Apple’s Landmark Day for Desktop Widgets
While Ars Technica, Apple, and countless others stood back in awe of the iTunes store sales figures overtaking Wal-Mart, marketers and e-tailers are missing one important point. In the chart here (via NPD, Ars) it’s easy to see the crucial competitive advantage Apple holds in terms of the service it provides:
iTunes is the only music store presented in a Desktop Widget.
No other music retailer has acted on the simple premise that if you make buying convenient, consistently fast and easy, the registers ring.
I’ve been waving the Emerge flag on this in different ways here and here, but I wanted to take this opportunity to focus on exactly how iTunes is making things happen by being a music platform on the desktop instead of a music website…
So let’s leave the Apple hype with the coatcheck and browse the reasons why they, or anyone, can succeed by blending the perceptions and abilities of the desktop with the Internet accessibility.
It puts all your music in one place, gives it a usable interface, and lets you play music
iTunes comes down to this really basic service idea. What do people with computers need? An easy way to get to their music and listen to it. All of the rest of the sorting and playlisting functions are key to that mission, but the basics are hard to beat. This kind of simple service and user experience premise can only be achieved on the desktop. No one is going to visit a website to see or open what’s on their computer.
Micropayments
While the micropayment parade of admirers trots gleefully down Facebook street, Apple hasn’t gotten all that much attention for riding the micropayment train all the way to market dominance. Most stories have been about how this has changed the music industry distribution model.
And this isn’t a new concept either, as the pizza place down the block from my house has been enjoying selling by-the-slice to tweens and teens since 45s spun on my record player.
Once a user has gotten comfortable with understanding exactly what they have in their music library, they’re only three clicks and a dollar away from hearing that song they wish they had because this other song they do have reminds them totally of that song.
Note: That last part was written by the logic of the 14-year old persona who hands iTunes all their disposable cash. User experience doesn’t always get explained in 10-word sentences.
Keeping your credit card info
When users save their credit card information at a website, it feels like a leap of faith. Where is my cc number held? How do I know it’s being protected?
These questions could be asked by desktop application users, but in fact are not as big an issue. They have already gone through the process of downloading the application. So they know that is on their computer. The application is constantly showing them and allowing them to interact with files on their own computer.
Even though iTunes Web service is really saving the credit card information, it feels like that information is being stored along with all your songs on your computer. It has the perception of being more secure, more private.
That perception alone turns the iTunes application into an impulse buy machine. Ninety-nine cents feels practically free with such little effort on the part of the user. And the system responds quickly with exactly what you asked for: a product that will always have a far greater emotional value than the price.
I’ll save the rest of my hootin’ and hollerin’ for another day.
Related posts:
