[expedia.com] knows what's happening... You can tell by looking here. That's right... Expedia owns expediaflights.com, expediahotels.com, expediavacation.com, and probably many more... I would venture every item across their tabstrip will have a domain if it doesn't already... They don't even forward you to expedia.com... If they're owning these domains just to squat on them , they're making a mistake... but I imagine they've got ideas on what to do with them.
Quiet note to self: expediacars.com is available...
If you want flight information, how often are you concerned about all that other stuff up there??? I want a flight, possibly a hotel... thanks, but this is too busy.
Here is Expedia's flights page, and another service available that knows what you want, kayak.com.
I know which one I prefer...
Other such sites are popping up everywhere. I've been referring to them as “micro-niche” sites. Your traditional niche may be travel, but unless you can somehow trim the fat and give your users exactly what they're looking for, quickly, and richly, you need a new solution now. That solution may be to break your site out into atomic service-specific sites.
Kayak.com has everything it takes to drive a splitting-wedge into the online travel market.
These splitting wedges are everywhere, and entrepreneurs have an enormous opportunity right now to take a sharp slice out of just about any market, here's another:
[www.indeed.com] vs. [www.monster.com] (It's the mechanism of the service I'm referring to, not the source of the data... in other words, indeed depends on monster and others to aggregate it's data from. The point is, Monster.com could be as slick as Indeed, but why toss all that time and energy put into their design???)
In explaining this concept to a friend of mine, I drew it up on an index card... here's a more refined version I did in Photoshop...
Please provide your insight & comments!
May 1 Update: After visiting with Brian Tinkler on this subject, I realize how important emotion is in marketing. Brian, being the business & marketing ninja that he is, stressed the importance of awareness/brand building, and how, without those facets of marketing this vertical-marketing strategy can't compete with the expedias and the monsters. Brian mentioned experience, vs. perception of experience. The latter being the “awareness portion“ of the brand. It makes sense that in a truly minimalistic approach, the awareness may also be minimal, due to the fact that awareness costs money...
I know we're on to something here, and I believe that the vertical-markets will enable service providers to sharpen their authority, and that there will be solutions for managing all of the tiny, but perfect micro-niche solutions out there. I got a comment from the co-founder of Indeed.com below, mentioning that such a “meta-service“ exists, to help point you in the right direction... I had a look at info.com, it seems like it has potential. I have to believe, however, that people will continue to rely on Google foremost, and that your strong, proven authority in your specific service will achieve it's deserved ranking. If all else fails, there's AdWords™ :)
Print | posted on Saturday, April 30, 2005 9:52 PM