that technology is harder to do right than most people think it is,” she concluded. “I understand that there is no perfect system and there will always be bugs and glitches in something like this. I am not saying everything has to be perfect just yet. But it startled me just how little things have improved in all the years I have been taking these courses online. It’s not that we should have progressed to perfection just yet. But we should have progressed a little.”

NetFlix provides lessons for stores...

There has been a lot of flack  surrounding movie rental company NetFlix lately.  First they changed their pricing plans.  Now they are separating the physical DVD business from the streaming business -- requiring customers to have two accounts.  Amidst all of this is was a breakdown in communications between the company and its customers as the company tries to transition from a world of more physical media to one of more digital delivery.

There are several lessons book stores could learn from NetFlix's recent foibles:  Perils of rental models; transitioning from physical to digital; or communication.   However, one quote from CEO Reed Hastings in his apology blog post captures one of the key messages I think stores should hear. 

For the past five years, my greatest fear at Netflix has been that we wouldn't make the leap from success in DVDs to success in streaming. Most companies that are great at something--like AOL dialup or Borders bookstores--do not become great at new things people want (streaming for us) because they are afraid to hurt their initial business. Eventually these companies realize their error of not focusing enough on the new thing, and then the company fights desperately and hopelessly to recover. Companies rarely die from moving too fast, and they frequently die from moving too slowly.

And there it is.  So whether we are talking about mobile commerce, digital course materials, rental, data analytics, price comparison, or any of a number of other technologies and developments in the retail book space -- we can not be afraid as a channel to venture boldly into a new future if we hope to have one.  This may mean trying new models that at first seem less profitable or sacrificing margins for market share. 

I hear many arguments that say "digital course materials is moving slowly, so I do not need to worry about it."  I believe this strategy is flawed.  Frankly, I do not care so much whether digital course materials take off this year, or in 5 years, or in 10.  We can all debate the rate at which digital takes hold, but that debate is hardly productive.  The truth is that the transition has begun.  Our window of opportunity to drive developments in favor of stores is now.  We must as a channel place "enough focus on the new thing" that when the time comes to move quickly we are not caught in a position of desperation or unviability.  That is key aspect of channel and business stewardship, and it is a critical strategic activity for all levels of management.  With the emerging technologies ahead of us, we are more likely to fail for having taken no action, than we are for having acted and making some mistakes along the way. 

Ok.  Back off of my soap-box. 

Why e-commerce matters to booksellers

I think I shared these numbers, but in a presentation from the London Book Fair day of digital education last year, the presenter from Bowker noted that in 2001 online sales of books were expected to never exceed 5%--ever. In 2008, Bowker reported that 23% of all book sales were happening online, making it now the largest channel for book sales. At the end of 2009 at least two sources are reporting to us that the number is now 39% of all book sales are happening online—a 16% increase in market share for the online channel in just 12 months. Our most recent student data says that the percentage of textbooks they are buying online (from the college store and other sources combined) is greater than that. Before we reach the end of 2010, one half of all book sales to consumers are expected to occur via a website or online transaction. (Note: hang tags in a college store do not count as an online transaction). On Christmas Day, e-books outsold printed books for the first time at Amazon. Not surprising given the number of those devices given for Christmas, but significant all the same. Some of our internal (i.e., proprietary data) suggest some related and interesting trends for online sales in higher education.

Forgive my bluntness, but it *IS* 2010. If you are a bookseller (collegiate or otherwise) and do not have a website capable of e-commerce transactions, do you really expect to be in business another decade? Can you afford to give up 10, 20, or 50% of your sales to online sources because you do not have an online capability? I could go on, but I am already breaking my New Year's resolution not to get on a soapbox for the 9th or 10th time. My point is, that if booksellers do not want to end up like other content industries being replaced by digital and new channels, they have to invest in the capabilities that allow them to participate in those channels. You have to go to where the customers are -- not expect them to stay with you because they always have. That world just is not our world anymore.