A new 9 point business plan has been released by virtual worlds specialists Daden Limited to help businesses and organisations make sense of the emerging phenomena of virtual worlds.
The white paper is based on Daden's ten year experience of virtual worlds and its recent observations of their commercialisation over the past few years. The paper aims to guide businesses considering virtual worlds through addressing 9 key questions.
The key distinction between virtual worlds and the web is that the web is mainly about information and transactions, whereas virtual worlds are about experience and social interaction. The reason why many business presences are unsuccessful in virtual worlds is because they fail to grasp this difference.
Daden believe that organisations thinking about using virtual worlds should have a clear idea that covers what it wants to do, why it wants to do it and how it expects to do it. This is summarised in our 9 point plan.
What's the aim?
Who's the audience (real or virtual)?
Private world or public world?
Which world?
How to engage?
How do you implement?
How do you market?
How do you staff?
How do you maintain interest?
David Burden, Managing Director says “We've lost count the number of times organisations have come to us with plans for a virtual world presence that really haven't been well thought out. That's why we've put together our 9 point plan. To make organisations think before they build.”
Daden have built environments in several virtual worlds, and have developed interfaces between virtual and real environments. “We have a deep understanding of the possibilities offered by new technologies as well as experience of the marketing and usability issues to know what might work, and what won't.” said David.
Virtual worlds are at and early-stage in their development, but all the indications are that they will become more and more important over the coming decades. The organisations which engage now and make their mistakes whilst (relatively)
David Burden ends “The key aim of this paper is to show how businesses can actually use virtual worlds for real business advantage. Our advice to anyone is to spend more time in the initial planning stages, considering what it is you want to achieve with your virtual presence.”
Daden's white paper Virtual Worlds and Serious Business can be downloaded from their website http://www.daden.co.uk
