Features are like your big nose. It makes you unique. Possibly even desirable to someone who feels they smell good. Features are the reason we initially select one person over another and also why we select one solution over another.

I realize this series is probably getting very specific to what I am working on. My hope is that you can relate it to what you may be doing, otherwise prepare to be bored. (This is the fifth post in this series, click here to read the first one.)

So in my last post I discussed "Minimum Requirements," and how that does not give you a damn thing. The only way that even gets you in the game is if you have something completely new, which I don’t believe anyone does. So we are all trying to build better mousetraps. Everyone in the space I am approaching (Go-to-Webinar, Webex, ReadyTalk, etc.) has the piece of wood with the big spring on it. I start with a piece of wood and a big spring also, but they have some things I don’t have: users, history, name recognition, financial backing, employees, rock solid platforms… okay forget it, I changed my mind.

Okay, changed it back. I can still carve out a niche in this well guarded space if I can come up with some features that people would want that the others don’t offer. But, if I come up with some great feature, what’s to keep them from just adopting it to keep me from getting any traction? I need a feature or features that they cannot replicate, at least not without making too many changes to their model. So let’s back up a little. I’ve been thinking about competing on the platform level, probably a lost cause unless I can somehow change the rules. So forget about the platform for a minute… what problem are they solving? What is a user hoping to accomplish via webinars? Well I assume they like the idea of being able to engage a large audience from anywhere in the world to convey their message. They probably like the interactivity and the whole “event” level feel. Maybe there is a different way to attack this need, something the existing players could not adopt.

So there are thousands of people and organizations that, for their own reasons, have adopted webinars as a tool. Let’s walk through what is involved for them and see if we can spot some weaknesses in the status quo.

I guess the first thing users need is someone in their organization to “do” the webinars. I think a lot of them choose poorly here, but I am not going to solve that problem. Then, they are going to need something to present, a PowerPoint or something, hmm…, maybe some opportunities there. They are going to need an account on one of the services… maybe an opportunity there also. They are going to need to learn how to operate the software… a definite opportunity there. They are going to need to create a webinar event and promote it, check and check. At the scheduled time for the webinar, they are going to have to login to a control panel of some kind and start running their webinar, possibly with multiple presenters, multiple hand-offs, potential technical difficulties, dead air, animations that may not work, etc, all while making sure they cover all of their points and not end up looking like a stammering incompetent boob… Bingo.

So I decided the weakest point in the process is the actual live webinar presentation process. We have all been on webinars, you look at a box on the screen with different things showing up while someone is talking, often a stammering, incompetent boob who runs way past the scheduled time. It’s almost like watching a really bad video. Wait just a minute! Why isn’t it a video?

I started doing a little more research on the better produced webinars… guess what, most of these folks already figured it out. In many of the best webinars, the presenter fires up the software and points his window to a video. No wonder he sounded so smooth. He’s also messaging with everybody, answering their questions right along, running polls, (I wondered how he was able to do that and run a presentation, I could never multi-task that well). Does anybody know they are watching a video I wondered… the content is good, the presenter is right there interacting, the presentation is flawless, ending at the exact time they said it would… I concluded that I would RATHER be watching a video. This is a much better use of my time. Eureka! I had just figured out my One Killer Feature. The webinar content for our platform will all be pre-recorded video.

While many of the webinars on the main platforms are actually videos nowadays, it’s kinda like pulling a wagon with a school bus. I mean all of the technology development in these platforms was centered around running live presentations; the ability to show different parts of your desktop, the ability to hand-off to different presenters, etc. I think they may have made a mistake when they offered recorded replays. The recorded replay distilled all of that technological effort into a single video file. Watching the video file, from a content standpoint was actually the same. In fact some of the guys using video started that way, playing the video recording of their prior webinars on the screen of their current webinar. All the benefit, with none of the hassle. Some of the smart ones realized, wait a minute, I don’t have to replay that crappy video from my last webinar where I had that problem with my slides, I can record a presentation on my own computer, and edit it to perfection. So now you know the secret to the really smooth webinars. They play a perfectly edited video and skip 90% of the features of the platform.

I decided this would be the centerpiece of our platform, with all of the money the other guys have spent on their live technology, there is no way that would even consider switching up to video, in fact I assume they are annoyed at the practice happening on their own platforms.

previous post in series: Minimum Requirements

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