There are many advantages of
using the Internet, such as :
- Global Audience
Content published on the World Wide Web is
immediately available to a global audience of
users. This makes the World Wide Web a very
cost-effective medium to publish information.
Reaching more than 190 countries.
- Operates 24 hours, 7
days a week
You don't need to wait until resources are
available to conduct business. From a consumer's
perspective as well as a provider's business can
be consummated at any time. The fact that the
Internet is operational at all times makes it the
most efficient business machine to date.
- Relatively Inexpensive
It is relatively inexpensive to publish
information on the Internet. At a fraction of the
cost to publish information by traditional
methods, various organizations and individuals
can now distribute information to millions of
users. It costs only a few thousand dollars to
establish an Internet presence and publish
content on the Internet.
- Product Advertising
You can use the World Wide Web to advertise
various products. Before purchasing a product,
customers will be able to look up various product
specification sheets and find out additional
information. You can use the multimedia
capabilities of the World Wide Web to make
available not only various product specification
sheets but also audio files, images, and even
video clips of products in action. The beauty of
the Web is that it allows customers to explore
products in as much detail as they desire. If the
client just wants a general overview, he or she
can look at the advertising information. For
those wanting more in depth information, you can
provide white papers and product descriptions for
download. The Web allows a business to provide
timely information, you can simply place the
information on the Web page and it is available
immediately for your customers.
- Distribute Product Catalogs
The World Wide Web is a very effective medium for
distributing product catalogs. In the old days,
putting together a product catalog used to
be very costly in terms of time and money needed
to publish and distribute it. The World Wide Web
changes all this by allowing content developers
to put together a sales catalog and make it
available to millions of users immediately.
Furthermore, unlike printed product
catalogs that are usually updated around once a
month, product catalogs on the World Wide Web can
be updated as needed to respond to various
changing market conditions.
- Online Surveys
Traditional methods of performing surveys are
often relatively slow and expensive compared to
online surveys conducted on the Internet. For
example, in order to fill out various needs of
customers or what they would like to see in a
future product, it's often necessary to compile a
list of address and mail a questionnaire to
many customers. The success of such an attempt is
not always guaranteed and can be very costly in
terms of mailing the questionnaires and entering
responses to a databases and analyzing it. On the
other hand, you can use the World Wide Web to
automate the whole process. For example, you can
set up a CGI script to conduct online surveys.
Results of such a survey can be automatically
updated to a database. This database can then
be used to keep a pulse on various opinions
and needs of customers.
- Announcements
With the World Wide Web, you can distribute
various announcements to millions of users in a
timely manner. Because there is virtually no time
lag from the time it takes to publish information
to making the information available to users, the
Web is an ideal medium to publicize
announcements. As more people discover the
virtues of the Web and get connected to the
Internet, the Web will become the medium of
choice for many organizations and individuals to
publicize various announcements.
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- Provide Technical Support
You can also use Web site to provide technical
support to users. Because Web pages can be
updated immediately with new information,
various technical support literature can be
immediately modified in light of new findings and
developments. This can be accomplished without
having to distribute changes to all users
affected by any changes using traditional mediums
of information distribution, which are often
quite costly compared to the World Wide Web.
- Create Online Discussion Forums
By using applications such as WebBoard, it's
possible to set up online discussion forums on
the Web.
- Obtain Customer Feedback
The interactive nature of the World Wide
Web is ideal for obtaining customer
feedback. You can easily set up a CGI script to
obtain customer feedback about a product or
service. Because customer feedback submitted by
customers can be read immediately, it's possible
to respond to various customer concerns in a
timely manner, increasing customer satisfaction
and quality of customer service.
- Immediate Distribution of
Information
When information is added to a Web site, it's
immediately available for browsing by millions of
Internet users. The World Wide Web is an ideal
medium of information distribution because it
takes away the time lag associated with
publishing content and actually making it
available to users
- Easy Integration with Internal
Information Systems
Internet information systems deployed on the
Internet can be easily integrated with
internal information systems managed with office
productivity applications such as Microsoft
Office.
- Powerful Content Publishing Tools
A new breed of Internet aware applications will
start emerging in software stores by the time you
read this. These applications will enable users
to develop content for the World Wide Web by
simply saving as an HTML file. In addition to
software developers making existing applications
Internet aware, various new, powerful, and
easy-to use Internet content publishing
applications are also being developed. These
applications will make the task of publishing
content on the Internet even easier. Most of
these applications are developed for
Windows users.
- Multimedia
The capability to incorporate multimedia into Web
pages is a major advantage of using World Wide
Web to publish information. For example, many Web
sites use sounds and video clips to make the
content easier and more interesting to browse.
- Formatting Capabilities
Content published on the World Wide Web can be
richly formatted by using various HTML tags and
graphic formats. The capability to do this is a
major reason for the success of the World Wide
Web. In addition to using HTML tags and various
multimedia formats in Web pages, various
interactive controls can also be added to a web
page. This capability allows Web site
content developers to create "active"
Web sites. For example, before a user sends some
information to a Web server for processing, a
VBScript or JavaScript subroutine can be used to
verify information typed in by the user.
Various formatting capabilities, along with
technologies such as Java and VBScript, make the
World Wide Web a richly interactive medium that
you can use to distribute information to millions
of users.
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References :
Terry Bernstein,
Anish B. Bhimani, Eugene Schultz, Carol A. Siegel, Internet
Security for Business, Wiley Computer Publishing,
John Wiley & Sons Inc, 1996
Sanjaya Hettihewa, Windows
NT 4, Web Development, Sams net, Indianapolis, First
Edition, 1996 |
