A ride on the Wayback Machine at Internet Archives is a bit of fun, and a  lot about understanding business strategy. Take vimo for example.

A who.is query on vimo.com reveals the following:-

Expiration Date: 2011-04-19
Creation Date: 2000-04-19
Last Update Date: 2009-04-14

One is led to believe that the site and hence the business at vimo.com is running since 19-4-2000, since that’s the domain creation date. Probe further and wayback machine tells you that in 2000 no pages were available from vimo. In fact even as late as 2005 end/early 2006, the domain was on sale with no business running, Feb 13 2005 snapshot and Oct 05, 2006

Next, take a look at Nov 21, 2006 snapshot.

See the GiveAways to incentivize user to rate doctors

The company is seen actively promoting Doctor Reviews and is giving away ‘5 free songs from emusic.com’. By December 09, 2006 the 5 free songs strategy seems to have failed and the site is seen donating $1 per doctor review to Toys For Tots. Move on, and by March 13, 2007, the $ is now seen going to American Heart Association. Getting users to rate doctors is certaainly a difficult task, or vimo was probably ahead of time in trying to do this.

We missed out an important aspect while figuring out where the dollar was going. From the day the site was launched till about July 2007, close to an year in operation, the focus had been engaging the user on the site and proving her information online. Speaking to a broker was not the primary message ompare local plan benefits and premiums, learn about health insurance, or speak to a broker. This changed in October 2007, when the primary message changed to an interaction with a licensed agent in a call center.

Change in Strategy - Voice becoming the primary sales channel

In subsequent months, this grew in importance and occupied about half of the home page. To me it occurs that either Vimo got a broker license then, or realized that conversions on phone are much better than on the internet. By August 07, selling insurance had suddenly accquired centerstage and doctor ratings (and hsa and prices of medical procedures) were found losing importance to pitches and information about insurance. Possible change in strategy?

Vimo.com today gives a decent focus to both the self service on internet and assisted health plan search through phone, change resulted over 3 years of innovation, growth in online traffic and coming of age.

( This is author’s attempt to correlate website changes with possible changes in business strategy. Choice of vimo.com as an example site is purely incidental)