JOHN SUMSER,
E D I T O R


S P O N S O R S


Find out more
About IBN


Articles

Archives

8 Corners of ECommerce


Register to receive
e-mail when
this page changes.

Email address


Hall Of Fame
8 Corners of ECommerce

Types of Links

H C I Readlist
Webstyle guide
The Pilot
Daily Webnews
I A Daily
Webcatcher
Professor Pete
Ad Tutorial
Advert World
TRADEWINDS
WebMaster Mag
HT Marcom
Dave-Net
A1 Index
Telecosm
Submit It

Suggestions?



The advertising
industry is on
the verge of
being shattered
into a thousand
fragments due to
the knowledge explosion
and the proliferation
of new technologies.
There are no
more grand theories
that hold sway
over the entire
industry.
Michael Strangelove


Advertising is
one of the minor
arts, so don't
be intimidated
by it. Try
not to lose
your sense of
playfulness.
Keep it fun.
Robert Bly



Reality
is more
complex
than
it seems.
John Gall



The System
is its own
best
explanation.
John Gall



It's better to
do a few things
really well than
than to do
a lot of things
badly.
If you can't
make the necessary
commitments of
time and energy
to your
electronic
marketing
efforts
scale back
your plan.
John Sumser


Suggestions?

All material on this
website is the
property of IBN
(The Internet Business Network)
You may download
a copy for personal
use. Redistribution
without permission
is strictly
prohibited.
All material on
this site is
© 1995. 1996 by IBN



OUR HOME

...

C l i c k   o n c e   t o   r e c e i v e   o u r   o c c a s i o n a l   N e w s l e t t e r
August 24, 1996

Navigation Design

Webmaster magazine remains on our list of treasured resources. Be sure to give a good look at Finding The Way. The article is a discussion between three webmasters about maximizing site navigability.

August 23, 1996

International Web Usability

As Sun Microsystems' usability guru, Jakob Nielsen tirelessly beats the user interface design drum in his monthly column, Alertbox and in a variety of other books and publications. This month's article talks about some of the minor details to watch in making your site usable for International Audiences.

August 22, 1996

Letters, We Get Letters

Staying adaptive means finding a way to flush your assumptions from time to time. It's no mean feat, particularly in the heart of the info-glut.

We hesitate before suggesting yet another mailing list. Our inbasket fills daily with unread gems that simply exceed our ability to absorb. We're sure that yours does too.

New Thinking is a weekly essay from an Irishman that attempts to help you reframe your assumptions. The distinct cultural perspective is coupled with a hard working attempt to break new ground. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't.

We purge our mailboxes often and there are many pieces that go directly into the trash without a reading. New Thinking seems to hover close to the edge without quite making it into the trash pile. In one of those increasingly infrequent quiet moments, we open it and are often delighted.

The New Thinking archives will give you a chance to evaluate this resource.

August 21, 1996

Simple Riches

We've been repeatedly reminded over the past couple of days that the Web is more like a telephone system than it is like a neighborhood. The idea that the Web is a "market" has its grounding in the idea that the web is somehow equivalent to a community. Nothing could be further from the truth. The Web is a connector of people, not a gathering place.

Although it's not true universally, in many cases, the "best" website gets out of the way of the relationships that build through the medium. While it's tempting to write simplicity off as a design failure, studied simplicity increases the transparency of the medium and removes place from the equation. In other words, the idea that the web is somehow a place or a market can be incredibly counter-productive.

A recent visit to a website called the Global Translation Alliance has had us considering these ideas for a day or so. Take a quick look.

The site has the chore of matching buyers and sellers of translation services between 46 different languages at three levels of skill. In other words, they have a product line that covers over 6,000 discrete offerings. You'd never guess that the database was so complex from using the site. Rather than overwhelm the user with layers and layers of nested menus and clever clip art, the Global Translation Alliance cuts directly to the chase.

What do you want to do, at what level of sophistication and how big is the job? The result is an instant quote.

We suggest that you use the Global Translation Alliance as a simplicity benchmark.

August 20, 1996

Peeking Through The Keyhole

McKinley, the Internet arm of the Robert Maxwell media empire recently purchased by Excite, offers an interesting slice of raw market research. The Search Voyeur delivers 20 randomly chosen keywords from ongoing searches every 20 seconds. The result is a mind altering stream of juxtaposed words and phrases.

We'd suggest a 10 or 15 minute immersion in this slideshow. While summary statistics are far more useful for marketplace decisions, there's something very educational about a dip in the raw data stream.

August 19, 1996

Alliances:
Can't Live Without 'Em, Can't Kill 'Em

Putting a Web business together requires a broad range of skills, most of which will exceed your core compentencies. Comfortable or not, this means that your operation will depend, to some degree, on a network of alliances and partnerships. Whether it's your local site architect, an advertising broker, independent content generators, a graphics house, an ISP or positions with the big boys (Netscape, Apple, Microsoft, Sun, SGI), position will equal partnership. The right alliance at the right time will provide a shot in the arm for traffic, visibility and sales.

The downside is that those same alliances will dictate significant portions of your capital investment strategy. The Web is increasingly littered with one-shot overnight sensations who were unable to survive an initial success peak. Getting into bed with this kind of alliance partner can have a near term positive effect and a long term penalty. The key question has to be: do you have a rapid exit strategy in your alliance relationships?

August 18, 1996

Views on Who's Making The Bucks

Somehow, the idea that losing money is part and parcel of doing business on the web has taken root in the traditional media. We're tempted to assert that it's a bias rooted in the difficult transition between print and the web. Here are a couple of the best sources of data for dealing with this widespread misunderstanding:


Take a look at the Archives. We've indexed all the past issues with topic pointers.


Try Freeloader


Check out the Archives....54 Weeks of Back issues including:

  • August 17 1996 Including:
    • Regional Yahoos
    • Big Dreams
    • Copy Editors
    • Cool Net Statistics Presentations
    • Browser Search
    • Give It Away To Keep It
  • August 10 1996 ) Including:
    • Useful Page Tools
    • Web Nuggets
    • Tropical Jim: Web Hero
    • Snafus And Apologies
    • Bright Spots At Apple
    • Mediums Are Not Markets
  • August 03 1996 (two weeks) Including:
    • Net Business Daily
    • The Project Oriented Economy
    • The Importance Of Customers
    • Computer Law Observer
    • 8 Corners Of ECommerce
    • Who's Doing Business
  • July 20 1996 Including:
    • Paying Viewers To See Ads
    • Grumpy About Apple
    • More Net Statistics
    • How Not To: I-Watch
    • Godzilla Uber Alles
  • July 13 1996 Including:
    • Multimedia Web
    • Selling Ads
    • An SIG Pidgin
    • News From The Front
    • Absolut-ly Fabulous
    • Tripod Redux
    • Jobs For Web Designers
  • July 06 1996 Including:
    • Makeovers R Us
    • JAvaScript Tip Of the Week
    • Microsoft Viruses
    • Sega Surfing
    • Jobs For Web Designers
    • Informant
    • IDML
  • June 22 1996 Including:
    • Advertising Effectiveness Part 2
    • Email Risks: Short Case Study
    • Leave 'Em Laughing
    • Translation Pages
    • Design and Graphics Tidbits
    • Advertising Law
  • June 15 1996 Including:
    • Ostriches On Line
    • Media Daily
    • NBNSOFT Content Awards
    • Lots of Juicy Tidbits
    • Knowing When to Quit
    • About Media Placement Agencies
  • June 08 1996 Including:
    • TRADEWINDS
    • Sponsored Site of the Day
    • Internet Link Exchange
    • WebServer Magazine
    • Net History from Alta Vista
    • Business.net
  • June 01 1996 Including:
    • Positioning
    • Filtering Ads
    • Balancing Technology and Marketing
    • Elements of Ad Effectiveness
    • Useful Microsoft Tools
    • Graphics / Tufte
  • May 25 1996 Including:
    • Suck
    • Web Informant
    • Fighting The Last War
    • Net Commerce Bureau
    • Web Review Revisited
    • Initial Promotion Tools
  • May 18 1996 Including:
    • How Not To Do It
    • Link Trakker
    • Television Industry
    • Guidelines for Promotional Email
    • Going Out With Dignity
    • Initial Promotion
  • May 11 1996
    • Roverbot
    • Tropical Jim's
    • Who's Marketing Online Reborn
    • StoogeNet
    • Dr HTML
  • May 04 1996
    • Yahoo's People Search
    • Hyperlinks are Institutionalized Referrals
    • The David Siegel Project
    • Junk Email Suit
    • Editor and Publisher Interactive
  • Apr 27 1996
    • How Not To Do It: Buf Puf
    • Email Courtesies
    • 2Ask
    • MRML (Mind Reading Markup Language
    • Do You Own Your Domain Name
  • Apr 20 1996
    • Types of Links
    • Solid Oak and Cybersitter
    • Search Engine Tutorial
    • Tripod
    • Salon
    • Webcatcher
    • WWWomen

    Contacting Us
    Call, fax, write, email. We'd love to talk about your project.

    All material on this site is © 1995, 1996 by IBN (The Internet Business Network), Mill Valley, CA 94941