World Wide Web (WWW)

WWW and the browser?

Your browser is a tool for viewing information on WWW. There are many types of browsers used for viewing WWW. Currently the most popular are Netscape, Mosaic and Internet Explorer. Although Internet Explorer is relatively new in the marketplace, it is bundled with Microsoft's Windows 95 and therefore could challenge Netscape for market dominance. Different browsers display WWW content in similar formats; however there are small differences. This reduces the overall control of information display from the content provider. As browsers evolve and standards become universal these differences should disappear.

The WWW project, started by CERN (the European Laboratory for Particle Physics), seeks to build a distributed hypermedia system. Hypermedia takes the form of HyperText and multimedia. HyperText is seen in a document as text that is highlighted or of a different color than other text. HyperText is used for key terms for which there is more information available. The advantage of a HyperText document is that if you want more information about a particular subject mentioned, you can "click on it" to read further detail. In fact, documents can be and often are linked to other documents by completely different authors, much like footnoting, but you can get the referenced document instantly and from the other side of the world! In addition to linking to other documents, authors will often link in pictures, movies, and sounds! Your browser will display all of these on your screen so that you can take full advantage of all that hypermedia has to offer.

Why browse WWW?

WWW can be of great use to new Internet users because of its ease and the way that it standardizes many of the Internet offerings. Instead of needing to learn about many different programs, how to use them, where to find them, etc., you can learn the basic interface of your browser and have almost all of the Internet open to you immediately.

How can I use WWW?

Once I know how, then what do I do?

After you have explored for a while, you may begin to come across other sources for home pages. One example is the magazine Newsweek. In their regular column Cyberscope, Newsweek reporters will often have short articles about offerings on the Internet, including WWW pages. More companies are also including their WWW addresses in their traditional media advertising to encourage consumers to access their sites. The tutorial will show you how to recognize these "addresses" and what to do with them.

Uses and benefits of the WWW for the Corporate Community

WWW AUDIENCE

It is important that your target market (or segment of your target market) has access to WWW. As the medium is still in the introductory/growth stage of its life cycle the number of consumers that have access to WWW is still relatively small. Various studies, including the recent GVUs WWW User Survey, http://www.cc.gatech.edu/gvu/user_surveys/survey-04-1996, indicate the current level of use. It is important to note, however, the steep growth curve of the number of consumers with WWW access essentially making published studies dated.

North America is more advanced along the life cycle of WWW, but other countries, particularly western european countries, are advancing rapidly. This rate of growth is going to be somewhat dependent on the changes in the existing telephone systems in countries outside of North America. Telephone charges directly effect the cost of the browsers' access to WWW and hence effect the level and type of use. The deregulation of the telephone systems in Europe in 1998 will accelerate this process.

The demographics of "typical" WWW users is most attractive. While the population may be relatively small, a review of the above surveys will reveal the high levels of discretionary income users have as well as their high level of education. They are also "innovators" in product purchasing; WWW users are therefore a very a ttractive target audience when marketing new products and technologically advanced products.

UNOBTRUSIVE ADVERTISING

Advertising on WWW is unobtrusive; that is, the user (browser) can choose what information s/he wishes to see. This is not the case with Email (junk mail sent to your Email in-basket), and Usenet News (broadcast advertisements posted to your news group cluttering up valuable discussions and waisting everybody's time).

Because advernets on WWW are unobtrusive, marketers need to develop new means to encourage their potential target market to access their information. Marketers must be sure that users are aware that they have a "Net Presence", that the latest information about their products is available over the Internet. Without an advernet plan, a marketer can only expect potential customers to find product information accidentally.

A solid advernet plan must:

• determine ways to promulgate pointers to the marketer's URLs where the potential customers will be exposed to them, both on WWW (via search engines, online catalogs and banner advertising) and in traditional media.
• employ graphics, sound, and video to enhance the potential customer's experience without inhibiting information access with "heavy" files. This encourages him/her to return to the site and Email the URL to all his/her friends!
• exploit the novelty of this medium by making a potential customer feel that s/he is getting the latest product information while using the latest technology.

INTERACTIVE MEDIA

WWW allows the potential customer either to browse or to make a focussed query for specific product information. With each query, the customer creates more information for her/himself, truly an interactive medium. The message the customer has received has been tailored precisely to his/her own needs.

Furthermore, with each query, the customer provides the marketer with direct and immediate feedback about the effectiveness of his/her advernet. A net-savvy marketer can learn where queries are coming from and get an immediate count of the number of people accessing their information. And, if the marketer is advertising a product that customers feel comfortable purchasing with credit cards, the number of purchases generated by the advernet is immediately apparent.

Since WWW facilitates a two-way flow of communication, the browser can communicate directly with the website. This is proving very effective with regard to customer service issues.

ELECTRONIC SHOPPING

Using a catalog on WWW to market and sell products is much more efficient than a regular mail order catalog. The catalog can be updated continuously, hence the marketer can, for example, be certain that a customer sees information about only items that are in stock. Because of the interactive nature of this medium, customers can request more detailed information of the products offered in the catalog, and ignore detailed information of other products offered that are of no interest to the customer. Once the customer is satisfied with his/her selection, s/he can make the purchase through this medium.

Issues regarding methods of payment need to be resolved before WWW becomes a significant channel of distribution. The issues revolve around developing methods to verify buyers as well as sellers and the safe transfer of money. These concerns should be resolved very shortly, but the perception that WWW is a secure environment for commerce will still take time to develop. To avoid these concerns, companies are closing the sale off-line, encouraging customers to use the fax or telephone to transfer credit card numbers or set up a customer account.

The customer's ability to create her/his own "electronic catalog" from a marketer's advernet and the marketer's ability to reach precise "niche" markets relatively inexpensively combine to allow WWW advernets to be a powerful marketing tool for larger purchases as well. For example, Volvo USA does not expect someone to purchase a station wagon over the net; however, their advernets allow them to provide customers with the precise information they need before they go for a test drive.

TIME AND PLACE UTILITY

Although the customer has control over when s/he reads the information, the marketer retains more control over the currency of the product information. Changes can be made immediately no excuses about holding up the Spring Catalog for that last bit of information.

WWW allows the marketer to display the information throughout the known universe, it is not limited by geographic boundaries as are other media. The limitation is access to WWW, which although at this time is problematic, it is attractive to marketers whose target market is the newly defined "Techno- Savvy". But the audience for a marketer's WWW advernets is expanding exponentially. More and more homes have personal computers. More and more of those households are subscribing to commercial services such as America On-Line. Microsoft is now in the marketplace as are major telephone companies such as AT&T. This competition can only help grow the size of the browser market.

PUBLISHING

Because the barriers to entry for WWW publishing are significantly less than traditional publishing, a number of small publishers are able to publish "webzines" that focus on very specific topics. The growth of these special interest webzines are a real benefit of WWW, but the reader must be very careful to qualify the source of information.

BEYOND BUSINESS

File formats

HTML

GIF

JPEG

MPEG

Sound files

PostScript Files

Useful Terms

Client or Browser

These terms mean the same thing. They refer to the program that you use to view documents on WWW. Generally this will mean Netscape, Mosaic or Internet Explorer.

Server

A server distributes documents requested by your browser (Netscape).

URL

This stands for Uniform Resource Locator. This is the Internet standard for addresses. It has the general form protocol://hostname/dir/filename. The major protocols are:

• HTTP://... This stands for HyperText Transfer Protocol. This is the form used for documents used by WWW, that is, documents which are formatted for display by your browser.
• GOPHER://... This stands for documents on a gopher server. Although these documents are available through gopher, your browser can also read them.
• FTP:// ... These are documents or files on an FTP server. Like gopher, these are available by other means, including WWW.

Double Click

This is a term referring to mouse operation. To double click something, you position the mouse pointer on it and then rapidly press the left button twice. If nothing happens, just try again.

Dialog Box

When using programs like Netscape, the programmers often put features into separate parts of the program to make them easier to work with. Dialog boxes are an example. Dialog boxes are the boxes which appear on the screen when you choose to execute certain commands. They are called dialog boxes because they request more information from the user, therefore starting a "dialog".

Extension

Filenames are quite often composed of two or more parts separated by a period or dot. The last part of the filename is usually a code for what the file contains, this is called the extension.

Home Page

A home page is a page where you start from. It will usually be the first page that loads when you start Netscape. It can also refer to the primary page of a website, i.e. the University of Delaware home page.