PC World's website heroes

Amplifier
We talk to Stephen O’Hoy, business manager, Amplifier, Auckland.

Who: www.amplifier.co.nz What: New Zealand music, downloads, CDs, vinyl, DVDs, news, streamed videos and merchandise. Why: Foresaw the future of music in digital delivery.

How long has your website been operating, and how often do you redesign?
Amplifier.co.nz began trading in 1999, as mp3.net.nz. We’ve been through two major back-end redesigns and three front-end changes. I’d like to see the front end change on a yearly basis. Although, as we outsource development and design, cost is always a factor.

What inspired you to set up a website?
The site was conceived by entertainment lawyer Chris Hocquard from Dominion Law. He was reading a copy of Wired and noticed an article about digital delivery of music being the way of the future. Seven years later, that article has proven to have been incredibly insightful. The only other real site operating at the time was mp3.com, so Amplifier was a bit of a trailblazer.

What brings customers back to your site?
We have a lot of repeat business and enjoy good growth in new users and consumers. Our terms of reference (New Zealand music) are very narrow, which takes a lot of stress out of decision-making — in some cases we’ll be the only place where you can find music from certain acts. As well as selling downloads, we retail CDs, vinyl, DVDs, some merchandise and retail books for publicaddress.net. As New Zealand music has found its feet commercially, we’ve grown with it. Now it’s starting to break overseas we’re beginning to see more international traffic, too.

What would you do differently if you were setting up a website again today?
I’d probably pass on the opportunity and go and grow organic courgettes instead! Increasingly, download sites are just reskinned versions of large international rights aggregators, such as OD2 or Destra. The margins in downloaded music mean there’s scant reward for the retailer without serious corporate backing.

How important do you think your website design has been to its success?
Working with the site every day, we’re probably more aware of its shortcomings than anyone else, and there are several things I think should have been done differently. However, when I’m talking to site users they’re nearly always happy with the site design. We still retail in MP3 format and have our music available for purchase by overseas customers. There’s been a lot of pressure to change to DRM-protected files over the past couple of years, but we believe MP3 gives users more flexibility and provides more promotional opportunity for the artists. Also, MP3 will play on iPods, whereas the most common DRM format, WMA, won’t.

How does selling online help you to reduce costs?
There’s no shop-front, which obviates the need to hold large amounts of stock. We also have an amount of onsite advertising space, which helps to reduce overheads.

What’s your main competition and how do you differentiate yourselves?
Our main competitors are the newer download stores. As our sole focus is Kiwi music, we can never compete with established online CD stores because they have access to catalogues 100 times larger than ours. But that’s also the differentiation: we’re smaller and we’re built on a passion for Kiwi music. We’re staffed by people who work in the music industry, so every bit of music means something to us and we’ll never view music as just a saleable commodity.


Cactuslab
We spoke to Karl von Randow and Matt Buchanan, directors, Cactuslab, Auckland.

Who: www.cactuslab.co.nz What: A full-service, boutique web design shop. Why: A ‘keep it simple’ approach, as an antidote to the design behemoths.

What inspired you to set up a website and what were your web role models?
Our web presence began as a small portfolio, and we purposefully kept it simple so maintenance and additions would be easy. Having both come from a company (WebMedia) with a high-concept, sprawling behemoth of a website, we were aware of the potential pitfalls of going down that road, which was further encouragement to keep things quite basic.

What do you think is the main thing that brings customers back to your site?
Pedro (our chat robot and Connect 4-style game) is definitely responsible for a whole lot of wasted time judging from the site’s statistics. We’re thinking of starting an office podcast, too.

How important do you think your website design has been to its success?
The most important factor is that visitors can quickly get a feel for the kinds of work we do and find out a little more about us if they need to. We feel the way a site works is as much a part of the design process as how it looks. To that end, the site’s overall design seems to have worked well.

What were your main website challenges?
In the early days of learning the ins and outs of web standards, we constantly butted our heads trying to get around bugs and issues with the major web browsers. Thanks to dozens of enterprising developers who’ve come across these problems before, however, many solutions and workarounds can be found online to assist in this area.

How do you differentiate yourselves from other full-service web shops?
By concentrating our efforts in areas we know and enjoy, and keeping up to date with new techniques as much as we can. Our adoption of web standards has been valuable not only for our clients, but also for us, in terms of streamlining our internal workflow. Many companies working in our field appear not to be aware of this shift in approach. We also view our inhouse technical expertise as an advantage over those suppliers who focus solely on the front-end design considerations of website projects.

Can you summarise your plan for future growth?
We’ve remained steadfastly a boutique operator, with a cautious view to growing too quickly, but we’re constantly on the lookout for ‘bright young things’ we may be able to foster working relationships with. Our site isn’t geared as a recruitment tool, other than by being a showcase of our work, but it’s garnered enthusiastic applications from around the world.

Is there a project that was a key success factor for your company?
There’s no one project that we can point to; our stability has arisen from the variety of work we’ve done. Marquee projects, such as our sites for the NZ Listener, 95bFM, Amplifier and Public Address have led to a large number of opportunities, several of which we’re engaged with now. Our strategic partnership with Satellite Interactive to provide technical implementations for several of its clients (including Coke NZ) has also helped create a solid base of ongoing work.

The host with the most

Finding the perfect host for your website. By Mark Evans. SO YOU’VE got plans to launch a website. But who is going to host it? The first thing to consider is the kind of site it is. Is it interactive, with a database for storing information, or will it consist of static pages like an online brochure? Static v Dynamic Static-page websites are straightforward. You may even find you can host a basic static-page site for free, depending on your ISP. Static-page sites require FTP access for transferring your HTML pages and associated graphics to the web server. There are many companies that can provide this functionality, but prices vary widely so shop around. If your website needs to be interactive — for example, offer e-commerce, forums or blogs — you’ll need to look for a web-hosting service that allows scripts to be installed. These are programs generally written in PERL, PHP, .ASP or other server-based scripting languages. You can write your own scripts, have a web-design company build and/or host scripts for you, or use open source or bought packages. One advantage of using open source applications is that it can make your website portable if you decide to change your host. There are loads of free, open source packages offering content management, blogging, forums, list management and more. See our list here (39kb) Many web-hosting companies allow you to install and configure these packages yourself via a web-based control panel (such as CPanel, Plesk and Fantastico) or by logging into the server via SSH or Telnet. A good place to check out open source packages written in PHP is www.opensourcecms.com, where you can try out demo versions. Sourceforge.net and Freshmeat.net are also good. Windows or Linux? Hosting companies usually offer either Linux or Windows accounts (or both). These offer much the same functionality and usually provide support for PHP, PERL and MySQL databases. However, if you want .ASP or .NET applications, or use Access or MS-SQL databases, you’ll need a Windows account. If you have particular application needs — for example, Cold Fusion (.cfm) scripts — you’ll need to search for a hosting service that supports these. Local or international? You can host with a Kiwi-based hosting service (see our list here, 39kb) or choose an overseas provider. There’s a plethora of US-based hosts, offering low prices and lots of disc space and traffic. Despite the lack of a local support option, many of them have good support services via email, live chat or phone and have 24/7 support desks. Some New Zealand hosts actually base their servers in overseas data centres or resell the services of overseas hosting companies. This usually won’t matter, as the difference in speed between local and overseas websites is often not noticeable. But if you will be uploading lots of large files to your website (such as photos) a local host offers faster FTP access. A quick test To test some web-hosting options, I set up four accounts: two with local company Net24 (one Windows, one Linux); a Linux account with local company Openhost, and a Linux account with US-based provider JaguarPC. I ran some simple tests: 1. Repeating FTP uploads and downloads (3.5MB file). 2. Setting up a single-page website and loading the page repeatedly. 3. Using the web-based control panels to install and configure Wordpress, a popular blogging package. The greatest difference between the accounts is that the US-based JaguarPC offers considerably more disc space (6GB) than either Openhost (50MB) or Net24 (25MB), and greater traffic allowance (180GB) than Openhost (2GB). Net24 offers unlimited traffic. Extra disc space is useful if you want to host a number of email accounts or store large files, and a generous traffic allowance is essential if your site will be busy. I was impressed with local hosts Net24 and Openhost. Both responded quickly to questions, their sites were clearly laid out and their service compared favourably with the US-based JaguarPC. Their Plesk web-based control panels were also more user-friendly than JaguarPC’s CPanel, although the options (such as the number of installable applications) were more limited. And they don’t offer SSH/Telnet access, which JaguarPC does. Jaguar also offers an extensive array of training videos — a big plus for newbies. The critical factors in deciding on a host will be price, functionality and performance. Ask for references, hang around in forums to gauge customer satisfaction, and see if you can get a test account for a month.

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