EP: A Marketers Guide to the Internet

A hands-on manager's perspective on
developing effective marketing sites on the World Wide Web

Presented by Jack Powers at the @ Cafe, East Village NY
June 5, 1996 | June 20, 1996

Updated June 19, 1996

Organic Online, hot San Francisco developers, and their portfolio.
Razorfish, hot New York web developers, and their portfolio.
Edge Marketing, a small web developer in Tonowanda, that publishes its price list.
Alpha Omega Solutions, a bad example.
The List catalogs over 2,800 Internet Service Providers, many with web hosting services in addition to access accounts.
A U.K. index to Free Web Space Providers for low budget do-it-yourselfers.
Tripod magazine's Member Signup gets you registered so you can Build Your Own Homepage as part of your magazine subscription.
Bearlife, a home made web site.
Bob Hollinger's investment firm business card page.
The Armani Exchange, net-delivered pages without reader options.
The Disney site combines selling, marketing communictaions, promotions and institutional advertising in an interesting visual package.
The Amazon book store database offers some of the best web selling features.

"Repurposed text" from a magazine article shoveled onto a web page.
Magazine text re-edited for the web.
Hyperlinked text developed for the web.
Spawn, a GIF guessing game home page.
Accucolor, a printing company, uses the web for marketing its services.
Campbell's Soup's home page shows nine buttons that drill down the directory tree.
Boston's BayBank puts the whole site on page one with fast-loading text, not image files.
@Toyota offers dozens of editorial features in addition to the product pitch in an on-line magazine format.
HomeArts' home page describes each feature with a cover line and displays both server-push animation and a Java tickertape routine.
CMP's TechWeb is an ad-filled daily newspaper that grabs readers with a dozen strong editorial and advertising pitches.
Hot Wired's carefaul attention to structure keeps readers focused and in control.
The New York Times on-line is almost identical to the print version.
The Wall Street Journal matches the tone of the print version while not duplicating it exactly.
Time Magazine's cover tempts the click, but the major feature is re-purposed content.
Dateline NBC's page has dozens of links, most of them given twice, but little sense of editorial direction.
The Spot is one of the web's oldest HTML soap operas.

RESOURCES

The Web Style Manual from Yale University's Center for Advanced Instructional Media provides an academic perspective on interactive page design.
Vanderbilt University's Project 2000, an academic research program on marketing in computer-mediated environments, including a paper by Hoffman, D.L. and T.P. Novak, "Marketing in Computer-Mediated Environments: Conceptual Foundations."

STATIC ART

The Computer Art Page from Walden Group shows the wide range of effects that web-based artwork can deliver.
Womenslink starts with a large shaded GIF file, but once it's cached on your PC it comes to the screen faster.
L'eggs Women's In.Site uses tightly packed images but scatters too many around the page.
MasterCard's complex, shaded graphics are hard to compress, and the biggest image is not even in the first screenfull.
Kinko's home page graphics don't specify height and width so the page waits for the image.
VISA tempts the reader with contests, rewards and stories on page one.
Big Book creates customized maps from its company database.
The Lycos Road Map feature does the same for any U.S. address.

LIVE VIDEO

SOUND

Aeon Flux on MTV's site complements thr TV show with video and sound.
Listen to Insect noises
WCBS-88 New York offers streaming Real Audio downloads for headlines, weather and sports.
PC Week Radiobroadcasts daily reports of what's new in computer technology using RealAudio 2.0.
On Computers is a RealAudio webcast of Gina Smith's weekly computer show CYBERLIFE on the Discovery Channel.
Radio HK is an Internet-only radio show.

ANIMATION

VIRTUAL REALITY

Honda's Odyssey mini-van site offers Quicktime VR panoramas of the car's interior.
Proteinman's Top Ten VRML Worlds.
Apple's Quicktime VR Samples.
Girls Brigade sells clothing from a Quicktime VR catalog.
Xu, Jiawei's Page presents an animated walk-through of a VRML environment.
Virtual Reality Vision uses VRML models for architectural and product designs.
RandyLand contains original 3D graphics plus VRML worlds with stunning animation.

APPLICATION FORMATS

The IRS Digital Daily uses Adobe Acrobat PDF files to re-purpose printed material on-line.

CAPTURING DATA

Cyberhunt/Sandbox is an interactive thriller that requires navigating the Internet.
Before you can download the Honda video sneak peek of a new sports utility vehicle, the web site asks for data.
TV Guide offers chat rooms, bulletin boards, crosswords and giveways.
American Express University captures card application data on-line.

READER REGISTRATION

SITE SEARCHING

The New York Times classified advertising section is available for searching over the web.

LIVE DATA

VISA computes the current time in six cities around the world.
Federal Express links its package tracking system to the web so customers can monitor shipments themselves.
Firefly, a state-of-the-art music database, matches readers' preferences across thousands of recording artists.
Auto Line, an online dealership, lets users search through the current inventory database for a car.
ESPN SportZone combining space ads with a $4.95 per month pay tier for more timely data.

TRANSACTION PROCESSING

Travelocity offers on-line airline reservations and travel features.
Speak To Me offers products that talk themselves into "virtual shopping carts."
Above and Beyond Mall .
MovieLink, a complex and constantly updated multi-city movie database with transaction links and several different kinds of ad placements.

GAMES SOFTWARE

ELECTRONIC COMMERCE

World Wide Web Shopping Directory with over 400 shopping malls.
Internet Shopping Network receives more than 10,000 vistors per day, 500 of whom make a purchase.
Media Mart sells CDs.
Bookport delivers books on-line.