Content Matters

Hoover's launched a new portal last week and with it, a more task-focused approach. Instead of the generic search box to look up a company, Hoover's has now created three tabbed pages - for "finding a company", "finding a person" and "generating a list". At the same time, they've reduced the amount of free information provided for an organization - both in terms of the quantitative/financials and the number of executives listed. The move is clearly aimed at pushing users to its subscription-based services. At the same time, the task orientation shows their first steps towards providing solutions, rather than a generic product for all. Each step of the new site pushes the user towards a function that they need, for example, to create a list. Hoover's used the "heroin" approach - give free access to everyone, then gradually take it away and make them pay for it. They've been more successful with this approach than most content providers, probably because they didn't have a large legacy base to cannibalize. Even with the new site, they provide a free "taste". Each day, the editors select a handful of companies whose complete profiles are made available for free; when you build a list, you see the first 10 records that qualify, though you need to subscribe to see the rest. I think that Hoover's has struck a good balance here between free & paid. The free site is still useful enough for the occasional browser to go to, but leads users to many tasks that require a paid subscription. This approach also gives them terrific growth opportunities. The portal becomes a platform for launching new products, all built around the base content. The careful balance will be in determining how much content to leave available on the free site, so that they maximize the ad-based revenues and overall traffic, while holding back enough value to push users towards subscriptions. They also have the option of selling it via pay-per-view, though other than D&B reports, they do not seem to be pushing in that direction.