Digital Delivery Market: Huge and Getting Bigger
The one thing everyone can agree on about the growth of the online digital delivery market is that it's big and getting much bigger every day. In-Stat says downloaded music will sell more than physical media bought online by 2007. According to Forrester Research, 12 million US households will be listening to podcasts by the end of the decade. By 2008, software delivered digitally will match the boxed software market and continue to grow, says Digital River. So what does this mean to you, a would-be ecommerce merchant? It means you need to pay attention to the idea of onine digital delivery not matter what you're selling now, since it's likely to be significantly affected by online digital delivery in the future.
Sites That Do Online Digital Delivery Well
Thinking about creating an ecommerce site specializing in online digital delivery? Let's look at some sites that do it well as models:
* Amazon.com: Amazon sells books in PDF, as well as Adobe and Microsoft E-Book formats. Books are purchased through the familiar shopping cart system and then can be immediately downloaded.
* iTunes: iTunes is such a sucessful ecommerce site that it's easy to forget that it's an e-business and not simply an online music library. iTunes make it incredibly easy to make impulse purchasing decisions.
* CinemaNow: Download the latest Hollywood movies to your laptop. Purchase 24-hour viewing windows.
* Getty Images: Getty and other stock photo sites offer hundreds of thousands of images for direct download under specific digital licenses.
Buying an Online Digital Delivery System
You can purchase access to a hosted online digital delivery system, complete with keycode delivery and digital rights management, for as low as about $30 monthly. If you know that your entire online ecommerce business is going to be built around selling digital content and only digital content, this might make sense. However, most ecommerce businesses will likely want more flexibility, so it makes sense to look at ecommerce solutions that allow both online digital delivery and tradtional delivery methods, depending on the product.
Can My Current Cart Do Digital Delivery?
What if you want to add online digital delivery to your existing ebusiness? Is it that easy? It can be, depending on your existing shopping cart software. If you use a hosted ecommerce solution, check to see if it is enabled for online digital delivery. If not, ask there is a module or upgrade available. If you use a locally hosted or custom solution, it may take some more work to reprogram your site to add in online digital delivery. However, you likely already have some web programming talent on hand to help make it happen. You shouldn't have to upgrade to new software.
Online Digital Delivery: Get it Now
You may not think you know what online digital delivery is, but chances are you've been using online digital delivery of content without even knowing it. Ever use iTunes to buy a song or an album? That's online digital delivery through Apple's ecommerce shopping cart, which charged you 99 cents a song. The same with videos, PDFs and even podcasts. You purchase content through an ecommerce shopping cart, but instead of having hard goods shipped, you purchase a digital copy that is made available to you as soon as your payment clears. It's a big part of the ecommerce market and getting bigger every day. Make sure your ebusiness is prepared for it now.
You Need These Features for Online Digital Delivery
Many full-featured ecommerce shopping carts -- both locally and remotely hosted -- can be set up to do online digital delivery. So if you're in the market for ecommerce shopping cart software for your site, look to see if it can be easily modified for online digital delivery, by adding a module or upgrading a hosted plan. A solid online digital delivery solution shhould offer all of the following:
* Readme files.
* License agreements.
* Maximum number and timed expiration of downloads.
* Software license key delivery.
Save Big With Digital Delivery
You can sell anything that can be delivered digitally through most online shopping cart software. This includes digital music -- iTunes is a hugely successful example -- as well as software, photos, podcasts, videos, webcasts and ebooks, reports and other text content. It can be highly profitable to sell through online digital delivery, since you save big on packaging and delivery costs. But remember that you need to have legal rights to all digital content you sell before you start selling it.
How Online Digital Delivery Works
Many ecommerce shopping carts allow a merchant to sell content through online digital delivery. Here's how it works: The digital content download site sits behind a firewall. In front of the firewall, a potential buyer agrees to buy some online digital content and is processed through the shopping cart software and payment gateway. Once the online digital delivery is processed, the customer is allowed behind the firewall to the digital download site. A potential problem: Make sure your software creates a unique URL for the digital download site when it allows a user in. Otherwise, once the URL is known, it would be easy to get around the payment process and go directly to the digital download site. This would be a big security hole and a potential moeny loss.