Think about it. Why do people buy certain brands,
drink only specialty coffee, stay with the same
type of cars for years and years? It is because
these companies have mastered what is most important
in our mature economy: an experience that draws
users in and keeps them there. The fact is, in
today's world, there are many products out there
that can do what we need but few that allow us
to do it quickly, elegantly and memorably. Take
a 49¢ cup of coffee and serve it at Starbucks and
customers will pay anywhere from $2 to $4 per cup!
Why, because the customer is engaged in an experience
- a series of memorable events that engage the
consumer in a very personal way.
Just consider the evolution of the birthday experience.
In the agrarian economy, mothers made birthday
cakes from scratch, mixing farm commodities (flour,
sugar, butter and eggs) that cost mere dimes. In
the goods based industrial economy, mothers paid
a dollar or two to Betty Crocker for premixed ingredients.
In the service economy, parents ordered cakes from
the bakery or grocery store, which at $10 or $15
cost ten times as much as the packaged ingredients.
Today, in the experience economy, parents spend
$100 or more to outsource the entire event to places
like The Discovery Zone or Touchstone Climbing
that stage memorable events for the kids and often
throw in the cakes for free. When Apple made
the decision to try to compete in a rapidly commoditized
PC market through clones and cheap computers, the
company almost folded. Now they have returned to
profitability and acclaim. "Think different" is
the tag line for Apple's move into the Experience
Economy. Every aspect of contact with the customer,
from the ads and the devices to the highly customized
stores, is a carefully crafted experience.
So, what does this mean for all of us? It means
that we should strive together to make the digital
experience as memorable and immersive as the offline
experiences that we have come to know and love.
You can compare the evolution of the digital experience
to the birthday experience. When the web first
started, we had flat HTML sites that basically
got a company's identity online and perhaps offered
some phone numbers or maybe even an e-mail address
for contact. Next, we added function with Perl
script that changed brochureware into more tailored
information. Soon after that we started delivering
dynamic content and more "desktop"-like
features with web applications that let you place
an order through an online store or customize something
you'd like to buy using product configurators.
At each step, the information became more relevant
to customers and enabled companies to bring their
unique brands online. Today, we are at the experience
level, where you, the developers, are creating
experiences that draw consumers in and envelop
them in their own personalized world. Just look
at what Nike is doing at nike.com (where
you can accomplish everything from customizing
shoes to keeping an online personal running journal)
to understand the new levels of experience we're
seeing on the Internet today. And, of course, we
have a whole new canvas to think about it in the
digital economy: how will we extend these experiences
to devices?
Why this ultimately matters to you and your customers,
as well as to us, is that great experiences are
great business. Great experiences improve customer
interactions; they directly improve sales while
delivering a compelling brand experience, leading
to financial return through increased use, brand
loyalty, and customer satisfaction. Forrester Research
found that investments in the user experience can
deliver as much as 250% Return On Investment (ROI)
in online commerce applications and significantly
lower the cost of deploying enterprise-packed applications.
We believe that the Macromedia MX product family
helps you increase ROI by bringing you the tools
needed to create the best experiences today. We
also believe that Macromedia MX lowers costs by
streamlining the development and delivery of these
experiences, giving you more time and funds to
spend on the creativity behind these amazing experiences.
The Macromedia MX product family is a huge step
forward for Macromedia and hopefully for you and
your work. But rest assured that we are just getting
started.
We believe it is possible to create more natural
and effective interaction models, ones that allow
for a better relationship between people and the
things they want to accomplish with the technology
they work with every day. Imagine nearly transparent
interfaces and presentations where people feel
engaged with and immersed in the actual content
and communication that they are attempting to access.
That would be a revolution. And that is the Macromedia
vision for rich experiences.
|
