When was the last time you paid for something digital through a webpage?

I was reading some comments by an analyst talking about iPhones, iPads, the "Post-PC" era, etc. You can read it here if you are interested. One topic was talking about the idea of apps vs HTML5.

Anyway, I had a thought while reading the analyst's discussion. When was the last time I personally paid for something digital through a website?

There are lot of websites where I pay for physical goods. Amazon.com, eBay, etc.

NetFlix: that's a good one. You pay and get access to streaming movies.

World of Warcraft: another good example. I don't do play online, but a lot of people do.

How about paying for online access to news? Not many people do it. The dot com folks taught us that we didn't need to pay. Their "get marketshare first, make money later" model made sure of that.

Do you pay for your personal email service? Gmail, hotmail, ? Nope.

Pandora? Nope. What happened when they tried to get everyone to pay? We all left and found another service.

Hmm....

Here's the thing. As consumers, we pay for value. How do we decide what price to pay for that value? We do it relative to something else. We feel that our personal email has to be free because there are so many good options that are. We are usually willing to pay a bit more for a book that has more pages, or at least looks thicker.

Back to Pandora. They want to charge $36. It happens to be for a whole year's worth of listening, but that is a big mental jump in price. Why not charge $3/month? Give me the first month for $1 and get me hooked. If it is really that good, I'll buy right? Have you not heard of Cocaine marketing?

But I'm getting distracted.

Apps. Why do so many people pay a couple of dollars at a time for apps?
1. It is a different delivery mechanism. What do we compare it to? (remember price/value comparisons) Other apps. Yeah, yeah - you're smart enough to know that it isn't much different from a website. But because it packaged differently I'm not expecting it for free.
2. Yes, there are free apps with advertising. But often times I'm willing to pay just a bit more for quality and no nagging. They are cheap. If the apps were $30 (cheap boxed software at a store) then I would have to analyze, comparison shop, question if I need it, etc.
3. Visibility. I can find all this value easily at one location. The app store.
4. I don't give my credit card and person info to some random app developer that may or may not be trustworthy, I give it to Apple. I already trust them. I bought my phone from them. Android/Google is a bit more complicated, but similar. On a site note, note the difference in the trust model and that Android users don't pay for apps as much. Interesting!

A website trying to sell something usually isn't any of the above.

Will HTML webapps make a comeback and destroy the app store model? Nope.

Yes, it costs more money to develop apps for each app platform. Trust me, I know all about that. But I can make enough money to make up for that.

If I made my app as a webapp, would people pay me for the value? Nope.
1. They would expect it to be free. Remember your dot com training!
2. Without the high volume of purchases through an app store, I would have to charge more, which would keep potential sales away.
3. My value would have to compete with many other websites that are delivering other types of value. How many people do you know are in the internet marketing business? I know a lot.
4. Would you trust me with your credit card for a $5 purchase? Not unless I was a big enough company to have a reputable brand.

The HTML side of the argument seems to usually land on the idea that HTML, being a standard, will win because it is ubiquitous. They say that it is to expensive to develop nonstandard apps for each app store.

Other than maybe Apple talking about their app store, you don't hear anyone arguing back on the side of the apps. Maybe they are to busy writing apps? If apps don't make money for them, they will come back to other kinds of software development in a couple of years.