What Makes People Click: Web Extras

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What Makes People Click:
Marketing an IEP Program on the Web
The following was prepared as part of a Demonstration held at TESOL 2003, Baltimore, MD, USA, in March. It is an ongoing project. Go to the Main page to see the rest or take a look at work that has already been done for previous presentations:
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Web Extras: Javascript, Flash, etc.

The secret to adding things to your pages is knowing how many people will be excluded with each addition. And, it is a secret. Though technology could be used to tell us how many people choose one kind of page instead of another, it cannot tell us if the person who avoided a carefully marked (Requires Flash) page avoided it because he/she didn't have Flash, or for another reason. It can't measure the anger one feels when opening an unmarked Flash-made page only to find it blank, or worse yet, when a page crashes your machine because it orders a process your machine can't comply with (1). Technology has no way of telling us who will try to open our pages in the future, even though it is pretty good at telling us, on demand, what kinds of machines are looking at them now. One can only bet, however, that in lean times, old machines will be recycled more and more carefully.

So, what is a person to do? To begin, use extras only when they are necessary. Learn simpler ways to do the same things, thus saving everyone trouble. And finally, educate yourself about what is possible so that, if you have the chance, you can use a variety of new things in interesting ways, labelled carefully so that the user can avoid them easily and without anger (2)

If you know the difference between Java and JavaScript, you may not need what I have to say here. I am a relative novice at this and have only found out what I know recently; for my own purposes, I haven't needed most of these, with the exception of cgi. Fortunately, the world of computer programming is relatively open to those who are willing to learn; it's not as exclusive as, say, the art world. To do this, follow the links until you find someone who appears to know what he/she is talking about, and join in. Use this only as a starting point!

Cgi

This is necessary to have an application or a hit-counter on your page. It sets up a real-time communication between your page and another server, such that, in the case of a hit counter, your page can receive a message in order to make a display which hopefully will change with each other machine that opens your page. (3). In the case of an application, information that a person types into the blanks will go through the other server and be delivered in a format, which you can determine, to the person of your choice, hopefully a secretary, or an admissions officer. In either case, a live machine that is always awake is demanded. There are plenty of those in the world, though.

Hit Counters and Measuring Traffic

It's always useful to know who has entered your site, where they are from, what kind of machine they are using, and through what avenue they got there. Hit counters can only tell you how many, and they usually aren't accurate (4). Your server actually keeps logs and knows much of this stuff, though to actually get at it, you have to work hard and sometimes people are busy, or it is lost in the system, etc. In our case it was one of the above, but I'm still trying. By the way, accurate and visible logs are getting more common as people are offering them as a service (5).

Applications and credit card transactions

An online application uses a basic cgi script, and it's easy to use. But if you want to accept credit cards over the web, you move into getting encrypted messages and secure transactions. We are lucky; we don't have to do this; thus, I can offer very little help....

Frames and Framing

Much less common than they were at first, frames set the pattern of many innovations by showing that the pure novelty of an innovation will make it appear to take over the business for at least a short while, though in the long run, its utility may be limited, just because as a practical matter, people don't really want to deal with it on a day-to-day basis. I like the fact that my webmail program uses frames, because I actually have to operate on two different planes simultaneously (throwing out junk on top, reading mail on the bottom) and the frame format allows that to happen easily, though I have to squint to read each line.

I can't imagine why a designer would want to do that with a program's homepage, or any others, for that matter, but I've seen frames used for some pretty sneaky things. For example, frames can take other people's content, and make it appear to be yours, so that the user is still inside your homepage, with your URL, but looking at another page (6). Tricky! There are legal ramifications of this which you should investigate before doing it (7). .

Java

...it is amazing how many people, including industry insiders, don't understand the difference between Java and JavaScript....Java, developed under the Sun Microsystems brand, is a full-fledged object-oriented programming language. It can be used to create standalone applications and a special type of mini application, called an applet. Applets are downloaded as separate files to your browser alongside an HTML document, and provide an infinite variety of added functionality to the Web site you are visiting. The displayed results of applets can appear to be embedded in an HTML page (e.g., the scrolling banner message that is so common on Java-enhanced sites), but the Java code arrives as a separate file....Javascript, developed by Netscape, is a smaller language that does not create applets or standalone applications. In its most common form today, JavaScript resides inside HTML documents, and can provide levels of interactivity far beyond typically flat HTML pages--without the need for server-based CGI (Common Gateway Interface) programs...it is important to understand that a Java-enabled browser is not automatically a JavaScript-enabled browser...it is unlikely, however, that future browsers will incorporate one but not the other (Goodman, 1996-2002).

I feel the same way about the little dancing envelopes with the letters popping out of them, used to announce one's e-mail address, as I do a neon sign with an arrow, pointing into my mailbox to help the postman find it on a cloudy day. That is, I haven't needed either yet. And I've noticed people going a long way to find free websites that DON'T have flashing banners, though you never know, maybe some people like the banners, just as some people live in Times Square, since they sleep better with the reflections of the neon signs flashing into their windows.

JavaScript

People are putting more and more JavaScript on their main pages, assuming that anyone who doesn't have it, or doesn't enable it, is simply out of the loop. It sets up the eternal question: is what it offers worth the price of leaving some customers out? And, exactly how many customers are we talking about here? The percentage is getting so low as to be seemingly insignificant (8); certainly less than 1%.

Flash

Flash is a plug-in which is aggressively marketed by Macromedia (9), which also consistently presents statistics proving that everyone can view it, everyone has downloaded it, etc. The mere fact that it's a plug in is responsible for the fact that many people still don't have it; however, the aggressive marketing combined with its alliance with Dreamweaver have increasingly given it more of the market and made it more palatable (Dougherty, 2001). As the web becomes more like television, with added interactivity that television never had, Flash has muscled into place as a prominent and common tool for web designers, especially those working for the large corporations who are paying for the skills required to use it.

The question of whether to use it for the international IEP market remains hinged on two variables, though. First, those who still don't have it are met with a blank screen upon arrival at the Flash-generated page; is it worth making them angry, just to provide something nice for those who have it? Should one still warn every visitor that they are agoing into a Flash environment (so that these people can avoid it), or, provide them an alternative? Second, Flash routinely disables the user's backbutton (unless it is programmed in by the designer); this also makes people mad (10), since the pattern of web travel, as far as anyone can track, relies heavily on the back-button, as for most people it's a kind of search-and-return pattern, with the main base often being a Google search results page. Flash designers thus are routinely cutting off people's preferred path of return (in some cases forcing them to intitiate a new Google search, or lose a page that had also been a base of exploration); and for what price? If a student is looking for basic information about a program, I would say it isn't worth it (11). If you would like to give that student a picture show, or an interactive exercise, upon arrival at your site, warning them appropriately (hopefully most people know what plugins are on their browser, though you'd be surprised how many people are operating out of a lab, or from a relative's machine); then, go for it.

Splash, XML, DHTML, iMovie, etc.

All I will put here is the advice I heard from my partner once: "Wait two years to use any innovation." Two years is an eon in computer time, but it does allow people to learn the cruel lessons of using things too early. DHTML causes some print to overlap others on many machines; some things freeze up large numbers of machines; and, in marketing, you don't want to learn these the hard way.

Footnotes:

1. I was sitting in the Electronic Village part of TESOL with an old friend of mine who was applying for a job at a prominent state university; he had come to the Village to get some quick information about the place before his interview. But, unfortunately, upon calling up the place's webpage, the computer crashed, causing some inconvenience for our friends in the CALL Interest Section.

2. "Top ten ways to Irritate your visitors" (ref) is a good way to see how truly angry people can be when they are faced with unwanted or unreadable innovations.

3. Cgi stands for Common Gateway Interface and can be carefully explained to you by people who, again, know far more than I do (U. of Ill., n.d.). My thanks to the Illini computer folks for supplying ours, all these years.

4. See Web Statistics (ref.). One problem is that sometimes pages are cached; sometimes they are viewed several times by the same person traveling through; sometimes an entire lab is viewing them and it counts for one; etc. The problem isn't displaying a number that is probably false; the problem only occurs if you believe the number, or leave the impression that it's accurate.

5. Online marketers (see Ch. 9) are onto this already, as it impresses customers, though few people have time to go check who has visited their marketers' pages recently.

6. One interesting case involves a marketer who tries to divert traffic from a program's main page to their foreign language pages, thus getting the user to apply through the marketer. But the program has frozen the second-language pages inside frames, so that no links work inside them; one is still in the program's window.

7. The jury is still out, so to speak, since most law is developed by previous rulings, and there have only been a few rulings.

8. The key word is "seemingly". Although every browser past Netscape 3 and Internet Explorer 2 has JavaScript capability, no one has measured the number of machines whose users have disabled it intentionally.

9. See Macromedia, 2001. Also see Dougherty, 2001 for an account of why Macromedia has been successful in positioning Flash well.

10. If you are foraging from a search, as many of our users are, you are especially mad, because you have to run the entire search again. And you sometimes forget the exact terms that got you where you were.

11. I actually appreciate being offered the choice of "Flash" or "HTML" upon arrival at a site, but am also aware that this extra doorway, void of any image except the two doors, has made it that little bit harder and longer for me to get where I'm going. The designer has the further problem of having a gateway page that has no search terms, though there are ways around that, too.

Sources:

Dougherty, D. (2001, Feb. 2). Why Flash is significant. O'Reilly Network. http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/a/network/2001/02/02/epstein.html

Goodman, D. (1996-2002). Java is not Javascript: Javascript is not Java. dannyg.com, Technical References. http://www.dannyg.com/ref/javavsjavascript.html

Macromedia (2001). White paper. http://macromedia.com/software/flash/survey/whitepaper/

Univ. of Illinois (n.d.) Common Gateway Interface: Introduction to CGI script, an overview.

Resources:

Poll builder, Center for History and New Media. Tool to put a simple poll on your page. JavaScript Links, Univ. of Minnesota-Duluth

Flash Links, Univ. of Minnesota-Duluth

XML Links, Univ. of Minnesota-Duluth

Copyright Thomas Leverett, 2003

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Page made and maintained by
Thomas Leverett, CESL, SIUC
Photo above (Spider Web) by Jim Leverett

What Makes People Click:Marketing an IEP Program on the Web

Web Extras: Javascript, Flash, etc.

What Makes People Click:
Marketing an IEP Program on the Web