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Hall Of Fame8 Corners of ECommerceTypes
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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
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In a newsgroup to which we subscribe, comp.infosystems.www.authoring.site-design,
we came across these principles of good site design, thoughtfully compiled
by Tobias C. Brown, with assistance from
Alan J. Flavell, Sue Jordon, and Susan Lesch.
"1. Write for multiple Web browsers to provide easy access to the widest
possible audience.
The World Wide Web is a multi-platform, non-browser specific medium. It should
not matter whether people browse your web pages using Netscape Navigator 4.02,
AOL Browser 3.0, Lynx 2.7, or NetPhonic's Web-On-Call.
Each browser ought to render your informational web pages without problems.
If a Web page is designed properly, blind individuals using text-to-voice
or Braille web browsers can easily access and review your work.
2. Condense textual content to fit the time and attention constraints of
today's busy Web users. Take a look at Thoughts
on Web Style,
3. Use small (byte-wise) graphics so graphics load more quickly in graphics-capable
browsers.
It is not advisable to use GIFs for everything. It's of the first importance
to make the right choice between JPEG and a palette-based format. Avoid blindly
choosing GIF and then trying to rescue yourself from the resulting problems.
JPEG image compression Frequently
Asked Questions
4. When using graphics, provide textual alternatives for image disabled
or text-only web browsers and indexing agents.
5. Run Web pages through a validator to test their compliance with HTML
standards.
Modify pages until they validate, because compliant pages have a better chance
of being rendered by various Web browsers, as the writer intends.
However, if you intend something that is impractical with HTML, it will be
no less impractical for being syntactically valid.
Work with the strengths of HTML rather than trying to batter it into a WYSIWYG
page design system.
What You See Is
Not What Others Get on the Web
6. Run pages through Lynx
View or
Lynx-me or, best of all, view them using a browser like Lynx, to see
how the "text-only" world sees your documents. Make documents Lynx-friendly.
7. Spell check your documents.
8. Establish a routine to help you locate and fix broken internal and external
Web site links.
8. If your web site URL or eMail address will change occasionally, consider
using a service that provides eMail forwarding and URL redirection.
9. Submit your Web site address to an appropriate newsgroup
for a critical peer review.
10. Promote your Web site by adding your URL to search engines and directories.
To ensure that people can easily find your Web site, it may be necessary to
modify your pages to take best advantage of current search
technologies."
Thank you Tobias et al.
HTML is in a constant state of flux, with new browser-specific tags being devised with each reiteration of the two major browsers.
In general, it's a hassle keeping up with them all.
No more. The latest version of Ron Woodall's excellent HTML Compendium has just been posted (dated February 1, 1998).
This resource lists pretty much every tag ever devised and provides indicators of which versions of which browsers support it.
The site itself is well-designed, offering the user a variety of mirrors depending on their geographical location, and, more importantly, a choice of framed or non-framed versions.
Bookmark this site and return regularly for updates!
Our recent article, Cunning Stunts, prompted this mail from Hilory Wagner of The
WebLinks Company:
"You do have a point, it can take hours, even days, to cultivate linking
relationships. This takes time that most companies just don't have.
Interesting idea to look at who links to competitors. But then, once you
find
those linkers, don't you still need to construct those flattering notes?
My point here is not to criticize, but to alert you to my business, The
WebLinks Company, which takes on the tasks that companies and web developers
don't have time for. We do the searching, the contacting, and the follow-up
for a very reasonable fee..."
We duly trotted off to the WebLinks site, and found a clean, pleasantly-designed site, with plenty of information and articles about the importance of inbound links to the success of your site.
We can find no argument with the site's linking philosophy:
"LINKING
It's about forging partnerships.
No prices at the site, and we would certainly recommend that Hilory acquire a domain name, rather than being ghetto-ized on AOL...
Travelers to Starbucksland will be familiar with the somewhat unusual nomenclature the company employs for the sizes of its brews.
Nothing so simple as "small", "medium" and "large". No. "Small" has no designation; "medium" becomes "grande"; and "large" transmorgifies itself into "venti".
"Venti"? Well, apparently it's Italian for "twenty", and refers to the number of ounces of liquid one purchases...
So what? Well, it seems to us that Starbucks is missing out on a great opportunity to build their brand on the Web.
During the course of our travels, we frequently find ourselves longing for a decent cup of coffee. And at Starbucks - just like at MacDonald's - you know exactly what you are going to get no matter where you are.
We were more than a mite surprised, then, to discover that, while the domain name starbucks.com is registered to the eponymous company, it doesn't appear to lead to a site.
Here's a perfect opportunity for the company to provide information on Starbucks' locations across the country, providing a great service for the legions of coffee afficionados who travel with laptops and internet access accounts.
We wonder if it's in the works...
Long time readers of this column will be aware that we set great store in the value of promoting your site offline.
However, a recent article by Charles Sayers in the ClickZ newsletter gave us pause for thought.
In his article, Charles quotes a number of examples which appear to indicate that, for online companies at least, the value of offline promotion is marginal at best, and can be counter-productive at worst.
His conclusions are summed up thusly:
1. We have one story focused entirely on one online company
2. A link, on a highly trafficked site, focuses on one online story
3. An online columnist writes consistently about online stuff
4. The Wall Street Journal features ClickZ and Microscope in the offline version
Now, one could argue that the traffic counting methodology is not specified and may be flawed. Or that there may not be a causal relationship between the two observed phenomena.
Nonetheless, an example from our own experience - the failure of an expected increase in traffic to materialize from a mention of this site in the offline New York Times - would appear to confirm Charles' hypothesis.
In which case, the moral may be, that for online companies, promotional bucks may be better spent on online promotion...
Take a look at the Archives. We've indexed all the past issues with topic pointers.
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