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Report #1 from Tom Vassos and Jacqueline Fortin

In case you missed our last post, yes, you're about to get
another set of trip reports from this week's DCI conferences.
Once again, we hope this information is of value to you.

Contents of this report:
* Web marketing...back to marketing basics
* Tips for the creation of your Web Site
* Advanced Development Topics for Web Developers

Ok, well we're here at DCI's Tuesday tutorials.  Some of
the material that was discussed is a repeat of what was
covered in our Internet World notes so we have NOT repeated
these points.  We have tried to only mention the new
points that these speakers talked about....here goes....

Notes from Tom:

"Using the Internet to Target your Markets"
David Radin, Marketing Masters
(radin@mmasters.com)
Nathan Wagoner, Stellar Business
(wagoner@mmasters.com)

Many Web implementations are forgetting the marketing
basics.  The 3 most important things in direct marketing are:
The copy, the list and the offer.  (Is the copy interesting
enough to keep the user reading the material?  Is the list (i.e.,
the people that have been attracted to your site) appropriate
for your product/service?  Is the offer enticing enough to
actually get the user to place an order?)
You must do this Direct Mail Acid Test on your Web Site
offerings as well.  If you fail at any one of these 3 items,
your offer will fail.

Electronic Mall Syndrome.  Users can go to a targeted site
as opposed to going to an electronic mall where they need
to sift through lots of unrelated offerings.  Some malls are
starting to specialize though.  The Software Mall has 8,500
software offerings (I believe it's at http://www.software.com).

Eight ways to Enhance your On-Line Investment:
* Forget the lure of 25 million users
* Treat it like a medium, not a market
* Leverage your other marketing programs
* Utilize the electronic culture
* Aggressively (but selectively) promote your web site
* Use a multi discipline electronic approach
(i.e., FTP, gopher, WWW, etc.)
* Require your on-line marketing to work well
* Be realistic about its capabilities
(If your marketing programs are not working in real life,
they probably won't work on the Net.)

Tips, Twists and Techniques that make your Internet
marketing more productive:

Web demographics are quickly changing.  More executives
and managers are getting online.  Average age of Web user
is increasing (ie. getting older).

Web providers and site developers like to create their pages
in a tree like structure from general to more specific.  Users
find their own way through this info and therefore have as
much to do with what your site looks like as the developer
does.  They go from point A to E, or straight to point F, not
from point A to B to C to D, etc.  The message is not to
try to force them through your sequence, but give them lots
of jumping off points to info that's far down the structure.

Sometimes the value of a web site seems to be judged by
the number of links that are provided.  Remember that each
of these links is another jumping off point to lose the user
from your site.  However, users will appreciate the links you
have set up and may therefore continue to use your site as
a jumping off point, making yours a popular site.

In the real world, several antique stores seem to clump
together.  Multiple stores seem to be more of a draw to shoppers.
This applies to the Web.  Consider working with several other
sites, all that may be complementary to users.  Your combined
impact as a draw for users may be greater if you combine
forces with others.

Why not even consider linking to your
competitors!  (Shows how confident you are of your products
and services!)

The value of "multi" in multimedia may be overhyped.  Many
people are turning off inline images or using character-based
Lynx browsers.  Make sure you meet their needs.  Graphics
should only be used when they carry content themselves.
Today, the Web is really (in practical terms) just bi-media,
not multimedia.

If you are a high traffic site and will be pointing to a low
traffic site, make sure you warn them/ask permission.  Try
to also get a reciprocal pointer from their site to your site.

In NY, on Friday afternoons, several bars have free hors d'oeuvres
which entice users to "graze" from bar to bar.  If they can't
meet their needs, the bar down the road will.  The Web is
similar.  Users are "grazing".  Make sure you excite them on
page 1 of your home page because it's easy to lose them.

Make sure your common icons cache from page to page to
improve response times (ie. where possible, use the same
icons from page to page which will reduce loading times for
your pages).

Fully interactive Web pages are coming.  For example, the
footplex (no url mentioned.  my guess:  http://www.footplex.com)??
site allows fully interactive chat areas.

One of the Netscape proprietary extensions that seems to be getting
lots of discussion going was blink tags.
Blink tags (html) allow for text on your Web page to blink on and off.
Only use Netscape html extensions that enhance your page, but
don't rely on these extensions.

Tips on choosing a graphic designer to create your web graphics.
Be careful, new designers tend to want to use huge gifs.  Make
sure they are web literate or plan for additional time to work with
them to understand this new media.

Spry (Compuserve) sticks close to the html standards.  Netscape
is much more adventurous with using non-standard html.  Prodigy
has a good browser.  Advice:  Run your code through an html
validator and also take a look at what it looks like using different
browsers...the results can look different.  These html validators
are accessible online (sorry, no urls given) and are used to error
check your code and also help you determine if your code meets
the relevant html standards.

Set up a responsive internal system to respond to e-mail inquiries.
Set up a file structure for your information that is expandable as
your site grows.  Many people don't realize how quickly their
web site will grow.  It's especially important if you're updating
on a regular basis.

Relative vs absolute path names:  Creating a site where your hypertext
links all point to absolute path names can be a nightmare to maintain.
Using relative path names (where you point to another relative
section within your pages) you point to the relative location as opposed
to an absolute location.  This approach is much easier to maintain.

"Key Attributes for Effective Web Marketing
* Use sound marketing tactics
* Target
* Promote your site
* Be aggressive/selective
* Integrate it
* Utilize its unique aspects
* Provide attractive content
* Maintain your site"

http://www.cbs.com/
CBS site has the David Letterman TOP 10 list.  They also
have lots of coverage of the NCAA college basketball tournament.


The next session is:  "Advanced Development Topics"
Alan Richmond

This session will cover advanced Web development topics
such a forms, connecting forms to databases, etc.  These
notes do not try to actually teach you the details that were
covered, but simply to give you an idea of some of the
capabilities that were discussed.  It also provides you with
some pointers to valuable resources for Web developers.

To review the entire contents of the tutorial that was covered,
simply use your Web browser and go to:
http://www.stars.com/
Alan maintains this Web Developer's Virtual Library.

(If you are looking for something on the net, Cern's virtual
library has tons of info on Web development topics.
The URL is   http://www.w3.org/
This site also has the Html 3 test bed browser (called Arena,
which only runs under Xwindows today).  This site also has
all the specifications for html 3.)

The Web Developer's Virtual Library contains lots of value
for developers.  It also has several pointers to other
sites on the Web which have development related value.
It contains free software, educational tutorials, a calculator
(dreadful use of Web resources), a help desk (Ask Dr. Web),
(several people worldwide now help to man (women) this
desk and answer your development-related questions).

This site also has extensive query capabilities to help you
find what you're looking for.  The Harvest tool is a free
text search engine.

Now, here's an idea of a couple of the development tips that
were mentioned...

Give thought to the title you are using.  Don't just call
something Chapter 3 because someone might want to
add that chapter to their hot list.  Therefore you must
give it a meaningful title assuming this is their entry point.

Strongly recommend that you use forms.  This will reduce
the ongoing maintenance of your site.

Use a CGI script to store all of your URLs.  Then when
they change, you only have to change them in one place.

META tag:  This tag allows you to store information that
doesn't appear in the document itself.  For example, it can
allow you to enter an expiry date for a document.  You can
also store info about the document author.

The Body of your Document:

The ISMAP attribute (Imagemaps)
You can align your images.  You can also turn your image into a
clickable image map.  Different imagemap programs use different
conventions to point to components of the imagemap.  There are
several imagemap public domain programs (there's one at the
Cern site).

Style sheets are a step in the direction of making html a
presentation markup language.


Well, that's it for today...talk to you tomorrow.

Tom Vassos                    Jacqueline Fortin

***********************************************************************
TOM VASSOS, B.E.S., M.B.A., Part-time Instructor, University of Toronto

Internet Writer, Educator, Speaker:  Call for courseware, keynotes, etc.

Manager, Internet Marketing Strategies, IBM Software Solutions Division

E-MAIL: vassos@vnet.ibm.com  PHONE: 416-448-2189  FAX: 416-448-2893 (c)

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