Chapter 1 - Introduction
Chapter 1 Learning Objectives
After reading this chapter, students should be able to:
Describe how computers and servers communicate to enable people to interact with webpages on the internet.
Name the three objectives of a website.
Evaluate a websites performance on its three general objectives and identify specific areas for improvement.
If you have any role in running a websitewhether the website is large or small; whether the website is the whole business or only part of a larger business; whether your role is central or peripheral to the websitethen understanding the various principles of internet marketing will help you do your job better. The goal of this book is to provide you with an understanding of internet marketing that is up-to-date, thorough, and succinct. Because this book is hosted online, content is periodically updated so that everything in it reflects the most recent best practices in digital marketing. Though no single book could possibly cover every valuable topic in internet marketing, the topics covered in this book represent the vast majority of internet marketing expenditures, meaning that they also represent the skills used by the vast majority of people who work in internet marketing jobs. Each chapter is short and to-the-point, providing you with the requisite knowledge and understanding without excess verbiage.
In keeping with this goal of succinctness, this introductory chapter provides a wealth of important background knowledge about the internet and about various types of websites. To avoid future confusion, this book does not assume you have any prior knowledge about the internet or internet marketing. As a result, some of this chapter may seem basic, but you will gain valuable knowledge by reading it irrespective of your current knowledge. The first section of this chapter, Technical Terms, discusses technical aspects of the internet and provides an understanding of many terms that will be used throughout the book. The second section, Successful Websites, provides a broad framework for evaluating the success of a website of any kind.
Chapter 1 - Section 1 - Technical Terms
Consider an internet user (well call him John) who goes online to purchase a Blu-Ray/DVD combo pack for a recently released movie. He goes to amazon.com, searches for the movie, puts the movie in his shopping cart, checks out, and two days later, the combo pack arrives in the mail. This entire set of actions would have seemed miraculous only 20 years ago, but today this is typical behavior. It is so typical, in fact, that many do not recognize the complexity that underlies each step of this procedure. For example, for Amazons homepage to show up on Johns browser, all of the following things occurred.
- John typed in amazon.com (or http://amazon.com or http://www.amazon.com or www.amazon.com). This is the URL (Uniform Resource Locator) for Amazons homepage, indicating which webpage John wants to display. (Amazon.com is also a domain name, the name of a website. Each of the thousands of pages within the Amazon website/domain has a unique URL.)
- The URL is converted to an IP address (Internet Protocol addressthe Internet Protocol is a standardized set of procedures for locating computers connected to the internet and for transferring information from one computer to another).
- The information request for Amazons homepage is sent to Amazons server (a computer connected to the internet that fulfills information requests to the website).
- Along with this information request, Johns browser also sends any data from any Amazon cookie stored on Johns computer. (A cookie is a unique identifier that Amazon placed on Johns computer during one of his previous visits to amazon.com so Amazon could remember him. Though some privacy advocates attribute sinister intentions to these cookies, cookies are typically used to tailor the website experience to each user. Amazon can better recommend products John might like based on his browsing and purchase history.)
- Amazons server receives the request for the homepage along with the cookie data and processes this request using a dynamic server-side programming language (Java, C++, Perl, and PHP are examples). The server will also retrieve information about Johns past behavior on the site from a database.
- This process creates HTML (hyper-text markup language) and Javascript code that will be sent to Johns computer. Both HTML and Javascript are client-side coding languages that web browsers (software that displays webpagesInternet Explorer, Firefox, Chrome, Safari) process to display webpages.
- Amazons server sends this code to Johns computer, which has its own IP address. Johns browser processes this code to display the homepage on his computer.
These steps are illustrated in Figure 1.1.1 below.