by Ernest von Rosen

June 21, 1995

Jean Karn has a small successful business importing handmade gift items from the South Western States. From colourful hand-woven throw rugs to rustic looking glazed pottery, her imported goods are sold for the most part by mail. Every six months she sends out a new copy of her catalogue which she advertises in the back of major magazines and from those responses alone she has been able to build a fairly substantial client list.

This year she has joined the Internet ride and has established a site on the World Wide Web. She went through the usual process of pulling together the text and pictures and even ventured into constructing an online order form with links to First Virtual so that her customers could pay for the items directly without having to worry about sending VISA numbers over the Internet. Advertising her business in the back of magazines was easy, deciding where and how to let people know about her business on the Internet is a whole new ball game.

Jean has several choices of WWW databases, webcrawlers, web robots, and discussion groups to which she could post her web location or URL ( "uniform resource locator"). The sites may vary, but the fundamental routes and functions remain the same.

There are three primary or functional communications mediums on the Internet. Electronic mail, newsgroups and the World Wide Web. The last has taken the Internet by storm and has been popularized by the media but the first two should never be underestimated. In fact it is the dynamic between all three channels that really sparks and interest and creates growth of a community on the Internet.

Actually, Jean doesn't really exist. She is an example of what you would have to do in posting your Web Site and the first ones would be the basics like Web Crawler (http://www.webcrawler.com maintained by America Online), Lycos (http://lycos.cs.cmu.edu), and Yahoo (http://www.yahoo.com). All of these sites have submission forms for new URLs though most of these will locate your site on their own automated weekly forays into the Internet. As well, there are submission forms for a "what's new" category where people can proudly proclaim their freshly staked territory on the cyberspace. The problem of course is how many of us spend time, daily time, chasing through the "what's new" category? Even then it is easy to get lost in the masses because there is nothing that emphasizes your business posting over the others. Still, everyone should post their URLs in these locations as a matter of course.

Some people obviously got fed up with chasing around and looking for individual sites to register with. They rolled them all up into one point of presence so that you enter the info only once, press a button and presto you are registered with the majority of sites and/or databases on the World Wide Web. Added value in action. Scott Banister has a very nifty interface called Submit It! (http://www.cen.uiuc.edu/~banister/submit-it/) which does just that. The site will post your URL to Yahoo, Starting Point, EINet Galaxy, Project DA-CLOD, WebCrawler, Lycos, WWW Home Pages Harvest Broker, NCSA What's New, and What's New Too!. The last one, at http://newtoo.manifest.com/WhatsNewToo/index.html is worth a visit as it is a good posting of newly minted WWW locations on the web. Their postings in turn go out to Yahoo What's New, Netscape What's New, Starting Point and Cool Site of the Day. These and other announcement services can be found listed at Yahoo (http://www.yahoo.com/Computers/World_Wide_Web/Announcement_Services/).

By definition people will now only find your site if they happened to choose the right keyword when using the majority of searchable databases. There are some databases, like Architext (http://www.atext.com/), which will let you do conceptual searches, but for the most part it is a hit or miss thing. That brings to mind two points to remember: when searching keep your words short as the search engines will do searches of partial strings, and when you create your pages include a commented section called "keywords" where you include any possible keywords that may relate to your site. Most databases will pick up on those tags and deal with them accordingly.

The real action is in the newsgroups. Definitely post your new site in "comp.infosystems.www.announce" (in fact there are several similar newsgroups-- just look for the keyword "announce") with a short description of what your online venture is all about. That will draw some attention. Then the footwork begins. You will need to find other discussion groups dealing with a related topic. Jean might respond to someone's question in the "rec.art" or "rec.craft" groups, and in the body of her message include her own URL for everyone to see. Interested readers could then visit her site. Human nature as it is dictates that the more flamboyant or outrageous your posting is, the more attention it will get. It is a fine line between being very annoying and speaking loudly and clearly.

One will not work without the other. Just posting your URL to databases and waiting for the crowd to burst through your virtual doors will be met with limited success. Discussions in newsgroups without a website to back up your position loses the client building momentum you could apply to your business. As has been said before, it is all about building a community in which your customers look forward to participating with your online ventures. A happy customer then is worth a thousand words-- each bringing you new business through the door.

Ernest von Rosen of netResults! consults on integrating businesses with the Internet. He can be reached at ernest@amgmedia.com or paged at (604) 631-9818.

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