View from the Hill - #5

Why are most* Sun resellers invisible on the web?

• is it because they think that web technology is something which is only good for their customers?
• are they useless at marketing? or,
• are they intimidated by competing with Sun's web site?

*excludes companies already listed on this site

I meant to start this article with a more controversial statement, such as "If you own shares in a Sun reseller organization which is not listed in the SPARC Product Directory, then maybe you should sell them now, unless you believe that the business strategy of being invisible to most Sun users is a good idea."

That's because if they aren't listed in this directory, then they are even less likely to be listed anywhere else. FYI - all Sun resellers get free links in this directory if either:-

• we find their web site. This is proactive research (we spend thousands of hours every year searching for new suppliers)

• they find our web site, and fill in their geographic location (country and state) and web address in the add url form. That's not too diificult, and companies get added typically within 1 or 2 days.

Before going any further, I'd just like to say:-

• Sun resellers have been very important in the development of the SPARC systems market, and from my own point of view the more of them there are, the better. If there were only a handful of Sun resellers in the market, the market would be very unhealthy. You wouldn't need to come to this directory to find competitive suppliers, and I would need to find a new job.

• The easier it is for you as a reader to find more resellers, the more you can benefit from:- choosing a supplier with a more convenient location, or a better product range, or a lower price.

• Manufacturers have diverse policies about publishing lists if their own resellers. Some do make these publicly available. Most don't. Sun Microsystems seems to have a policy which varies from country to country. But Sun is not in the business of helping its competitors, so even where they do make this kind of information available, it typically excludes a significant number of companies which sell compatible products made by competing oem's. Another reason that manufacturers don't like publishing reseller lists, is because that makes it easy for their own competitors to target and poach their best customers. As a publisher, our interest is to try to include as many companies as possible so that our own product (this directory) is bigger and better.

• I do have interests in some marketing training companies (my wife runs one, and works for several others) but they get more than enough business from across the whole spread of IT manufacturers and resellers, and don't need my help to drum up business. Feedback from that quarter would suggest that resellers in all segments of the computer market are equally good or bad at marketing, so perhaps I'm being unfair at focusing on the Sun segment. But that's the one I know best. So here goes...

• 10 years ago, when I was a marketing manager in a Sun reseller company, I too, was completely clueless about most things to do with marketing, having started my career as a techie. I wasn't concerned about my ignorance then, and most marketers today probably aren't concerned about their ignorance either, because when you're seeing phenomenal growth occurring in your own customer base, you don't have to be very good (at marketing) to survive (or even thrive).

First I'd like to quantify what percentage of Sun resellers you can actually find on this web site, compared to the estimated number of such companies in the market. This is to support my statement that most of them are "invisible on the web".

If anyone has any better market size data than the table above, just contact me. If my market sizes are too small, I'll be delighted to learn that the SPARC systems market is actually bigger. But that also makes the percentage of missing companies bigger as well...

So why are most SPARC resellers so shy about promoting themselves on the web? The cost for being added to this site is free, and even very small low-tech, and no-tech companies seem to have no problems with setting up web sites in other markets...

Let's look at it from their point of view.

• 1996 - they start thinking about setting up a web site... But decide to wait, because not enough customers are using the web.

• 1997 - they still think this web thing is a good idea, but it's too early for them

• 1998 to 2000 - now they think it probably is a good idea, but they are nowhere on this learning curve. The average cost of setting up a really good web site (as reported by Netb2b.com) is now $730,000. Hey they know a lot of people in other companies who did do that, and then a year later had to repeat the process to replace an out of date site! Not only is that scary, but the really scary part is that they don't want to risk setting up a simple site which will not adequately reflect the position and true importance of their company. And also they don't want to be embarrassed when they show it to their Sun account manager, and they compare it to www.Sun.com...

Here's the good news for anyone who works for a websiteless SPARC reseller.

• Most users surf the web while using only 1 copy of their browser. So if they find your web site, size = 1 page, and that page includes the information they need, then the other 999 pages which you haven't yet designed are not relevant to them, or to you. A few years ago, one of our advertisers Memoryx had a web site which consisted of just 1 page:- their price list, which was updated frequently. Their web site is a bit more complex today, but it's still got a simple and effective format.

• Setting up your own web site is easy. Take a look at my web marketing bookmarks for more information than you'll ever need about this subject.

• You can promote your company on the web effectively even without having your own web site. For example, if you join SPARC International ($500), or advertise as a reseller on this site ($1,000) you get 1 year of classified advertising which works whether or not you have your own site. See also, my list of other hardware organizations which can offer similar schemes. Another option is to just deliver a stream of press releases about your company via the web using a service like SourceWire. That will create information about your company which can be found by potential customers who use search engines which track those news feeds. Later, when you start you own site, you can include links to those other sites, or cut and paste some of the content to get you up and running.

Ideally, I would like to see every reseller in this market survive and thrive, and have links in this directory. I would be very happy to be proved wrong.

I see zillions of web sites. Here are a few examples of web sites in the STORAGE market which have impressed me recently, which I feel I should mention here:-

---

Paralan's list of SCSI information includes articles and reference information about all aspects of SCSI cables and related problems. This is a company which has invested a lot of time to help educate potential customers. In fact they have written a new article specially for us called LVD, SE, HVD, SCSI compatibility - or lack of it - by Paralan. The Paralan site goes to show that you can produce a really useful web site without using whizzy technology in the site design. But you do have to think about the needs of your customers and invest time and effort to give them the info they want.

---

There are also lots of other good examples in the SPARC market, which are linked from this web site. I didn't want to just start listing hundreds of links...

SPARC(R) is a registered trademark of SPARC International, Inc. SPARC PRODUCT DIRECTORY(SM) is a service mark of SPARC International, Inc used under license by ACSL. Products using the SPARC trademarks are based on an architecture developed by Sun Microsystems, Inc.