Buyer's Guide on The Archers Website
Post categories: Radio & Music
| 11:43 UK time, Wednesday, 22 April 2009
If you look carefully at website today, you'll see a link to a "Buyer's Guide".
Click on this and you'll be directed to Audiobooks of The Archers which are available on CD and/or as a download. There's more information on each product, links to suggested suppliers and clear pricing information.
Our decision to introduce the 'Buyer's Guides' is driven by a public service, and not a commercial, ethos. Rather, this is about making it easier to find relevant ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ material and providing information to help guide people through buying online.
And just to reassure you suppliers do not make any payments to the ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳, either for listing as part of this service or for any click-throughs.
The suggested suppliers have been assessed against published criteria which include purchasing security, data protection and customer support. These criteria are intended to give a simple and reliable way to find ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ products while not favouring any one retailer over others.
We're launching the Buyers Guide after research we conducted (survey, interviews, focus group and user testing) suggested people want to know how to find ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ content that is commercially available online. They reacted positively to the idea that the ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ should provide links to commercially available ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ content. In fact most participants were happy for the ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ to take a stronger commercial stance. The user testing of the choice of price, preferred brand, and availability presented by the Buyers Guide was also welcomed.
Buying media online can be confusing and daunting, particularly for those with concerns around security and legality. I believe the ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ has a public service role to play in helping people to find older content, and in guiding those least familiar with purchasing media online. Acting as a 'trusted guide' is something that we take very seriously.
In terms of aggregating content, for example, if you're interested in the UN talks on North Korea, then ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ Online will link you to a wealth of, and links to other sites including , and.
This aggregation of material becomes more complicated when some of the relevant ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ content is only available commercially, and, in the past, we didn't link to it. For example, go to The Archers website and you'd see links to other ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ drama from the past seven days but no reference to old material available as Audiobooks.
Consequently, we hope that the 'Buyer's Guide' will go some way to providing users with the opportunity to find out more about their favourite ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ content.
I'd be interested to get your reaction.
Mark Friend is Controller, ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ Audio & Music Interactive
Comment number 1.
At 22nd Apr 2009, Josh wrote:Very nice to see you use the same ID strings as /programmes and iPlayer. Good stuff!
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Comment number 2.
At 22nd Apr 2009, Moz wrote:Hmmm. Not sure this is a good idea.
You say you think it's something that people want, but is it the ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ that came up with the idea, and got positive feedback to this, or did people actually ask for it without prompting?
Just seems a bit commercial to me, and the more commercial the ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ gets, the more impartiality it loses.
Surely it's easy enough for people to find ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ content to purchase themselves. Just type in 'Archers CD' or 'Archers audiobook' into any search engine.
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Comment number 3.
At 22nd Apr 2009, Andrew wrote:This seems like a good idea, and I hope you expand it to cover DVDs and books soon.
Some comments:
* I think you should give a "From" price for each format on the main product page (e.g. /buyersguide/product/99 ), so that you can get an idea of price without clicking both of the links.
* On the specific product page (e.g. /buyersguide/retailers/9781405687850 ) for CDs and other physical products that you may include in the future, I think you should add a column for total price (i.e. including P+P).
* Also on the specific product page, the columns should be sortable (ideally with JavaScript so you don't have to reload the page) which would mean you could click the Total Price heading (suggested in previous comment) and easily see where the price is lowest. It's obviously easy to see at the moment, but once you get up to 5 or 6 retailers it becomes harder.
And I assume you meant 'kbps' instead of 'kbpm' in the FAQ: /buyersguide/faq and /buyersguide/suppliers
Also there's a typo on the Suppliers Info page: tehir
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Comment number 4.
At 23rd Apr 2009, sexteta wrote:I'm all for the ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ making money out of it's DVDs, audiobooks etc. I'd rather the ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ wasn't completely dependent on my licence fee. If a large chunk of it can come from commercial activity then you'll have a bigger budget to make decent programmes and/or you can reduce the licence fee.
And as you have a website, why not push stuff through it, makes sense.
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Comment number 5.
At 25th Apr 2009, Andy Mabbett wrote:I'd be happy for you to be using affiliate codes, if that meant more money to supplement your license-fee income.
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Comment number 6.
At 23rd Oct 2009, 007MarghoSting wrote:Everything is about marketing, no one can blame anybody here. I like the idea and found some interesting stuff through this media which I would not have noticed another way. It's all about information.
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