We’ve been speaking to many of our customers and prospects over the past several months and one of the questions that is repeatedly brought up is if we have any idea why their BIMObject downloads are going down.
Here’s what we know, which may help explain some of the downturn.
1. There has Been a Shift in the Building Product Marketplace
More and more manufacturers are understanding that Architects, Engineers, and Contractors want to go to the BUILDING MANUFACTURER’s website to download the content. Like everyone else, AECs are trying to mitigate their risk. They want to make sure they’re downloading the most up-to-date, accurate, unedited content – and the most reliable place to do that is from the manufacturer themselves. We are hearing that they believe that in the event of a conflict with your product during the actual construction phase, that you will provide better support if they sourced the content directly from the Manufacturer than if they sourced it from a third party. If they’re not finding what they need on the manufacturer’s website they’re looking for, they’re going on to the next manufacturer – not an aggregate site.
2. Seek Library Users are Unsure
Seek was one of the leading sources for BIM content on the Internet. Owned by Autodesk™ (the publisher of Revit®), the Seek library was generally perceived to be trustworthy since it belonged to the software publisher. Earlier in 2017, BIMObject acquired the Seek library and subsequently moved it to their aggregate site. Those who trusted Seek are now forced to interface with a third-party site that they did not originally sign up to use. This generally causes attrition and unhappy users as Apple and U2 found out.
3. (Additional) Pay for Play
If an Architect is on BIMObject and they have selected a category, there appears to be sponsored content that displays first when a Category has been selected and a Manufacturer has not yet been selected. Think of this like Google AdWords; some of the first results that they see are based on those Manufacturers who are paying for that privilege. It looks like if you’re not paying for this additional listing, it’s likely that some clicks are going away to those manufactures that are.
Not Good.
Maybe it’s time we talked about Concora?