Apart from any fair dealing for the purposes of research or private study, or criticism or review, as permitted under the relevant copyright, designs and patents acts, this publication may only be reproduced, stored or transmitted, in any form or by any means, with the prior permission in writing of the publishers.
30 Minutes ... To Master the Internet
Neil Barrett
As always, for Diana, Jenny and Vicky YOURS TO HAVE AND TO HOLD BUT NOT TO COPY The publication you are reading is protected by copyright law. This means that the publisher could take you and your employer to court and claim heavy legal damages if you make unauthorised photocopies from these pages. Photocopying copyright material without permission is no different from stealing a magazine from a newsagent, only it doesn't seem like theft. The Copyright Licensing Agency (CLA) is an organisation which issues licences to bring photocopying within the law. It has designed licensing services to cover all kinds of special needs in business, education and government. If you take photocopies from books, magazines and periodicals at work your employer should be licensed with the CLA. Make sure you are protected by a photocopying licence. The Copyright Licensing Agency Limited, 90 Tottenham Court Road, London, W1P 0LP. Tel: 0171 436 5931. Fax: 0171 436 3986. First published in 1997 Reprinted 1997, 1998 Apart from any fair dealing for the purposes of research or private study, or criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, this publication may only be reproduced, stored or transmitted, in any form or by any means, with the prior permission in writing of the publishers, or in the case of reprographic reproduction in accordance with the terms and licences issued by the CLA. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside those terms should be sent to the publishers at the undermentioned address: Kogan Page Limited 120 Pentonville Road London N1 9JN © Neil Barrett, 1997 The right of Neil Barrett to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A CIP record for this book is available from the British Library. ISBN 0 7494 2366 8 Typeset by Saxon Graphics Ltd, Derby Printed in England by Clays Ltd, St Ives plc
CONTENTS Introduction
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1 Getting Started An Internet computer 10; A connection to the Internet 11; Internet software 14
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2 The World-Wide Web What is it? 17; How does it work? 19; Searching the Web 20; Accessing a site 23; What do pages contain? 25
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3 Downloading Files File Transfer Protocol 28; Types of file for download 28; Protecting from computer viruses 32
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4 Using E-Mail and Accessing Newsgroups Addressing e-mail 35; E-mail etiquette and expression 38; Accessing newsgroups 42
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5 Establishing Your Own Web Presence What do you want your Web pages to achieve? 48; What do you want your Web pages to contain? 53; Where do you want to keep your Web pages? 56; Maintaining your Web pages 59; Protecting your Web pages 60; Summary 61
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6 Welcome to the Future
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The 30 Minutes Series The Kogan Page 30 Minutes Series has been devised to give your confidence a boost when faced with tackling a new skill or challenge for the first time. So the next time you're thrown in at the deep end and want to bring your skills up to scratch or pep up your career prospects, turn to the 30 Minutes Series for help! Titles available are: 30 Minutes Before Your Job Interview 30 Minutes Before a Meeting 30 Minutes Before a Presentation 30 Minutes to Boost Your Communication Skills 30 Minutes to Succeed in Business Writing 30 Minutes to Master the Internet 30 Minutes to Make the Right Decision 30 Minutes to Prepare a Job Application 30 Minutes to Write a Business Plan 30 Minutes to Write a Marketing Plan 30 Minutes to Write a Report 30 Minutes to Write Sales Letters Available from all good booksellers. For further information on the series, please contact: Kogan Page, 120 Pentonville Road, London N1 9JN Tel: 0171 278 0433 Fax: 0171 837 6348
INTRODUCTION The Internet; the World-Wide Web – or sometimes, just `the Net'. Business cards now all seem to carry electronic mail – or even `home page' – addresses; newspaper and TV adverts quote complex Web addresses, pointing the interested user into that cyberspace of multi-media, interconnected pages. Shop for PCs or software and one is inundated with Internet-related information. To the uninitiated, it's not only baffling it's also slightly frightening. Can it really all be mastered in just a 30 minute briefing? It can. Or at least, sufficient detail can be mastered to allow you not simply to use, but to begin to benefit from it. That is the aim of this book: To help business people gain an understanding of and access to the Internet facilities – not for leisure purposes, as is usually the case, but as a marketing, R&D or purely business tool.
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30 Minutes to Master the Internet
Let's start our briefing – our 30 minutes – by looking at what the Internet actually is.
What is the Internet? The Internet is nothing more than a network of computers. There – simple. Each computer within the Internet is connected to a set of others. This connection might be by means of a local network, interlinking the computers belonging to a single university or organisation; or it might be a wider network, linking computers and networks from several organisations together. The computers within the Internet are called hosts. Each host has an Internet-name – an address – that tells every other host system how to find it, so that messages (such as electronic mail) can be passed to it. An example of an address might be: uk22p.bull.co.uk This is the address of the host that I use. It has several components – just like a real-world address – separated by `dots'. The computer itself is called `uk22p'; the company is `bull'; it is in the commercial domain (`co') and is in the UK. Only the last two elements (`.co.uk') are `special' in any sense to the Internet: the choice of company name and of computer name within that company is entirely free – although it must be registered if the other hosts are to find it. The process of registration is discussed below. Other domains might be: `.edu.fr' – for a French university; `.org.de' – for a German non-profit organisation (a charity, for example); `.gov' for a US government organisation. 6
The technical details of how messages are actually routed from host to host are essentially irrelevant to us here; it is important simply for you to know that the Internet is a global connection of hosts, each one of which has an address that can be used to communicate messages to it.
Who uses the Internet? The Internet itself was built to allow American military organisations, defence contractors and universities to communicate. From there, it has grown to encompass universities, and then commercial, government and other organisations around the globe. There are estimated now to be close to 50 million Internet users – and the services are accessible in almost every country. Businesses use the Internet to advertise, to communicate and even to sell and distribute goods; Some large organisations use it to communicate with subsidiary companies and their suppliers; Students and schoolchildren use it to communicate and to gather information; Individuals use it to communicate or for their work. The key theme here, of course, is communication: the Internet is there to support electronic communication between computers around the world. If asked, most people would have said they didn't need such communication; now it's here, they find they can't do without it!
What does the Internet provide? The Internet itself only provides the means by which computers communicate – like a road system linking towns. The true interest, however, is in the information or services provided by those host computers.
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30 Minutes to Master the Internet
These range from simple electronic mail, to the multimedia presentations supported in the World-Wide Web. These will all be explained in later chapters. It is safe to assume, however, that anything in which one has an interest will be catered for within the Internet or Web. The question is, of course, what do you want? The Internet is perhaps the most important new business technology since the introduction of the postal service and the telephone. It's a simple mechanism that can allow you to learn about your competitors, examine new research or technological developments, communicate with your staff, and most importantly with your customers. You can make use of the facilities as: a research tool – to learn about new developments or products, competitors, market news and customer opinions; as a communication tool – to support correspondence with customers, suppliers or staff – either through electronic mail or the recently developed `Internet telephone' services; as an advertising/trading tool – to support a digital shopfront, selling goods or delivering information through World-Wide Web pages to customers on a global, 24-hour basis. In this book, we will assume that your use of the Internet will move through these phases, using the Internet first to research a new product and consumer opinions, and then to market and sell it throughout the world. As I explain how this works, I'll try also to give you an indication of the power it can also bring to your business – and the advantages that I hope you will find. You will already, I expect, know that there are now a great number of businesses already benefiting from the
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Internet; some of them might be your competitors already – but still others might find a way, using the Internet, to undercut your market, by bringing the Internet facilities to bear in strange and new ways. For example, the Internet already `threatens' the traditional postal, telephone and business communication markets; it could well go further, perhaps also threatening to alter markets in disciplines as widely disparate as: newspaper, magazine and book publishing; provision of on-going adult education; provision of banking or other financial services – even of gambling; television and video-based entertainment; music publishing and possibly performance. Even if your business is in an area that is not immediately affected and has no customers that currently use the Internet, it can still be of value: for communicating with your own staff; for data exchanges with suppliers; for learning about new research advances relevant to your industry; or even for learning about your competitors. But first, we must look at how to get you started.
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1 GETTING STARTED A new user to the Internet needs three basic components to get started: a computer; a connection to the Internet; suitable software.
An Internet computer The bulk of the Internet consists of the host systems on which the information and services are held. These are usually multi-user, UNIX machines – although a growing number of hosts are now based on Microsoft's Windows NT operating system. Users, however, most typically connect to the Internet by means of simple, single-user PCs via an Internet Service Provider (ISP – see below); more than half the current users connect this way. We will look at this first, simplest case before moving to the more complicated instance in due course.
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Getting Started
Basic facilities What facilities should the PC provide? There are several elements that are desirable: a fast processor, colour screen and free disk space. However, the only truly essential element is a fast modem. This is to reduce the amount of time spent waiting for files, messages or communications from the Internet – which is long enough! Modem speeds are quoted in `bps': bits per second; a `bit' is the basic unit of digital information – 1 or 0, off or on. Typical speeds are 9600 bps (very slow) through 14.4 Kbps (thousand bits per second) to 28.8 Kbps (the fastest currently). Some computers use even faster communication mechanisms – in particular, PCs can also use purely digital telephone connections (ISDN – Integrated Services Digital Network) that require no modems, only a so-called `terminal adapter'. These are therefore much faster, around 64 Kbps – although of course more expensive. Prices from BT in the UK, for example, are around £500, together with £400 for a connection, and a quarterly rental of £88; in the US, these facilities are much, much cheaper, at slightly more than a tenth of the UK cost! Call charges are usually the same as regular telephone lines, making them more efficient given the higher speed.
A connection to the Internet Having selected a suitable computer and a sufficiently fast connection, it is then necessary to find some means of linking this to the broader Internet. Recall, the Internet is a network of primarily UNIX hosts: it is necessary to find a means of linking the PC to one of these hosts, from which the services will become available. This first connection is most usually provided by an ISP:
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a commercial organisation selling its ability to provide this access, along with a set of support services. ISPs include organisations like Demon Internet, Pipex, CompuServe and over 2000 others – with prices typically around £10-£20 per month. ISPs advertise their services in the national and trade press, on TV and radio – and even on roadside bill-boards. Some go so far as to provide basic set-up software for free, with CD-ROMs or diskettes attached to PC, computer or Internet-theme magazines. How do you choose which one to use? Choosing an ISP An ISP will have one – or more usually, very many – host machines with dial-in modems or network connections. These are the other end of the telephone connection – receiving the warbling tones from your modem, and translating them into digital signals for their hosts – or they are the other end of the ISDN link. These hosts will typically provide storage space for electronic mail messages, for their users' own `home pages' and a set of related facilities such as advice, support software and appropriate security. The ISP in turn then purchases access to the Internet backbone: the ultrahigh speed network that connects the larger university, commercial or military systems together. There are now a large number of ISPs, offering a wide range of facilities over and above the most basic connectivity, at roughly the same price. For the business newcomer to the Internet, however, the choice of ISP comes down to just two basic, important questions: How `near' to the high-speed backbone is the ISP? What is the capacity of their systems?
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Getting Started
Smaller ISPs buy their access privileges from the larger, socalled `first tier' ISPs, such as PIPEX, Netcom or UUnet. The larger ISPs sometimes even own elements of the backbone itself, or at least lease them on a dedicated, fulltime basis from network providers such as BT, AT&T and Cable & Wireless. Where an ISP buys access from a first tier player, however, they are unlikely to have the same capacity available to them as their larger cousins; by choosing an ISP that is as close as one can afford to this backbone, it is possible to ensure the highest possible levels of performance and network capacity. The important question to ask is therefore this: `From whom is the ISP's own Internet access sourced and with what capacity?' This is also important for the second point. ISP capacity Any ISP will be providing network access services to a set of customers, not all of whom will require access at the same time. They will therefore choose to install and operate a small but sufficient set of high-speed modems or network access points (`ports'). There is nothing more frustrating than waiting to connect to the ISP – so choose one with the largest possible set of modems or ports relative to the numbers of users supported. The second important question to ask is therefore: `What connectivity capacity can the ISP guarantee to your business?'
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If your connection is via a telephone line and modem, it is also well worth considering installing a second line dedicated to Internet access – so as to avoid the problems of a permanently engaged telephone. Of course, for most businesses the spare line will probably already exist – although for accounting requirements it might prove a good idea to obtain a separate telephone number for this, so as to keep track of Internet-access expenditure. It is also advisable to run this second line independently of the main switch board, so as not to remove telephone capacity for your own customers seeking to contact you through old-fashioned mechanisms! Choosing an ISP is perhaps therefore the most important, Internet-related decision. Consider the following points while you are trying to select such an important partner: Discuss their performance with others in your industry, perhaps through a trade association. Check the computer trade press for `horror' stories about ISPs. Check that their contractual terms are appropriate for your requirements. Because the Internet access is for a business reason, it should be seen as a business tool – with the same assurances associated with any other tool upon which you have a dependency. With the right equipment, and an account with an ISP, all you now need is the right software.
Internet software In the early days of the Internet, it was necessary to have a wide collection of software: file transfer programs, electronic mail, news readers, etc. The popularity of the Internet – or at
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Getting Started
least, of the World-Wide Web – is in part due to the way in which all of this disparate access software is now made available in just one package: the browser. Web browsers A browser is a graphical user interface to the Internet. This simply means that the operations are displayed on the screen by means of pictures (so-called icons) that are selected and activated by using the computer's mouse. Instead of having to remember a complex set of detailed instructions, the user simply points and clicks. Although there are several browsers available from many manufacturers, two in particular dominate the Internet market today: Microsoft's Internet Explorer Netscape's Navigator. Netscape were the first to market with a browser, which they cleverly offered free of charge to non-commercial users – and at a very low price even to the commercial market. Despite Microsoft's on-going Internet-market push, the browser market is still very much dominated by Netscape; indeed, the company was founded by the inventors of the first World-Wide Web browser, called Mosaic. Four out of every five Web accesses are performed with the Netscape browser. However, competition between the two companies is now intense, with Microsoft providing Explorer as an integral part of new Windows releases. In this book, I will use Netscape Navigator (usually abbreviated to just `Netscape') for the examples, since it remains the most widespread, and is provided as the access software by many of the ISPs themselves; it's also the one that I use.
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As well as browser software, Microsoft, Netscape and others also provide the necessary server software – essential for the more complicated server and PC configuration discussed above. With software in place, a suitable PC and an account with the ISP of your choice, you're ready to `surf'!
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2 THE WORLD-WIDE WEB As we said earlier, the Internet itself is the means by which different computers communicate around the world. For the users, accessing the Internet now usually means accessing a page in the World-Wide Web. When you first run the ISPprovided browser, you will be connected to a Web page – probably a colourful, confusing and perhaps even fully animated screen provided by your ISP of choice.
What is it? The Web was developed by researchers at the CERN institute in Switzerland to make accessing information within the Internet-connected systems easier. In the Web, information is structured into pages. These pages can contain a wide variety of things: formatted text – ie, with titles, section headings, underlining and so forth;
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30 Minutes to Master the Internet
pictures – in a variety of formats, even including moving pictures; sounds – again, using a variety of formats; Java applets – small programs that `animate' the information; forms – that can be completed by the user and returned, perhaps requesting further services. In addition, the pages also contain links to other pages – either within the same or an entirely remote system. The links therefore create a complicated `web' or network – of individual pages, connected to one or more others. This linking between pages is called `Hypertext' and is perhaps the most exciting aspect of the Web. Each page has a `location' within the web of linkages, specified by a URL or `uniform resource locator'. This is the address quoted by advertisers, magazines or on the television, showing how to get to a particular organisation's pages. The URL has two elements: the address of the host on which it is stored; the location of the file on that system. A Web page specified as: www.bull.co.uk/internet/help.html is a file called `help.html' in a directory `internet' on the Bull World-Wide Web host (recall the explanation of Internet system addresses from above). The `/' character separates directory and file names in the predominant UNIX systems that are the Internet hosts. The `.html' part of the filename refers to the format (hyper-text mark-up language) in which the pages are described.
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The www element of the system name is a convention: the Web servers of almost all organisations are conventionally called www, although this is not strictly essential.
How does it work? The first thing to notice with the Web pages is that they are transferred to the local PC for interpretation. In the early days of dial-in computer systems (the so-called Bulletin Board Systems or BBSs) the local PC acted like a terminal to the host system: the PC was connected to the host, and ran its programs over the link. In the case of the Web, the local PC accesses the page just long enough to download it. The page contents are transferred to the local PC using a mechanism referred to as HTTP (Hypertext Transfer Protocol). When specifying a page, for example, it might commonly be written http://www.bull.co.uk/internet/help.html The http: element tells the browser and the Internet host to transfer the page to the PC, where the pictures or text can be displayed – or indeed, the Java program (the `applet') can be executed. The `//' simply acts as a separator between the protocol specification and the host name. Other protocols can be specified in place of the http; the most common alternative is ftp, which is considered below. This description of Web page access, however, raises an obvious question: If the connection is only needed long enough to transfer the page itself, why is it necessary to keep open the telephone call to the ISP's system, with the associated expense? The answer, of course, is that it isn't. However, connecting to the ISP's system is usually time consuming –
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30 Minutes to Master the Internet
even assuming that they have very many free modems or ports. Most users therefore balance the costs of remaining connected, against the wasted time of continually reestablishing those calls; they therefore stay connected, unless they are expecting to take a long time in reading and digesting a particular page. Having said that, there are now an increasing number of Web services that allow off-line browsing, in which the contents of several Web pages are transferred in a huge collection of data for casual browsing when disconnected. If connection costs are an issue, and browsing requirements can be precisely defined, this advance can be particularly useful.
Searching the Web Your first task with the Web or Internet is to begin to find the many locations that contain information of interest. That is, find those locations that have material of relevance to your business interest, whatever it might be. Because the Web can be used to satisfy so very many, different business requirements, we will take a somewhat artificial example: researching, marketing and then ultimately selling a newly developed computer game. Of course, your specific interest might not (and probably will not) be in this particular field. However, this example will allow us to explore a wide range of Web and Internet applications – and is one area in which very many of the Internet users themselves will surely be interested! Because the Internet contains so much information, finding the specific element you require is no simple task. In the early days of the Internet, simple indexing tools were developed, to try and help users to `navigate' through the mass of material. These still exist: tools such as `Gopher', `Archie' or `WAIS', that can be used to construct a list of
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interesting or relevant sites. In the main, however, as they have been superseded by the Web facilities themselves we will therefore concentrate on these. Finding relevant information is much, much more than a simple issue of following hypertext links. From whatever start point – home page – it will take a long time to find anything of relevance simply by following the initial, albeit interesting links. If your home page is configured for, say, Netscape's Web site – and your interest is perhaps in introducing a new computer game to the PC market (as in our example), there are no immediately obvious links on that initial Web page. However, you might already know some potential start point, such as an `on-line magazine': the Internet-published version of a paper magazine, or perhaps a purely electronic publication. Using a search engine Netscape and Microsoft both provide built-in links through a button to the several, popular search engines – with names like Yahoo, Excite or Magellan. These are Web hosts that contain large (very large) databases of the millions of Web pages accessible to them. On a regular basis, the search engine hosts explore the Web pages, updating the database with information as to what each host and Web page contains. The best of the search engines index the material carefully, and in some cases even provide an editorial comment on the quality of the site. In addition to the database, the sites also contain retrieval programs. These can extract Web pages from the database either by examining an index of categories (`Publishing: Magazines:PC:Games') or by a simple keyword search. The fastest way is often to give a keyword to the search engine.
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30 Minutes to Master the Internet
The search engines all have a text box into which the search terms – separated by spaces – can be typed. Some allow AND or other groupings to be used; most assume that any list of keywords can be used to find Web pages containing at least one of the terms. Thus, if you type: `PC Games Magazine' at the text box, the search engine will look for all pages containing `PC' or `Games' or `Magazine' (or `PC Games' or `PC Magazine' or ...). When the search engine has finished extracting the detail from the database, it will present a summary: `found 21,220 documents matching search terms'. This was the result when I ran this search at the time of writing. It is a lot of Web pages to explore. However, the engine will rank them according to how many references to the search terms they contained. It will present a list of them, giving the URL as a link that can be followed (by clicking the mouse on it) together with a brief summary of the contents. A suitable magazine with a name like `PC Games' will be close to the top of the list – hopefully! Bookmarking a page Once you have found the chosen site – and particularly if it was problematic – you won't want to spend a long time finding it again. Browsers therefore provide a memory facility – a Bookmark – that allows you to record the location of the current page. In Nestcape, for example, this is a dropdown option at the top of the screen. Bookmarks can be added very simply – and Netscape even provides a mechanism to allow you to organise your bookmark collections into a tree-like structure. This allows you to build up your own, private `Web' of interesting, relevant pages – mine, for instance, are divided into categories ranging from newspapers, magazines and on-line publications, through research sites relevant to my work, to
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the corporate and personal home pages of those with whom I most often communicate. To return to a bookmarked page, the menus at the top of the page also provide a `jump' facility to go straight there.
Accessing a site For most sites, accessing the Web pages and retrieving the information that they contain is simplicity itself: the browser simply displays the requested page, along with its contents, allowing you to move freely from page to page. Some sites, however, restrict the access generally provided – in particular, they might ask that you pay for access or (more commonly) ask you to provide them with information about yourself. This is called `Registering', and is an important part of Internet use. Why should a Web site owner – a publisher or whatever – wish to know who visited their pages? Well, in the case of most publishing or magazine sites, particularly of computerrelated material, it must be recognised that the Web site itself in effect undercuts the paper magazine – from which the publishers gain their profits. Despite these potential difficulties, the Web contains: newspapers (from US and UK broadsheets such as the New York Times and Daily Telegraph, to very many overseas publications); a wide variety of magazines (such as an electronic version of New Scientist, the Economist, etc); digital versions of some books. To offset the potential damage to revenues, publishers seldom in fact put their complete issues on the Web site, but do provide a search facility to get information from back
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30 Minutes to Master the Internet
copies – particularly in the case of newspapers, which therefore provide an excellent research source. These `private' search engines are used exactly like the broader Web search facilities, but of course only then provide pointers to stories within back-issues, or a limited set of external links to related sites. A newspaper story about a new car might, for example, include a link to the Web site of the manufacturer concerned. By requiring users to register for such access, the publishers can identify the types of user that they attract and can then use this information for: direct marketing – perhaps even selling the collected names to other companies; or sale of advertising space on their sites. We will consider the mechanisms involved in such advertising below. The publishers or Web site owners implement the registration process by providing a simple form – asking for a user's name, address, e-mail details, etc. Many registration pages also require a password to be chosen and used for all subsequent visits – this allows the publishers to identify users, and of course in future to allow some form of billing mechanism to be easily introduced! A word of warning: Do not use the same password for Web site access as you use elsewhere! It is simplicity itself to capture system passwords by establishing fake or pretend Web pages, and use the information to access (that is, to hack) the user's computer systems. Once having accessed the magazine, however, you can
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search through the archived material, hunt for specific articles, or simply read and (in the case of our example) get an idea of the types of computer games favoured by the readers. This sort of simple research, for instance, might allow you to identify currently popular interactive games – such as id Software's Doom – that can form the basis of subsequent research.
What do pages contain? Assuming that Doom, for example, was to be the model for the new interactive game you propose to market, the next step would be to search for pages that reference it. A popular game such as this, however, will produce many thousands of references, some of which may be from companies selling the game, or from the producers (id Software) themselves – but the more interesting ones will be owned and operated by the individual players. Pages on the Web reflect the publishing ideas of their owners – in part, this is the true power of the medium. They can contain attractive graphics, well designed and interesting; or they can be poorly structured and difficult to follow. They can contain text, links, sounds and references to other material. In paper publishing – or in other traditional media such as TV – the differences between corporate and personal efforts are usually all too obvious. Amateurs produce amateur-looking goods. However, within the Web it is difficult to distinguish: major corporations produce clumsy pages; and private individuals produce masterpieces. The Web really is a global medium with global accessibility. Because of this, you would be unwise to turn away from the private pages, particularly in the case of researching any aspect of a new product that might be discussed (or even sold) within the Web.
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30 Minutes to Master the Internet
Private or corporate Web pages will therefore contain a wealth of potentially valuable research data. This variety of interesting information is available on computer games; equally interesting material is available within Web pages discussing new cars, high-street fashion, domestic consumer goods, etc. Web pages are published by such a variety of individuals and organisations that, while some will certainly contain rubbish, there are still a large number that contain items of crucial interest to your business. Just within the context of computer games, for example, there are Web sites maintained by: researchers into virtual reality, computer graphics or animation techniques; computer game distributors in almost every country; magazines throughout the world carrying games advertising; Web-published market surveys and reviews, giving market sizes, spending power, growth analysis and so forth; and many, many others of relevance. Accessing these disparate pages therefore allows you to begin to undertake more detailed market research – albeit in terms of discussions and of Web-user opinions – or more technical research. However, if you were to do this, you would quickly find a reference to three things: 1. Files containing new computer games, pictures, relevant research papers and so forth that can be downloaded; 2. The electronic mail addresses of the individual users or researchers themselves; 3. Reference to one or more Internet newsgroups discussing the subject in much more detail. This, of course, brings your Internet exploration into new areas – moving outside the hypertext-based area of the Web, into the more fundamental aspects of the Internet itself.
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3 DOWNLOADING FILES One of the most important aspects of the Internet is the way it allows you to access and obtain files from very many host systems throughout the world. While the Web pages are, of course, downloaded to the local PC, these are usually (and ideally) quite small. By contrast, the files that are downloaded – by a process known as `File Transfer Protocol' (or FTP) – are often much larger, and contain a variety of things, such as: programs – from business applications to computer games; picture archives; print-ready, formatted text (described below); encrypted archive collections. These are the most common types of file accessed, although there are quite simply no restrictions that are imposed by the Internet itself – it is purely a question of what is made available by the users.
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30 Minutes to Master the Internet
File Transfer Protocol The majority of the Internet sites are now Web pages, accessed through the HTTP system described in the previous chapter. Even on these systems, however, there are files that are not structured using the HTML required for Web pages. And there are other systems that only provide access through the older and more limited FTP system. In this, the Internet user establishes a connection to the remote host – `logging-in' exactly as though they were a local user. Normally, the login is a so-called anonymous one – that is, the user's name is not required; instead, the login name is `ftp'. This anonymous login is achieved invisibly by your local browser software when you access an FTP site. Just like a normal login to a computer system, you are then given access to certain files and directories of files, that can be copied over the network to your PC. In this case, in place of the initial http: specifying the Web page, the location is quoted as ftp:, for example ftp://uk22p.bull.co.uk/public/sample.txt
Types of file for download The files that can be downloaded by FTP fall into three broad categories: those that can be displayed by the browser immediately; those that can be displayed by using a suitable `plug-in' component (see below); those that must be saved and accessed in a different way. Displaying downloaded files In the first case, simple text or picture files can be accessed 28
by FTP and then displayed immediately. Text files are often specified by a suffix `.txt' although this is not always necessary. Text files that are displayed by the browser are similar in many ways to the `normal' Web pages – but they will contain no clever formatting, pictures or hypertext links. You will find, however, that where the Web pages often take a long time to download, simple text files are very rapid. This is because even small Web pages require the transfer of a lot of data along network connections that might become very busy; by contrast, even seemingly large text files need only relatively small amounts of data to be transferred. Picture files are similarly specified by a suffix, but here the suffix is essential, since it is used to determine the way in which the file is displayed. The two most common types of picture file are GIFs and JPEGs – specified as `.gif' and `.jpg' respectively. These two formats represent a means by which colour images can be expressed as a sequence of numbers, usually then compressed so as to make the `image file' as small as possible. There are a large number of other formats as well (tif, bmp, cgm, pcx etc), but the high quality of GIFs and JPEGs makes them the most popular. Image files can be produced by scanning existing photographs – or they can even be produced on the computer directly by means of software packages such as Microsoft's PaintBrush. Throughout the expanse of the Internet there are untold millions of image files, ranging from small cartoons, through complex posters and pin-ups of movie stars. There are also, as the press so often report, very many pornographic images, some of them unimaginably obscene. Internet pornography With respect to the pornographic content of these image files, it is worth considering a few important aspects. The
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30 Minutes to Master the Internet
illegal pornographic images are as accessible as the more harmless – and for some of these, simple possession is itself an illegal act. It is important to ensure that such image files are never stored on your computers – either by yourself or by those working for you. There are software tools (available from both Netscape and Microsoft, as well as the ISPs) that can be used as filters along with the common browsers to restrict access to sites known to provide such images, and it is also important periodically to check that no such files are present. This might seem like an intrusion into your staff's private affairs. However, if they use your business computers for such access, you will be held at least partially responsible alongside them. Check and double-check that such files are not accessible and are not stored on your systems. Certain Internet-accessible image files are obscene. It is illegal to possess them, even if they are not intended for distribution or for sale. Ensure that filtering software is in place, and ensure that your staff know that possession of such images is an illegal act.
Displaying files using plug-ins Files that can be displayed immediately by the browser – but which are not accessible using HTTP directly – very often come from older host systems, or from so-called archives. There are also files that can be displayed, but only through the use of a `plug-in'. This is an additional element of software, that can be used by the browser to `display' the file contents, when the file is not in the normal HTML format. Plug-ins can usually be found either at the Netscape or
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Microsoft home pages, or by accessing the Web sites of commercial providers. Often those Web pages, using a particular format, will also provide a corresponding link to a site at which the appropriate plug-in can be obtained. As an example, along with the image files there are also often sound files that can be played on the modern, multimedia computers. These are often files in `.wav' format – the sound waveform, that can be played. In this case, a plugin component to display the file contents has to be able to translate the waveform into sound – and there are many tools to do just this. There are also two very popular text formats that are common within the Internet, particularly used by research organisations and universities for papers and publications. These are Postscript and PDF. Postscript is a language used for describing text and textual formatting to a sophisticated printer. A postscript display program can interpret those commands, and draw the result on to the screen, so that a browser plug-in can show the text directly. PDF (which stands for `Portable Document Format') is very similar, and can equally be displayed on screen. File names are `.ps' or `.pdf'. These two formats are preferred by researchers and by universities because of the greater sophistication over the simple HTML formats used in `ordinary' Web pages. These documents look just like `proper' printed material – with two or more columns, tables, diagrams, footnotes, titles and so forth. If you are retrieving and accessing Internet-published research material or complex documents, you will certainly need plug-ins for these formats. Some plug-ins are offered free-of-charge – and of course then come without commercial support arrangements; others are charged for, but are then supported. In the case of simple document display utilities such support is, however, seldom a requirement.
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30 Minutes to Master the Internet
Downloading file archives If no plug-in or display option is available when you start to download a file, the browser will instead give you an option to save the file to your local hard disk. This will be the case if you are downloading a program – which will have a suffix like `.exe' for example – or a larger archive. Archives are collections of several files, combined into one large file by an archive application. The two most popular archivers in the Internet are pkzip and Gnuzip – the file suffixes are `.zip' or `.gz'. Encryption tools are also increasingly popular, to protect files from interception by hackers (or in the case of illegal material, the police). A common archiving tool providing such encryption is PGP, with file suffix `.pgp'. As with the plug-ins, it is of course necessary to obtain the necessary archive applications in order to unlock the archive, expanding it into the original collection of files. Again, these can be obtained by downloading from any one of several sites – simply use the search engine to look for `pkzip' or others as appropriate. To expand the archives, create a directory for the files; place the archive therein – and then run the archiver. If you are unsure how to use it, these utilities often have very explicit help, which usually can be found by: pgp /? or pgp -help or similar combinations.
Protecting from computer viruses Computer viruses are a widespread problem, and the Internet is a very polluted environment. Before accessing
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the Internet – and certainly before running any downloaded programs – make sure that you have an anti-virus procedure in place. This is more than simply having anti-virus software installed on your system; it is also necessary to have: a regular back-up procedure, copying important information safely; a `clean state' for your system – that is, a configuration and set of files that you know to be free of computer viruses; the most up-to-date version of any anti-virus software used, to ensure that all prevalent viruses are considered; a strongly enforced discipline to use the anti-virus software every time a program is downloaded. The first two points here are necessary to ensure that your business can recover in the unfortunate event of a virus attack; the second two points are to try and make sure that such an attack never occurs.
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4 USING E-MAIL AND ACCESSING NEWSGROUPS Electronic mail – of varying degrees of sophistication – is supported by very many office automation suites. Microsoft Office includes the `MS Mail' application; there is also ccMail, UNIPLEX mail and a host of others. Each allows complex documents – sometimes even including pictures, spreadsheets and multi-media presentations – to be distributed. Internet e-mail, by contrast, is an altogether less ambitious affair – allowing simple, textual files to be exchanged between Internet users. This simplicity, however, need not stop the exchange of equally complex documents – by means of special encoding techniques. Preparing and transmitting e-mail is supported completely by the modern Web browsers – that help you to specify who the message is for, and provide a text editor to allow you to
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Using E-Mail and Accessing Newsgroups
create the message itself. Accessing the news-groups is equally straightforward. There are several important aspects of Internet communication beyond this, however, that we must examine: addressing e-mail to other users; establishing your own e-mail address; `netiquette' and expressing one's meaning; transmitting complex documents; using the newsgroup structure effectively.
Addressing e-mail Electronic mail passes through the Internet, from a sender to the recipient. For this to work, however, it is necessary for the intermediate systems to know where the e-mail file is to be sent – that is, where `is' the recipient? This is the email address for the user. Just as every World-Wide Web page has a location – an `address' or URL – so too do the users of the Internet, provided they have bought an e-mail facility from their ISP. There are two components to this address: the address of the host system providing their e-mail facilities – and to which they connect; the login or user name of that user on the host system. Recall from above, the address of the host that I use is `uk22p.bull.co.uk'; my login identity on that system is `n.barrett' – my e-mail address is therefore:
[email protected] The `@' symbol is pronounced `at'. Not all user names are quite so obvious as mine. Some 35
ISPs still use essentially numeric identities, or variations of name and number – for example, users in CompuServe might be identified as: 17001,
[email protected] and in America-on-Line as:
[email protected] This is determined by the operation of the e-mail host system itself – and CompuServe and others are rapidly moving towards providing more `user friendly' e-mail addresses. Your own e-mail address You will need your own e-mail address, and there are several options. Let us assume that: your name is `A.N. Other'; your company is `ABC Ltd'; you have an Internet account with `ISP Ltd' in the UK. The majority of ISP organisations that provide e-mail facilities support the following types of e-mail address:
[email protected] – ie, a personal e-mail account;
[email protected] – ie, a corporate e-mail account;
[email protected] – ie, a hosted e-mail account. Or, you can register your company name as an Internet domain: abc.co.uk All domain names are registered with the name servers by 36
Using E-Mail and Accessing Newsgroups
a US organisation called InterNIC; you can register the name yourself – by contacting the organisation through e-mail – or ask your ISP to perform the registration for you. Most Internet users register their domain name via their ISP as part of the establishment of their Internet e-mail presence; I would advise you to do likewise. It is also worth bearing in mind the following: Although you own your company name, this does not automatically give you ownership of the corresponding Internet domain name – these are assigned on a `firstcome first-served' basis. Register your preferred domain name as soon as possible so as to ensure it is not taken by some other company. The actual registration with InterNIC is free – although your ISP will probably charge for the registration process as part of your contract with them. This nominal handling fee – covering duplicate name searches, for example – is seldom more than a few hundred pounds. Your e-mail address would then probably become:
[email protected] This is also useful for when you establish your own Web pages (discussed below) and wish to establish a Web host name such as: www.abc.co.uk Make sure you tell people what your e-mail address is – perhaps by including it on your business cards, letterhead, advertising, etc.
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E-mail etiquette and expression You can, of course, use Internet e-mail exactly like normal, business mail – or like the internal memos sent within companies. In which case, the conventions associated with those forms will apply. You can also, however, use Internet e-mail to communicate with a much broader community of users – perhaps as part of the formal market research for the computer game discussed above. In that case, it will be necessary to understand the way in which those users read and appreciate e-mail. Electronic mail is essentially an informal communication medium. Exchanges are not encumbered with the stylistic constraints of regular business correspondence, but it would be a mistake to assume that they are entirely free-form. Because the exchanges are purely textual, it is very difficult to ensure that the real meaning behind an exchange is indeed received. It is all too easy to use words or expressions that allow the recipient to take offence. To avoid this, a number of e-mail conventions have come about – conventions that will be seen as even more important in the context of newsgroups, discussed below. The most obvious convention is that of unsolicited email, as mentioned above. While unsolicited paper mail (the Internet term is snail mail!) might be irksome, it is free to the recipient. By contrast, Internet users must – in most cases – pay for their Internet access, and for the time taken to download the e-mail message. If this is a long, unwanted – or worse, unnecessarily commercial – message (considered below) it is far, far more annoying. Expression and emphasis Beyond this practical example, there are several other important points. First, the convention is that lower case
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Using E-Mail and Accessing Newsgroups
is used throughout e-mail, unless you want to SHOUT. Shouting is usually taken as an expression of anger – if this is what you intended, then fine – otherwise, try only to use lower case as you would with a normal, written letter. Second, emphasis can be added by using one of two characters. Bracket an italicised word with `*' and an underlined word with `_'. Thus * italics* for italics; and _underline_ for underline. Third, feel free to describe emotions or expressions throughout the text – this gives the reader a guide to the intended message: `that's how it works (he pauses and smiles) at least in theory!' And fourth, there are a number of character combinations – called emoticons – that can be used to give meaning within a text, such as: :-) happy :-( sad ;-) happy wink :^0 shock Commercial commitments If you are planning to use the Internet to further market research for a new game – as in our example, discussed above – these rules of expression and of netiquette are particularly important. There are other aspects of e-mail, however, that should also be considered:
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E-mail might seem as informal as a telephone conversation – but it is recorded! An informal but recorded e-mail exchange might well include a commercial commitment, without your intending it to do so. If you are using Internet e-mail as one of several business communication tools, you should be aware that it therefore has the same status as a more apparently formal medium – such as a business letter. Many e-mail users have found themselves writing things in an e-mail message that they know would not be acceptable in a business letter, or that would constitute a formal agreement. Their impression is that e-mail is much more informal, but the message can be every bit as binding! An element of advice here: every user can attach a standard footer to each piece of electronic mail – this is called a signature. I would recommend that, as your corporate policy, this includes some standard phrase such as `the expressions in this e-mail are the private opinion of the author, and do not represent a commitment on the part of the company.' In this way, it becomes a question of positive choice whether or not to view an e-mail correspondence as binding and official – and requires that this signature text be removed. Another element of advice, however, if you do want an email communication to be part of a binding commitment: Make sure that the e-mail is copied to an independent, third party (such as your solicitor or accountant) and held safely.
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Using E-Mail and Accessing Newsgroups
This is so that, in the event of a contractual dispute, an unchallengeable version of the e-mail message is held. In some cases, one or other party in the dispute might believe that the other has perhaps altered the e-mail message, changing contractual terms. A safely stored, canonical version can remove this worry. General business etiquette Once you recognise e-mail as business correspondence, several other elements of general business etiquette are seen to become important. These might seem to be trivial, or obvious – but they are ignored by the vast majority of Internet-using businesses: Check your e-mail on a regular and preferably frequent basis. Reply to e-mail promptly, but in a considered manner. If an immediate reply is not possible – because of the complexity of the request, for example – then give some response, perhaps advising the sender that you will make a more complete reply in a specified timescale. If you are away on holiday or travelling on business, arrange for your e-mail to be collected and responded to by a colleague – or through an automatic reply system (`sorry, I'm on vacation until the end of August'). Electronic mail – whether used to discuss new product options with potential customers, or for correspondence with employees – is a very powerful business tool. It should, however, always be seen as just that: a business tool. E-mail is, in general, ludicrously cheap when compared to standard, snail mail – but it is still just one of several communication media of vital importance to your business.
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One very useful thing it can do is allow more complex documents to be transmitted.
Accessing newsgroups Electronic mail is, as discussed above, an essentially private communication between two or more users. Larger collections of recipients for a given message can be specified – so-called mailgroups – but in most cases e-mail serves the same purpose as a letter. The Internet also, however, supports far larger discussion groups, called `newsgroups', in which arbitrarily many users take part. Each of the Internet hosts runs news software that allows users to access the very many newsgroups, reading or submitting their own articles to an ever growing collection. Newsgroup structures There are over 10,000 newsgroups, covering subjects ranging from politics to astrology, from computer science to faith healing, from adventure games to sex. These can all be accessed by means of the standard browser mechanisms, which provide a graphic display of the newsgroup structures. It is worth noting that – whatever your business or commercial interests – there is certain to be one or more newsgroups discussing issues that are relevant to it. Newsgroups can therefore form a particularly useful source of information, news or views. The newsgroups are organised into several general categories, including: comp: computer science topics, including encryption, programming languages, operating systems, etc; sci: general science and research topics, such as chemistry, biology and so forth;
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Using E-Mail and Accessing Newsgroups
biz: general business topics, including discussion of markets and company performance; rec: games, recreation, hobbies, etc; alt: `alternative' topics – covering a wide range, from computer games to sexuality. Within the general groupings there are very many subgroups – and sub-sub-groupings of these. To return to the computer game example used above, if your business was interested in the Doom game, you would find it discussed in newsgroups such as: alt.games.doom and in several others as well. Some of the newsgroups are administered by a moderator – who acts as an editor. By far the majority of groups are, however, completely free-form, with no control beyond that which the users impose on themselves. Reading news articles Reading a news article is simplicity itself. Your browser presents the general, tree-like structure of newsgroups and sub-groups. It is simply necessary to `open' the group – by clicking the mouse on it – and select the article to display. The browser will allow you to read it, and then present you with an option to move on to the next article. Often, articles are connected by explicit `threads' – these are the threads of discussion and argument running through the material as users reply to previously posted articles. No matter when you first access the newsgroup, remember that you are always coming in part way through the conversation. This last point is important, because sooner or later you will feel a need to make your own contribution.
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Newsgroup netiquette As with the e-mail case, netiquette is particularly important. Reading the FAQ is just one part of newsgroup politeness – other important elements are: Do not post blatantly commercial articles – for example, expounding on why your product would solve a problem currently under discussion; Do not cross post articles to several newsgroups – especially not commercial articles; If you quote another article, do not reproduce the whole thing, just that part to which you are responding – this saves on other users' download time/cost; Do not post private e-mail without the author's explicit permission to do so – and do not cross post an article from one newsgroup to another without the author's permission; Do not issue offensive, insulting articles – called `flaming' – even if in reply to flames at yourself. It is not good commercial practice. These are all – quite obviously – the application of good business sense and politeness in the Internet context. That is, these points are obvious – but are nonetheless all too often overlooked. Spamming The commercial use – or rather, abuse – of newsgroups has come to be known as `spamming'. Strictly, this originally meant sending the same message to some – or even all – newsgroups. It has now come to mean using newsgroups for general advertising. We are all familiar with junk mail, and the Internet newsgroups have their share of it. In the Internet context,
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Using E-Mail and Accessing Newsgroups
however, it is doubly annoying – since you have to pay to download it. Such newsgroup advertising – where the commercial use is blatant and unimaginative – is very unpopular and unwelcome. As such, it is probably counterproductive for your business. Don't do it. Clumsy newsgroup articles advertising your company or its products are not welcome and should not be submitted. Respect the `natives', and use newsgroups as they were intended: as a discussion medium or as a source of information.
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5 ESTABLISHING YOUR OWN WEB PRESENCE Let us recap what you should now be able to do within the Internet. You will have an account with a reputable, businessfocused Internet Service Provider, allowing you to search and access Web pages for your research. You will have an electronic mail address that you will have published on your business cards, letterhead and perhaps even in your `regular' media advertising. You will be following – and perhaps even have contributed to – interesting and relevant newsgroup discussions. You already, therefore, have an Internet presence – but what about a Web presence? Establishing a Web presence can allow you to use the global facilities yourself – for advertising, publishing, or as a means of making more general information about your
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Establishing Your Own Web Presence
company or business available. You should, however, approach this process with care if it is to have real business benefits – rather than being simply a case of `trendfollowing'. In your use of the Web and the Internet to this point you will already have noticed a large number of corporate Web pages. Some of these will have been stored and accessed via host systems named after the company itself, eg: www.abc.co.uk others perhaps accessed as Web pages held within an ISP's Web site, eg: www.isp.co.uk/abc Some of the Web pages will have seemed slick, exciting and ever changing; others will have been poorly constructed, boring – and perhaps even broken. Some of the Web pages might have been informative and interesting – perhaps offering additional information and links to relevant parts of the Web; others will have been nothing more than on-line brochures, meriting one and only one visit. In planning and envisaging your Web presence – your collection of pages, links and services – it is vital to keep both the good and the bad examples in mind. More than this, however, it is important to look at five central questions: 1. What do you want your Web pages to achieve? 2. What do you want to put on them? 3. Where are you going to keep them? 4. How are you going to maintain them? 5. How are you going to protect them?
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What do you want your Web pages to achieve? This is perhaps the most fundamental and important of questions that a business can ask itself about a Web presence. All too often, Web pages are produced for reasons that have little or nothing to do with the business itself and the process of implementing the pages driven by the content question (2 above). For you, however, the Web page is to be a business tool – as much a part of your organisational strategy as newspaper advertising, running a fleet of delivery vehicles, or maintaining sponsorship deals for local sports teams. In examining the Web page plans, ask yourself this key question: What pure business benefits am I looking for? At the simplest level, the Web page is an advertisement, aimed at those people using the Internet as a medium – just like newspaper or other advertising. This is true even when the page is simply being used to disseminate information – say, a research paper, or company data: the Web page is advertising your business – either explicitly, or through a message implicit in the competence with which a research paper or whatever has been developed. As such, the Web page has three key objectives, which are entirely divorced from the issue of what it might contain: 1. it must attract viewers – not just once, but repeatedly; 2. it must retain viewers; 3. it must form a part of the selling process. Attracting viewers Attracting viewers to a Web page is not the same as having an attractive Web page. You can have designed and implemented the Internet's all time best Web page – but the
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Establishing Your Own Web Presence
Web users must choose to visit it. They must therefore know about it – and they must be given some reason then to attend it. The most obvious and easy ways to attract viewers to your Web page involve explicit advertising of it. If your `normal' advertisements refer to the Web pages, interested customers might choose to visit. Your Web pages should also be registered and indexed within the many search engines – a process that your ISP will help you to achieve. Alternatively, it is possible to include so-called `banner adverts' within other, already popular Web pages. You might already have seen these advertisements during your initial exploration of the Web. The search engines themselves all contain such simple, small advertising banners. These are links to the Web pages of the advertised product or service. The search engines ensure that the banners displayed are relevant to the search being performed, so there is more chance of `capturing' a user's attention. As well as the search engines, other popular pages can be sponsored, with the advertising company paying for the privilege of the space and the link. Costs vary tremendously – just as with regular media usage – but are similar to the costs of `normal' advertising. If paying for advertising space and links on other `interesting' sites is not part of your plan, it will be necessary to make your Web site interesting in itself. Sites that attract interest in this way are those that contain clever graphics, games, cartoons, free software, interesting screensavers – even, it must be admitted, pornographic images. These are all options – but beware of them. You want your site to reflect and sell your business, not itself! It is a business tool, not a hobbyist's tool. Beware of making your site interesting but irrelevant to
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your main business, just for the sake of attracting a large number of visitors – who might not then ever plan to buy your products or services. It is also important to look not just at attracting first time visitors, but also repeat visitors. In selling, it is necessary to have an on-going relationship – a dialogue – in most cases. This means you need to attract people back to your Web pages in the future – so as to continue and develop the relationship with them. The best – perhaps the only – way of achieving this is to have a site that is alive. That is, a Web site that changes and evolves on a regular, frequent basis. Ensure that the Web pages are up to date, and that they contain new news about your business – or the most current research report, product announcement, cartoon or whatever. Retaining viewers Having attracted viewers to your Web site, it is important to keep them there – long enough for the key objective to be achieved (that is, to sell your company's expertise or products to them). Sites that attract viewers through `gimmicks' (cartoons, screensavers, etc) will find this the hardest part of the process: viewers will arrive at the site, download the cartoon and then leave! A relevant, changing site will tend to retain viewers, but it is also worth considering what things will tend to dissuade viewers from staying: excessive use of intensive graphics – these are time consuming to download and usually irrelevant; pages that don't work – perhaps with links to nowhere, or that are badly written; sites that are simply corporate brochures on-line – these brochures are likely to be held anyway by existing
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Establishing Your Own Web Presence
customers, and seldom sell themselves to potential new customers. It is also worth considering the structure of the Web page hierarchy. Large pages take a long time to download – but once accessed, navigation within them is easy. Short pages are quickly downloaded, but might then frustrate users by requiring them to download more and ever more pages before they find a relevant and useful item. The only answer is to ensure that an appropriate structure is in place, suitable to the information you want to provide. This is considered in more detail below. A piece of sensible advice, however: Periodically, access your own Web pages, over a modem link at a busy time of day. Explore the pages as you would expect a potential customer to do. If you find this access frustrating, difficult or timeconsuming, so too will your customers! The selling process Very few organisations examine and justify their Web pages in the context of the selling process – that is, not just the way in which the Web can be used to sell your goods, but rather the way in which your existing selling process can use the Web. This is an important distinction. Some goods – such as the computer game example we discussed above – can be sold entirely within the Web. Your Web site can advertise the game, accept credit card orders (subject to the security considerations addressed on page 61) and allow the customer then to download a file containing the game. In other cases, the Web page can be used just like a catalogue,
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with pictures of the goods that can then be despatched to the customer. However, in most other cases, selling of your business's services or goods takes place within the `regular' sales process: advertising, sales visits, relationship building, persuasion, etc. A dialogue between your business (or salesman) and the customer. Your Web page can help this but a badly designed page can equally well damage it. For example, the Web page can contain unlimited quantities of information about your products or services, providing a potential customer with far, far more than can be contained in even the best corporate brochure. It can contain sufficient information to allow the potential customer to recognise that the specific service he believes he needs is not in fact offered by your company! Now, a visit by your sales staff – or even a simple telephone call – might have allowed you to persuade the prospect that your alternative service was what he did really require. Many customers do not fully understand their own needs, and very often the major task of a salesman is to listen, explain and help the customer to understand the basic issues. A Web page – even the best – cannot do this. But what is worse, a Web page can sell what you do do so well, that you get no chance to discuss, persuade and understand other prospects. Make sure that your Web page fits into the sales process that works for you already – don't redesign a winning process simply to allow you to make use of the Web. Use a Web page to entice a more structured, persuasive sales visit – if indeed that is the way in which your selling
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Establishing Your Own Web Presence
process works. If your business can already – or in fact wishes to – use a simple, catalogue-style selling mechanism, then fine; otherwise, make sure the Web page is informative and useful, without undermining the existing sales procedures.
What do you want your Web pages to contain? You will have a series of guiding principles for the contents of the Web pages themselves. There are then, however, a number of specific items that should be built into the Web pages, regardless of the actual information that is to be held. General contents and layout – Do's First, the Web pages will form a linked structure of information. This might include a set of pages describing your company, press releases, descriptions of products or services, etc. In the most comprehensive of collections – and the only limit is your imagination and the storage space available – these can be very complex. It is therefore important to provide some form of navigation mechanism: links, within every single page, back to the top-level structure, or into the top pages of the individual collections; perhaps even a search engine. Second, each page should clearly indicate your company identity, along with the copyright information. This is so that when – as will inevitably happen – your pages are referenced from outside your Web structure, it is still obvious that they belong to you! Third, each page should also contain an e-mail contact – usually a so-called webmaster (described below) – that viewers/customers can contact. This is important for several reasons, not the least being to allow users to report
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any errors (or worse, hacking) that might otherwise be overlooked and damage your site. Fourth, each page should reflect your corporate image. That is, if you have a specific logo, or a typeface, or perhaps even a colour that is strongly identified with your company, use this throughout the structure. Make sure that the pages all look as though they came from the same place. Some Web sites, for example, have a consistent layout, with pictures all of the same size spaced down the left-hand margin and text in a single column to the right. These simple steps can provide a sensible, workable series of Web pages. Provide a `navigation' mechanism through links to the top pages. Ensure each and every page contains your company name and a copyright. Provide a webmaster e-mail contact on every page. Give each page a consistent identity that reflects the corporate image. The Web page must be maintained and regularly updated. Some Web sites therefore include a date, showing when the site was last changed. This can be useful, in justifying a return visit by a particular user; it also has the beneficial effect of forcing you to update regularly. And don'ts What should the Web page not contain? I would strongly advise against excessive use of graphics. While the Internet does provide the means by which you can illustrate Web pages in an imaginative and colourful way, the images can take a long time to download. This can be very frustrating, especially if they add nothing other than colour to a given page. Remember – your objective is to sell (your
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company, services and products) by means of this mechanism, not to create the fanciest, flashiest Web page in the Net! If it is necessary to provide graphics, don't do this in the very first page, which is after all the Web-version of your corporate headquarters' reception. If this first page takes a long time to access, potential viewers will inevitably be put off – and will of course then go elsewhere. Instead, put graphics in subsequent pages – and perhaps even warn viewers that the page is an image-intensive one and that patience might be required. At the topmost level of your Web structure, you might even find it useful to give a set of options – allowing viewers to select, for example, a text only set of pages, or perhaps a set of pages suitable for slower access. Do not overload your Web page with graphics just because you can! Do not use a visit counter unless you have a good reason to do so. Specific contents Once the general content and structure are clear, the Web pages will have to be populated with your specific information. To achieve this, it is necessary to have some content in mind – that perhaps already exists – and to translate the content into the HTML format. The actual format and nature of the specific content will vary from business use to business use. In the case of written documents – perhaps research papers or similar – there are Web publishing tools available from a variety of vendors. Microsoft, for instance, provide tools as part of their Web server suite to translate documents or presentations – and there are many others.
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The issue of presenting the information and the Web pages themselves is reasonably simple: the server software is designed to achieve this; it is no longer necessary to be an HTML programmer to build good-quality pages. Far more important is the question of ensuring that the pages are relevant, interesting and that a process is in place to ensure that new pages are produced on a regular basis. What does this mean? For most early players on the Web, the pages were produced not by a marketing or publicity department, but rather by technicians who knew how the Web worked, but not necessarily the best way to get the company's message across. The new tools – and the whole focus of this book – allow the Web pages to be designed and (at least partially) implemented by business people: marketing managers, PR experts. Expert help might still be necessary, of course – but this can as easily be sourced from the newly emerging Web publishing companies and consultants, or even from the very many advertising agencies themselves – or internally, provided that the essential, business focus is retained.
Where do you want to keep your Web Pages? Once the design and content of the pages have been determined, it is then necessary to have a host system available on which they will be stored and accessed. There are three obvious potential places to be considered: 1. on your ISP's host system; 2. on a host system rented from an agency; or 3. on your own Web server. Wherever the pages are to be stored it will be necessary for your domain name to be appropriately registered – either by you or by your ISP.
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Using your ISP's host system Many of the Internet Service Providers now make storage space available to hold their users' own Web pages. Some ISP contracts include a limited amount of storage as part of the basic offerings – and in any case, it is usually possible to rent additional space. This has several advantages: The ISP carries responsibility for ensuring that the host system continues to operate, giving your business the 24hour availability required. The ISP's access security ensures that the Web pages are not tampered with – or that if they are, the ISP's insurance covers any damage. The ISP will also often be able to provide expert help in designing and constructing the Web pages themselves. In this case, you will also need an appropriate domain name pointing to the pages. The easiest for the ISP to establish is often a hosted series of pages, ie: www.isp.co.uk/abc Assuming, however, that you have already registered your own domain name, the pages can be identified simply as: www.abc.co.uk There are many advantages to using your ISP to store your Web pages and only a few drawbacks: The ISP will certainly charge for the service – and might even charge based on the number of accesses your Web pages experience. You are at that point tied-in to the particular ISP, and will find it more difficult to change suppliers if required. 57
For most newcomers to the field of Web publishing, advertising or trading, however, this option will probably – and in my opinion, correctly – be seen as the preferred one. Using a Web agency The next alternative is very similar, but involves using the services of an agency – usually the very one that perhaps helped to design your pages. Again, there are many advantages here. Most obviously, you need no involvement in the day-to-day managing of the site, and with suitable contractual terms can be assured of a good service. As with the ISP option, however, there is the worry of tie-in – and perhaps also there might be a sense of duplication of effort. After all, if you already have a relationship with an ISP (for e-mail, etc) it might seem unnecessarily wasteful to have your Web access via another provider. The only guidance here can be to do with the contractual terms. If the agency is cheaper or offers a better (ie, more comprehensive) service, it might be preferred. Using your own Web server The final option is perhaps the bravest, and involves using your own Web server. Brave simply because it involves the greatest direct commitment on the part of your business: your Web site will be visible globally, 24 hours a day; do you have the expertise to ensure it continues to operate? You will need to install adequate security (addressed below); you will need a very high-speed computer to cope with the remote access requirements; you will similarly need a high-speed network link – perhaps even more than the ISDN-line discussed above. You might, in fact, need to lease a permanently open network link – such as the 1.5 Mbpscapacity `T1' links used by the smaller ISPs. You will
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need to maintain the site; update the Web pages while ensuring continuous access to the servers. This is a heavy commitment – and not one for the novice Internet user. I would tend to advise you against this option. That being said, it does have some advantages. If you have the facilities in place anyway (Web server, security and network link) it is certainly cheaper than paying somebody else – ISP or agency – to do it for you.
Maintaining your Web pages Once your Web pages are in place and hosted on some system, it is necessary to keep them in good order. Don't under-estimate the amount of effort that this will require – not simply to ensure that the content changes frequently, but also that the hypertext links and general structure are well maintained. That is, a technical and a content-related challenge. Many organisations find that the technical maintenance is best achieved by appointing an individual (a so-called `Webmaster') with specific responsibility for just this. The Webmaster must be accessible by e-mail, and must make the commitment to respond to communications – either by escalating a request through your company, or by handling it his or herself. Perhaps the most important task of the Webmaster is continually to monitor the Web pages themselves – checking for any errors (or much worse, any hacker-induced changes!) and for any pages that are out of date. Beyond this technical challenge, as discussed above, it is also necessary to establish an on-going procedure whereby the Web pages are developed and changed. This ensures that the site remains fresh and attractive. While this can all be achieved by an agency under contract, it is still important that some responsibility at least is accepted by your company: it is, after all, your business that is on show.
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Notice also that this responsibility is not necessarily a requirement on the Webmaster: his or her task is more usually technical rather than content-focused. A recurring error in business use of the Web is a focus on the technical medium rather than upon the commercial message. Advertising and more traditional PR are commonly the responsibility of the companies' marketing departments; the same should be true of their Web presence!
Protecting your Web pages Related to the maintenance of the pages is the question of protecting them. The Internet is, it must be admitted, a `hostile environment'. Along with legitimate users and companies, it also plays host to the hackers: digital vandals who seek any and every means to access and damage the Internet computers. Hacker activity is illegal. But that doesn't stop it happening – and is no consolation if your Web pages are modified by an untraceable individual. Instead, it is necessary to protect your Web pages and information as best you can. Again, this can be made the responsibility of agencies or of ISPs under contract – but you should still be aware of the issues. There are several aspects of importance: protecting your servers from illegal access; protecting Web pages from illicit modification; protecting sensitive data – such as credit-card or order. details. Web servers can be protected by the use of `firewalls'. These are special-purpose, secure computers that filter all access from the Internet, ensuring that the access is legitimate and harmless. Your ISP or Web agency will assuredly use a firewall; if you wish to run your own Web host, ensure that
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you too have a firewall in place – and take expert advice on how it is best configured. The best protection against illicit modification of Web pages is continually to monitor them – either look at them yourself on a regular (and preferably frequent) basis, or install software that examines them and alerts you if they are changed. Credit card orders Just as with the registration process described above, it is easily possible to install Web pages that sell goods to your customers by presenting them with a form to complete. One entry in this form can be their credit card details – which can be checked before the goods are delivered. If a hacker can intercept these details, however, they can then steal and reuse the credit card numbers. To protect from this theft, the credit card companies, the Web browser manufacturers, and the growing number of Internet-hosted banks now use encryption. In this, the information passed over the Internet is scrambled in such a way that it cannot be read even if it is intercepted by the hacker. As with many other aspects of the modern Web system, the browser and Web server software now comes with easily installed options to support this high level of security. If your business use of the Web calls for commercially sensitive data to be transferred, you really should use these encryption facilities.
Summary Establishing a Web presence can be an exciting and potentially very attractive option but several important points must be borne in mind: Ensure that the Web site has executive-level commitment.
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Drive the Web-presence as an important marketing activity. Ensure that the Web-presence fits your company's selling process. Keep the Web pages fresh, well structured and in-line with your corporate image. Avoid gimmicks, intensive graphics and those features that would dissuade potential customers. For preference, use the facilities of your ISP or an agency unless you have adequate in-house resource and expertise. Your lodestone in planning, justifying and building the Web site should always be the key question given at the beginning of this chapter: What pure business benefits am I looking for?
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6 WELCOME TO THE FUTURE In just 30 minutes, we have introduced you to the most fundamental concepts within the Internet and World-Wide Web. There is much that has not been covered – from the advances in Internet telephony, in digital cash, in encryption technologies, Java applet facilities, hacking, fraud, and the use of software agents. For this oversight, however, I make no apologies: you have the knowledge now easily and quickly to search for and retrieve the most comprehensive descriptions of these and a thousand other subjects – all at the click of a mouse. The Internet and Web really are the media of the future: global, publicly accessible – and containing more useful information than a hundred reference libraries. You have learnt what the Internet and the Web are: A global network of interconnected host systems, offering pictures, text, applications and communication facilities to around 50 million users.
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You know what you need in order to access those facilities: A PC or server computer, with a high-speed connection to a reputable, trustworthy and businessfocused ISP. And you know what the important elements are for exploiting your own Web presence: An interesting, marketing-focused Web page, that is well maintained, free from cumbersome and unnecessary graphics, and that forms a part of your corporate sales process. Welcome to the marketplace of the future. Good hunting, and happy surfing!
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