Newsletter ArchiveSUBJECTs:About The Internet 800 Directory - Pop-Up Windows The Internet 800 Directory - http://www.inter800.com The Internet 800 Directory Newsletter This issue is for Thursday, June 29, 2001 Table of Contents 01. About The Internet 800 Directory -George Paul 02. Pop Windows – Chuck Arning *01. About The Internet 800 Directory -George Paul (george@inter800.com) I'd like to take this time to discuss a few things about the Internet 800 Directory that you may not already know. First our directory allows searches by toll free number. This means, if you have a toll free number and want to see who owns it, you can enter the toll free number into the "Search for" block on our home page. If the number is listed, you will get back the company name it is associated with. Understand that not all toll free numbers are listed in our directory. There are many companies that choose not to list their number for a variety of reasons. If you cannot find the owner of the number within our directory, I recommend calling it. You may change or edit your listing should you need to. To do so, simply click the "Add Listing" button on our home page. Enter your toll free number when prompted and your existing listing will be returned. Contact info such as your name, email address, local & fax numbers will not be displayed. Next, edit your listing however you deem appropriate and submit your request. Changes, like requests for new listings, do not automatically appear in the directory. Real human beings edit our directory and one of them must approve the request before it appears on the web site. Obviously, this is done for your protection. If you need an immediate change to your listing, I recommend calling me direct (800-299-1879). Our search engine only returns listings that contain exactly what you typed into the "Search for" block. For instance, if you search for "Training manuals", you would receive only listings that contain both the words "training" AND "manuals". These words may appear anywhere in the listing (company name or category or one in each), but both words must be present for a listing to match. Listings containing the words "training manual" would not match, as "manual" and "manuals" are 2 different words. Also, since the search engine searches the entire listing, a word that appears in your company name need not be repeated in your key word section. As long as that word appears anywhere in your listing, your listing will match. Following up on this thought, we do not utilize a "category" system in our directory, even though we use that term. What you should list in this section is whatever you think a potential customer is most likely to search for when looking for what you do. Keep in mind that we list hundreds of thousands of businesses, so if you were a travel agent, listing "travel" as your only key word would not be effective. Businesses in crowded categories such as "travel" or "real estate" should add some type of adjective or descriptor to increase their chances of being seen. For instance, a real estate agency might add the city or geographic area served (such as "Real Estate Boston") or a travel agent might list a particular specialty (such as "Caribbean Travel"). Last on the subject of the category/key word section, do not use punctuation. Punctuation is either ignored or confuses our search engine. Also, the amount of space allowed for key words is very limited in a Free Listing; so don't waste it by putting commas or slashes between each word. If you have any questions about how the directory operates or your listing, please call me direct, 800-299-1879. *02. Pop Windows – Chuck Arning (chuck@inter800.com) Last week Steve Jackson e-mailed me an article about a form of online advertising that took one company’s web site from little traffic to one of the top 5 most visited sites on the web. The company was X10.com and advertising they were using was a pop-up windows. If you have been using the web for any amount of time you have probability experienced pop-up advertising. Pop-up ads open a new browser underneath the current browser window, so when the users exit the browser, they see the ad. This type of ad is a not new; porn sites, free hosting sites and AOL have been using this type of ad for years. It’s my belief that this type of advertising never made it into the main stream because of the hassle factor it poses for the web surfers. Statistical Research reported that 62% of web surfers feel strongly that pop-up ads interfere with the reading or use of a web page. Does this type of ad work? The ad campaign did increase X10.com’s traffic. X10 first appeared on the Media Metrix Top 50 in March, debuting at No. 30 with 8.4 million visitors. A month later, it was in the Top 15 with just over 15 million visitors. By May, the site jumped into the Top 5, by attaining 28 million unique visitors with the pop-up windows. If you just look at the number of visitors that hit X10.com site you would think the campaign was a huge success. But did these visitors translate into new business? When I surfed sites like New York Times and Sporting News, a pop-up window was opened to X10.com’s site, when that happened I closed the window. Every surfer that opened a pop-up window was counted as a visitor to X10.com site, even if they never went past the ad. Without having access to X10.com sales numbers I have no way of really knowing if they produced increased sales from this ad campaign. Because X10.com is preparing for a public offering, I’m not sure they care. The hype of traffic numbers comparable to e-commerce Goliaths like Amazon.com and eBay should help sell their stock even if it doesn’t sell their products. Because many cash-strapped web based companies are searching for new forms of revues, I think it is likely that we will be seeing more of these types of ads being sold, even if their visitors don’t like them. If you would like to stop these pop-up windows, X10.com will set a cookie on your machine that lasts for 30 days. Visit this link to make it happen: http://www.x10.com/home/optout.cgi?DAY=30&PAGE=http://www.x10.com/x10ads1.htm If you have any thoughts on this subject or any ideas that could be helpful to the others in this group send them to me (Chuck Arning) at chuck@inter800.com Thanks for taking to time to review our newsletter for this week. If you know of anyone that might benefit from receiving this newsletter, send them to (http://www.inter800.com/news800/ ) where they can subscribe. 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