Advertising
Advertising on the Internet is just coming into its own. There is a big advantage in that the actual ad need only be a teaser to bring people into the Web site, not a self-contained document, like a print ad. Paying for advertising, if done correctly, is the best way to bring large numbers of interested people through your Web site. Advertising on well-traveled sites like Yahoo!, CNN, or Infoseek is very effective (though expensive). A better approach to online advertising is to determine which sites are most popular with your target clientele, and advertise there.
Back Button
The most well-used option on most people's browser is the Back button. It allows the user to leave the present page and go back to the one before it. Many Web sites have built-in Back buttons or Home buttons, but it is generally faster to use the browser's Back button because the browser will usually not have to access the information again, but can simply pull it out of the disk cache.
Button Bar
A button bar is a graphic that acts as a directory to other pages in a Web site. The ShopSite button bar provides links to the most often used ShopSite screens (Pages, Products, Orders, etc.) from any other page.
You can make a button bar for your store, either with graphical links or with plain text links and put it in the store header or footer so it will appear on every page.
Checkpoint
A checkpoint is a question and answer pair that you define. When you try to access certain ShopSite screens, a dialog box will present the checkpoint question and ask you to provide the answer. This keeps unauthorized people from accessing confidential information.
Clickable Image
Just as you can use text as a link to another document or section, you can also use an image as a link. Sometimes the image will have a colored border around it, more often it will not (it's an option that the HTML author can choose). An image map is a single image that contains multiple links.
Control-Click
A control-click is the generic term used in these help resources to refer to selecting multiple items in a list within ShopSite. For example, rather than having to edit each product one by one, you can select several or all of your products, then edit selected fields, like price and name.
The key that you hold down may not be the control key. The key you should hold down while clicking with the mouse depends on your operating system and which items you would like to select.
| Platform | Select | Select |
|---|---|---|
| Windows | Click the first item you want to select, then Shift-Click the last item | Click the first item you want to select, then Ctrl-Click additional items |
| Macintosh | Click the first item you want to select, then Shift-Click the last item | Click the first item you want to select, then Command-Click additional items |
| UNIX | Click all of the items that you want to select | |
It is possible to link from standard pages to custom pages by using extra standard pages as placeholders.
1. For every custom page that you want to link to from standard pages, create a standard page and give it the same file name as the custom page. For example, if you have a custom page with sporting goods on it and you name that page sports.html, create a standard page and enter sports.html in the File Name field. You can name the page (with the Page Name field) anything that you like, but it is best to use a name that describes the contents of the custom page.
2. In the Link Location field of the Add a Page screen, check the box next to the standard pages that you want to have links to the custom page.
Don't fill in any other fields for the standard page; it is only a placeholder and will never be seen.
3. Repeat the above steps to create placeholder standard pages for each custom page that you want to link to.
4. Publish your store. ShopSite replaces the links to the standard pages with links to the custom pages of the same name.
Database
A database is a collection of information stored in a computer. ShopSite uses databases to store information about products, pages, and orders. When you make changes in ShopSite, you are making changes to the databases. When you click the Publish tab, your Web site is regenerated based on the data in the database. It is the database format that allows you to make a few small changes that alter a great many pages in your site, without having to edit each page individually.
You can upload previously existing data into your ShopSite store to save time. You can then use the ShopSite software to modify and configure that data for inclusion in your store.
Digital Offer
A digital offer is a description of an item for sale that is sent from a Web store to the Commerce Center when a customer clicks on an Order or Buy button. It contains the kind of information a cashier might need when ringing up a sale at a department store: the price of an item, the quantity sold, a short description of the item, whether the item is taxable, etc. Digital offers are protected from tampering in several ways, so that there is no chance for someone to create a fake digital offer or change the price in a digital offer and still have it accepted by the Commerce Center.
Domain Name
A domain name is the `.com' address of your store on the Internet. The real address of your store is an IP address, but it is much easier for customers to remember your domain name.
Forms
Fill-in forms are the boxes, buttons, menus and assorted places to enter information on line. ShopSite is full of them. Some browsers, old ones mostly, do not support fill-in forms correctly.
FTP
File Transfer Protocol (FTP) is a method of transferring files that is much older than the World Wide Web. Before the Web, it was the primary way people transferred files. You can access FTP servers with your Web browser and download files from them, but to upload files to a remote server and perform functions like renaming and creating directories, you will need special FTP software. You should be able to get the software from any large shareware archive like shareware.com. If you're using Windows, try out CuteFTP. If you're using a Macintosh, try Fetch.
GIF
Graphics Interchange Format was invented by CompuServe and is the standard for images on the World Wide Web. GIF images can be identified by the .gif suffix. JPEG, a compressed image format, is also accepted by all but the most antiquated Web browsers. GIF files can be made transparent, so that the background shows through, or interlaced, so the images first appear fuzzy and then become sharper as the site finishes loading. See the graphics page for more information.
Hits
When speaking about a site's traffic, people often use the term 'hits'. Hits are a good way of measuring how close a server is to reaching its capacity, but are not very useful as a practical measure of how many people are visiting a web site. To find out why measuring hits is an inaccurate way of calculating traffic, read Hits vs. Visitors.
Host
A 'host' in Internet terminology is a server that is owned and operated by an ISP. You, as a seller, buy hosting services from the ISP. The HTML files that make up your store reside on their server, and so does the ShopSite software that you use to access your store and orders.
Hotlink
A hotlink (or just 'link') is a word or image within the text of a Web site that links to another document, another section of the same document, or another Web site. It is usually a different color from the body text, and, depending on the browser, the user's mouse cursor changes shape when over a link.
HTML
HyperText Markup Language. This is the code that World Wide Web documents are written in. A Web browser interprets this code to decide where and how to display images and links in a Web document and how to lay out the text. Web browsers are not standard, however, and some support certain HTML tags in different ways, or don't support them at all.
If you view the source of a Web page (look on the View menu of your browser) you can see what an HTML document looks like. All HTML code is enclosed in the < and the > characters. For example, the HTML code to make this link to the Netscape home page looks like:
There are several online guides to help you learn basic and advanced HTML. Some of them are listed under Using HTML in ShopSite.
Image Map
An image map is an image on a Web page that contains several different links to other Web documents. If you click on a particular area of the image, it will take you to a new page. The ShopSite button bar is an example of an image map; it is one image, but each button links to a different area of ShopSite.
Creating a clickable image map is not incredibly difficult, but your server's administrator may have to help you do it.
Images
Images are what makes the World Wide Web different from other methods of presenting data on the Internet. Most Web browsers are capable of reading only two image formats: GIF and JPEG. As a rule of thumb, GIF format is better for drawings and logos, and JPEG is better for photographs. On the Web, an image can be made into a link so that clicking on the image is the same as clicking on highlighted text.
Internet
The Internet is a worldwide network of computers. Thousands of separate computers, called servers, are connected to each other via high-speed phone lines, and are constantly exchanging information. Millions of people are then connected to these larger computers and are able to participate in this exchange of information. Commonly, people connect their personal computers to the servers with a modem. Some of the information that passes between these servers is e-mail, Web documents, downloadable software, and online databases.
Internet Directory
There are many large directories that catalog and classify Internet sites. Many of these sites, like Yahoo! and Infoseek, also contain search engines. If you are looking for a specific type of site, these are a good place to begin. To increase traffic to your store, you should register your store with these directories. Submit it is an easy way to take care of this
Internet Hosting Service
Providing space on an Internet server is known as hosting. Most companies or individuals who have Web sites do not own servers. Maintaining an Internet server is time consuming and requires a lot of know-how, and most of the sites on the Web do not need to have a dedicated server. It's better to share a powerful server with other Web sites. Commercial sites requiring a secure server would have to cover the additional expense of setting up security on their server if they had their own. Most ISPs and IPPs can provide hosting services.
Invoice
A record of the fact that an order has been fulfilled, either partially or in its entirety. Invoices are created for each action on an order. Credits, cancellations, backorders, and shipment are just some examples of actions that generate unique invoices.
IP Address
When you use the telephone system, you enter in numbers that determine whom you call. On the Internet, combinations of letters, numbers, and punctuation make up an IP address, which is like an Internet phone number. The letters in a domain name represent an IP address. For example, openmarket.com stands for 12.11.162.110. You can type those numbers into your Web browser to visit the Open Market home page.
Internet Presence Provider
An Internet presence provider is an individual or company that provides not only server space for people to set up Web sites, but designs and usually maintains the site as well. Their fees range from under a hundred dollars to tens of thousands of dollars for their services, depending on the size and complexity of the site, and many other factors. The prices that Web designers and 'Internet consultants' charge can vary wildly. Be a shrewd consumer.
An IPP generally offers more services than a hosting provider, although the definitions are similar.
Internet Service Provider
An Internet service provider, or ISP, generally provides e-mail accounts, dial-up access to the Internet via PPP, access to newsgroups, and sometimes Web site hosting for individuals and businesses. Quality, cost, and breadth of services vary tremendously, so shopping around is important. To compare different ISPs available in your area, check The List™.
JPEG
In the early days of the Web, browsers could only display images that were in the GIF format. But GIF only supported 256 colors, and large or detailed GIF images meant large files, which are slow for users to download. The JPEG format was created, which allows images to be displayed in millions of colors and compresses image files so that they takes up less disk space. However, most image special effects, such as transparency and animation, are only supported by GIF format. In general, JPEG is better for photographs, and GIF is better for drawings and logos.
Logo
A logo containing the name of a company or store has a tremendous effect on a site's overall look. Hiring a graphic designer to create a professional-looking logo is well worth the money. On the Web, logos should generally be saved in GIF format, unless they contain photos, in which case they should be saved in JPEG format.
Mailto Link
A mailto link is a special kind of hotlink that, rather than bringing up another Web page, brings up a window in your browser that allows you to send an e-mail message to someone. Most Web sites have a mailto link to the site's Webmaster. All commercial sites should have at least one mailto link so that customers can contact the company via e-mail. Making a mailto link is easy -- just insert the following HTML into your store:
<a href='mailto:your.e-mail.address'>your.name.or.other.highlighted.text</a>
Mosaic
Mosaic is the venerable Kung Fu master of Web browsers. Netscape drew from its design and Microsoft actually bought a version of it to use as the basis for its Internet Explorer browser. It holds a place in the annals of Internet history, but no further development is being done and it currently lacks important features that Netscape Navigator and Microsoft Internet Explorer have.
My Store
The My Store button opens a new window and displays your store. When you are done making changes and would like to see how your store looks, this is a quick shortcut. If you click on the My Store button and you have not updated your store, you will be asked if you would like to do so. The only reason to say no is if you haven't made any important changes, and you don't want to wait for your store to generate.
Netscape Navigator and Microsoft Internet Explorer are the two leading World Wide Web browsers. The fierce competition between them has benefited consumers by compelling both Microsoft and Netscape to constantly strive to improve their products.
With each release, the browsers have included more features and more bells and whistles, however, Internet Explorer has not become quite as bloated as Navigator, and therefore requires less RAM to run. Navigator, on the other hand, still beats Internet Explorer feature for feature, but the hard reality is that many features are little used, and some are nearly useless.
Most important, the browser wars have all but pushed out the myriad other browsers that once cluttered the field. This is good, in a way, because many of the other browsers did not support important formatting and functional features like security, tables, frames, and JavaScript. Without security, for example, doing business on the Web is a risky venture. For another browser to enter the melee, it would have to meet a certain minimum requirement to pose any threat to the big two.
To the question "which browser is better" we can only say that you should probably judge for yourself. Each has a slightly different "feel" and interface. You may find that you prefer one over the other. You can download versions of both programs for free at the following locations:
Download Netscape Navigator at http://home.netscape.com. Download Microsoft Internet Explorer at http://www.microsoft.com/ie.
Online Services
Since the early days of modems, there have been companies that link up people from around the country in virtual communities. The ones that charge a fee for the services are known as online services. America Online, CompuServe, Prodigy, and The Microsoft Network are the best known, and there are others out there. With the proliferation of the Internet, these companies began offering access to the members of their internal networks. That Internet access has grown steadily, and is now generally on a par with what is available from local Internet service providers.
Order Form
An order form is a feature, much like a virtual shopping cart, that lets customers browse through an online store's selection and 'pick up' items as they go along, without having to enter payment information until the end. The order form in ShopSite is sophisticated, configurable, and secure, allowing the seller to personalize the customer's experience, advise the customer of important details, and ask for specific information.
PPP
A PPP connection is the most common way for users to access the Internet from their home computers. It allows computers to connect with an Internet server, and, using various specialized applications, use e-mail, browse the Web, FTP, gopher, telnet, and other Internet functions.
Use record names if possible. If you have multiple products or pages that have the same name, or if you like to change product or page names frequently, you must use record numbers. Note that if you delete your entire database and reload it, there is no guarantee that the record numbers will be the same.
To find the record numbers for products and pages:
1. Click either the Pages or Products button on the ShopSite button bar.
2. If viewing products, click the List All Products button.
3. Use your browser's View Page Source feature to see the source code for the page.
4. Scroll down to about half way down the page source, until you see a <select> list and its associated <option> tags. There is one <option> tag for each page or product in your store, and the value parameter gives the number for each record.
Security
Information flows freely on the Internet, and it's relatively easy for someone to tap into some of that flow and retrieve information. Your e-mail can be read without you knowing it, and the information that you submit and retrieve from Web sites is similarly vulnerable--unless you're using security. The Netscape and Microsoft browsers allow for information coming into and going out of your computer over the Internet to be encrypted, so that if it is intercepted it will be illegible. That way, confidential information like credit card numbers can be transmitted securely. To indicate a secure page, both Netscape Navigator and Microsoft Internet Explorer show a closed lock at the bottom of the page, like this: 
Server
A server is a computer that is connected to the Internet and is specially configured to 'serve' files to other machines connected to the Internet. In other words, a server hosts Internet sites. Every Internet site you can access through your Web browser is hosted on a server somewhere. Most servers are powerful computers hooked up to the Net by super-fast data lines.Many servers are on T1 lines, which transfer data at 1.544 MB per second. To put that into perspective, the average modem transfers at 28.8 K per second, which means that a T3 is 1553 times faster than a modem.
Shareware
Shareware is software that is available to be freely distributed by friends or associates, or for online download. Many programs are only available for free use during a trial period. If you decide to use it often and keep it, you are expected to pay a shareware fee. Information about registering and paying fees is distributed with the software.
Shopping Cart
A shopping cart is a feature, much like a virtual order form, that lets customers browse through an online store's selection and 'pick up' items as they go along, without having to enter payment information until the end. The shopping cart in ShopSite is sophisticated, configurable, and secure, allowing the seller to personalize the customer's experience, advise the customer of important details, and ask for specific information.
ShopSite
This is the screen that ShopSite merchants enter in order to make changes to their store's pages and products, receive orders, and check statistics. The first page of ShopSite contains a menu of all ShopSite functions. The ShopSite button bar appears at the top of every page in ShopSite and can be used as a launching place to edit the store quickly and easily.
SKU
SKU stands for Stock Keeping Unit and is a number associated with a product for inventory purposes. In some countries it is more commonly called a 'stock code.' Even if you don't track your products by SKU you can use this field as a kind of second name field. You can choose to display the SKU field in your store or keep it hidden (see Edit Page Layout). If it is hidden, it will only be displayed after the product has been ordered.
You can also configure the search function to allow customers to search for product SKUs.
SLIP
A SLIP connection is a way to connect your personal computer to the Internet via phone lines. It is neither as good nor as popular as a PPP connection.
Store ID
The ShopSite software keeps track of your store with a store ID, a single-word code, usually based on your site's URL.Hosting Service
Submit It! is a Web site that helps you submit the URL for your store or any Web site to various search engines and Internet directories. It is available at http://www.submit-it.com/
" var Suffix = "Suffix
A suffix is a group of letters appended to a file name that specifies what kind of file it is. Bluesky.jpg is a JPEG (picture) document and '.jpg' is the suffix. Index.html is an HTML (Web) document and '.html' is the suffix. Suffixes are usually very important and if you omit them or make a typo, the file will not be recognized correctly.
The most common suffixes that you'll see on the World Wide Web are:
.html or .htm Web documents
.jpg or .jpeg graphics files, usually photos
.gif graphics files, usually line drawings
T1
A T1 line is a high-speed connection to the Internet that is available for several hundred dollars per month through your phone company. Most Internet servers are connected by a T1 or faster connection.
TCP/IP
TCP/IP is the protocol that computers on the Internet use to communicate with one other. Web browsers, e-mail programs, FTP software, news readers, telnet applications, and other Internet-specific programs all make use of TCP software.
Thumbnail Graphic
A thumbnail is a small graphic in a Web site that a customer can click on to see a larger version of the same graphic. Thumbnail images load much faster than their larger counterparts.
Thumbnail images are especially useful if you are using More Information pages for your products. On the page where you list the products, you can display a thumbnail image of the item and make it a hotlink to the More Information page, or just to a larger image of the product.
To make an active thumbnail using HTML:
+ Create full-size and thumbnail versions of the image that you would like to display.
+ Use the following HTML code to make the thumbnail a hotlink to the full-size image:
<a href='images/your.large.image.gif'><img border=0 src='images/your.small.image.gif'></a>
URL
Uniform Resource Locator: This is the code that identifies the location of an Internet resource. All URLs for nonsecure World Wide Web resources begin with http:. For example, the URL for CNN is http://www.cnn.com. Most Web browsers will display other Internet resources, besides Web resources. For example FTP (URLs beginning in ftp:), gopher, (gopher:) and newsgroups (news:).
Virtual Server
A virtual server is like a dedicated Internet server, but instead of being an individual computer hooked to the Internet to serve files, it is a portion of a computer, which is configured to act just like a server. It is virtually indistinguishable, and the only drawback to using a virtual server is that you have to share bandwidth and processor power with other Web sites, but in most cases there is little to no difference. The big advantage to a virtual server is cost and support. It is much less expensive, and somebody else is maintaining the hardware.
Visitor
Each person who visits your store will be logged in your store's Reports. For more information on how ShopSite calculate your site's traffic, see Hits vs. Visitors.
Web Browser
A Web browser is software that translates HTML files into documents that integrate text and images. The HTML files are located on servers all over the world. Combinations of letters, numbers, and characters, called URLs, guide your Web browser to retrieve these files and display them. Most Web documents also contain links to other Web documents, either on the same server or elsewhere.
There are many different Web browsers available, but it is generally a good idea to use Netscape Navigator or Microsoft Internet Explorer, since they have become Internet standards. Older or less-than-full-featured browsers will not be able to read new HTML files correctly.
World Wide Web
The World Wide Web is the connection of hundreds of thousands of different pools of data around the Internet that can be accessed with a Web browser. Your browser, reading a code called a URL, retrieves information from remote locations and displays it on your monitor.