The first thing that I notice about Acollege Trade college classified site is that they are marking to college students’ parents as well. Wow, this is definitely a different direction that Dormitem, Chegg, and CollegeMedium are going down, but I don’t think it’s the best direction.
Marketing to the parents of college students may seem like a good marking decision, but it’s just not that sexy. Think about it, the only way for something like that to work would be to first acquire a critical mass of loyal college students.
That alone, is extremely hard. Then on top of that, your service would need to be so excellent and so compelling, that it would drive these students to actually spend the time to tell their parents about it.
So in other words, you’d first need the power and support of the student, then – and only then – can you even consider attacking the parents. You’d be out of your mind if you think that you can circumvent the students all together and head strait for the parents — not to say that’s what Acollege Trade is doing.
Now, other the other hand, if the service was focused solely on the parents then that would be a completely different story. The way Acollege Trade is set up now – based upon that mission statement – tells me that their marketing strategy is split between the parents and students. And that’s not going to fly when you’re going after the fickle college student market.
You have to hit students dead-on! You can’t juxtapose the student and their parents. It just doesn’t sit well for students. Associating parents with college students isn’t a comfortable feeling.
Believe me, when a student thinks of their parents while in college, they automatically think about “authority,” “less control,” and “less fun.” So be careful when you have a service that may cause a student to think more about their parents than actually using your service.
Acollege Trade has a very ebay-ish look and feel to it, which becomes very apparent from the “buy it now” option. The quality of how the images on the site are handled can definitely be improved and the navigation isn’t the easiest to use.
I would much rather be able to select my state, school, and category and automatically have the page update upon selecting category as opposed to having to click “go” every time – something that’s just another step for the busy college student to have to take.
With a more intuitive design and better marking direction, I think that Acollege Trade could become a formidable a player. For now, I’d place it at the lower end of the college classifieds chain.
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