Navigating the Web

Unit 2-1

Managing the Digital Enterprise

By Professor Michael Rappa

Information Abundance

• The abundance of information readily available in the Web– Information used to be limited– Costly and time-consuming to create and disseminate – In little more than a half-decade we have gone from

information scarcity to an overabundance

• Universities traditionally have depended on collecting and sharing information in libraries as a way to conserve resources.

Web Navigation

• Individuals– Need to understand how to find the

information we seek, with reasonable ease, speed, and accuracy

• Businesses on the Web– Can and will be found by potential customers

who seek their goods and services.

Search Engines

• Web directories and search engines– An indispensable feature of the Internet

• A point of entry to the web– Google– Overture– Yahoo

• Knowing how they work is key to understanding how to search and how to be found on the web

Finding A Business on the Web

• Adding ".com" to its name – This is not necessarily always the case

• The web community begin to recognize domain names as an area of concern for trademark law– A company's trademarked name could be

reserved to be its domain name

Search Problems

• Becomes trickier when searching for a product or service instead of a particular company

• Yield hundreds of resultant links – More than we have the time or energy to

investigate

• Search accuracy, in terms of the actual number of useful sites, can be very low

The Quality and Integrity of A Dotcom Business

• Present new challenges in evaluating– Brick and mortar– Click and mortar– Dotcom

• Basic information such as the location and ownership of a virtual storefront can be difficult to determine with absolute certainty

Key to Being Found on the Web

• Picking the right "keywords" • Using meta-tags • HTML links along with graphics

• Positioning them correctly on your web pages

• Submitting only key pages to search engines

Other Steps

• Be sure that your trademark process and web address strategy are coordinated– Not only will it help customers find your company on

the web, it will preempt opportunists from misdirecting your web traffic

• Do not discontinue the registration of a domain name that your company has actively used in the past even if it is no longer needed

• Maintain the old address and simply redirect traffic to the new domain name or the company's main site.

Apple ComputerCompany name:

http://www.apple.comhttp://www.applecomputer.com

Product names:http://www.powerbook.comhttp://www.quicktime.comhttp://www.firewire.comhttp://www.webobjects.comhttp://www.applescripts.comhttp://www.ipod.comhttp://www.imac.comhttp://www.macintosh.comhttp://www.powermac.comhttp://www.ibook.com

Marketing trademarks:http://www.thinkdifferent.com

VolkswagenCompany name:

http://www.volkswagen.dehttp://www.volkswagen.comhttp://www.vw.com

Product names:http://www.passat.comhttp://www.vwbeetle.comhttp://www.beetle.comhttp://www.jetta.comhttp://www.cabrio.comhttp://www.vwgolf.comhttp://www.eurovan.comhttp://www.gti.comhttp://www.vwbug.com

Marketing trademarks:http://www.radiovw.com