JOHN SUMSER,
S P O N S O R S Find out more
Hall Of Fame8 Corners of ECommerceTypes
of Links
Red Herring
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
Reality
The System
It's better to
All material on this
|
... |
Click OK to receive our occasional Newsletter
Oh, Dear!Computers Made Simple of San Antonio, TX, will, apparently teach you how to use both hard- and soft-ware which you may inadvertently purchased in a fit of pique. Their Website is a model of what NOT to do. In fact, this effort at "communication" is so abysmal that we're not quite sure where to start... How about with the 81K background on the "homepage"? It shows one-third of a car parked in front of a building "designed", it appears, in the "'60's Brutalist" style. Or perhaps the attractively overlaid orange text, which, in addition to being long-winded and ungrammatical, inexplicably has a blank line inserted towards the end? The bold link transports one to a page which further invites one to "click HERE". The text is yellow on white. The page serves no apparent purpose. But clicking on "HERE" transports us magically to -- a scanned brochure! The 125K download is prefaced by a warning that the page "may take some time to load". We're not quite sure what this "site" is intended to achieve. The effect - albeit undoubtedly unwitting - is to convey the notion of a bunch of rank amateurs whose comprehension of the New Medium is risible. It is unfortunate for them that, no matter how good they are at training the mugs who give them money, that impression will prevail. --John Blower
Web Site GarageThe good folks at AtWeb.com gave us a sneak preview of their new web site tuneup station: Web Site Garage. The new all-in-one service effectively aggregates many validation, performance, and pr services under one "roof" to make checking and promoting your web site a one- stop affair. Webmasters just pull into the garage, type in their URL, and hit go. The mechanics quickly look under your site's hood and up pops a 50's style oil-change-like clipboard, complete with an overall rating and a 5-point checklist. You can browse through the results, and see where the problems lie. We liked the HTML Design Check, that uses lint, and color codes the numbered lines of bad HTML. Included in the free Tune Up package are checks for:
Each report is formatted for both the Web and easy printing, signed by the head mechanic. After checking over the problem spots in your page, you can choose to upgrade to their self-serve turbocharge service, or go for a complete overhaul. AtWeb offers their own Register-It! promotion services, a complete site analysis version, as well as best of breed services with partners like Businesswire.com for press releases. Best of all, each Turbocharge service is priced at under $100. There's also a free GIF/JPEG image reduction and conversion service called GIF Lube, that looks promising but was still in beta as we went to press. If you don't want to promote and redesign it yourself you can order a complete overhaul and have the pros do the job. Complete promotion packages, press releases, site redesigns and more can be had for under $1000 each. The AtWeb technicians said they have designed the back end to be scalable and plan on adding more services each month. Overall we were impressed with the design and convenience the service offers. Busy webmasters will appreciate the site's one-stop convenience for validating and promoting their web sites. http://www.websitegarage.com/start.cgi?banner=webreference-- John Blower
Print ResourcesIn addition to advertising your business online, it's important not to forget about advertising in the real world. Advertising in the real world does not have to be expensive. There are many specialized publications pertaining to just about every business, occupation, sport and hobby. The advertising rates are substantially lower in these specialty publications even though the circulation is not as large as the major magazines and newspapers. Readers of these smaller publications consist almost exclusively of your target audience. If you plan to use traditional advertising, get a handle on the media resources by checking out Standard Rate and Data Services (SRDS). SRDS publications and directories have been the foundation of every solid media buy for more than 78 years - they are the "meeting place" where buyers and sellers of media converge and millions of dollars are exchanged daily. Their innovative e-kit provides electronic access to media kit information for the leading publishers of business publications, consumer magazines and newspapers. These directories list business, technical, and trade publications categorized by markets served. You will find it very helpful when you are trying to decide where to advertise. A few more resources for traditional advertising include: http://www.tradepub.com/ The premier internet service for professional trade publications. Great for finding and subscribing to quality professional magazines. Magazine Newsstand displaying hundreds of Newsstand magazines and features more than 1,000 magazine publications available to consumers today. You can search for a magazine publication by title or by category. --John Blower
More eMailIf you use the original "push" client, eMail, as a marketing and promotion tool, you may be interested in a new list manager from British company Unipalm. Revnet's GroupMaster gives users a fully-featured tool for scheduling the delivery of bulk email messages, web content and attached data files. It automatically delivers pre-scheduled information, manages "bounced" or undeliverable email, and keeps accurate list membership and email read-rate statistics. GroupMaster enables the list manager to:
GroupMaster supports discussion groups and offers a unique member control panel that lets list participants control their own list options over the web. The product runs on Windows NT Server and requires an SMTP (TCP/IP) mail server on another machine. List managers require a Web browser plus an email client and subscribers require only an email client. There are four versions of GroupMaster available from Unipalm, priced as follows:
Take a look at the Archives. We've indexed all the past issues with topic pointers.
All material on this site is © 1995, 1996 by IBN (The Internet Business Network), Mill Valley, CA 94941 |