Check Out the Web’s Hidden Treasures

The World Wide Web is full of hidden treasures for direct marketers. The trick simply is knowing where these interesting spots can be found.

For this article, I asked catalogers and e-tailers for their suggestions of lesser-known online resources, information sources and new ideas related to e-commerce. The resulting list is somewhat eclectic. Hopefully, it will trigger a new idea and help with your Web marketing.

DIAGNOSTIC TOOLS

DNS Stuff, www.dnsstuff.com/

Ever encounter something odd such as a well-known site disappears, an e-mail to a good address bounces or a customer says your site is down when it isn’t? Often the problem stems from DNS, the system that maps a Web name (e.g., www.yahoo.com) to its corresponding Web location or IP address (e.g., 66.94.231.98). The DNS Stuff page provides a bevy of free tools for quick DNS checks.

Warning: This site is technical, so you may prefer to pass this link to your IT staff when things seem awry.

W3 HTML Validator, http://validator.w3.org/

The World Wide Web Consortium is responsible for specifications for the Web, and it provides free HTML mark-up validation programs. (Few Web pages truly are compliant with specs.) You may need to wade through many minor warnings to find real errors, but it’s worth it.

This site will challenge your Web team to get your site’s HTML as clean as possible. Why is that important? Well-formed HTML messages work reliably in more browsers, render faster and are preferred by search engines.

DISPOSABLE E-MAIL ADDRESSES

Sneak Email, www.sneakemail.com

When you’re worried that a Web site may not use your e-mail address responsibly, or when you want to sign up for a competitor’s e-mail newsletter anonymously, Sneakemail.com offers free “disposable” e-mail addresses.

For example, if I didn’t want to entrust a company with my real e-mail address, I’d ask it to mail me at rguag5t02@sneakemail.com, and it will forward to my real e-mail account. Because you create a new e-mail for each use, you can determine the origin of any spam to that address and easily turn it off. You can both send and receive from these anonymous e-mail addresses.

MARKETING NEWS AND IDEAS

Cool News of the Day, www.reveries.com/coolnews/

This is a daily e-mail newsletter about interesting things in the world of marketing. Though it focuses on brand advertising and consumer packaged-goods marketing, direct marketers will find useful ideas here.

National Retail Federation’s Daily SmartBrief, www.smartbrief.com/nrf/

This short daily newsletter keeps you on top of major happenings in retail. (The URL above takes you to the registration page to sign up for the newsletter.) Easy to skim each morning, the newsletter is comprised of short synopses linked to original articles from various newspapers and magazines.

Postopia, www.postopia.com

While game-based marketing doesn’t make sense for many catalog brands, Post’s advertising/game portal is an interesting visit for online marketers. Kids play free video games here, and the games reference Post brands and logos. Kids collect token codes from Post cereal boxes to get game hints or extra powers.

Though no fan of sweetened cereal for breakfast, I find the marketing here excellent. The brand messaging is restrained, and the games are fun. (My 6-year-old recommends “Waffle Boy.”)

Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page

The Wikipedia is an open-source encyclopedia; that is, the site has more than 300,000 collaborative articles on all subjects, written and edited by volunteers. The articles generally are of high quality.

The site may interest online marketers for three reasons: It’s a vivid example of open-source principles in action; it shows the power of Web communities; and it’s a very useful encyclopedia.

NEWS ALERTS

Google Alerts, www.google.com/webalerts, www.google.com/newsalerts

At your request, Google will search itself for your selected query, and e-mail you new results daily or weekly. This free beta service is a great way to monitor your brand, competition and key ideas in your industry.

REGISTRATION INFO

Whois, www.whois.sc/

The Whois database provides registration data for Web domains. You can use these data to discover, to some degree, who owns a domain and where they’re located. The database can help you find contact information for sites harming or competing with your site.

The Whois interface is particularly comprehensive, providing registrant info, an image of the homepage, related domains, meta tags, DMOZ links and reverse IP information. Basic service is free; there’s a small fee for advanced features.

SEARCH TOOLS

A9, www.a9.com

Amazon’s beta search engine, A9, is interesting for several reasons: It remembers your recent searches; it searches Amazon’s “search within the book” database; and the A9 toolbar provides a diary feature so you can save notes on any Web page you visit.

Alexa, www.alexa.com/

Surprisingly, many e-tailers aren’t yet familiar with Alexa, a search portal owned by Amazon. Though the site runs slow at times, it offers free traffic statistics and trends on Web sites, enabling you to see how your site stacks up against your competition in traffic, speed and inbound links.

Kartoo, www.kartoo.com

This is a visual meta-search engine that runs a query against several search engines and presents the results in a graphical map. You can see excerpts from the various pages by “hovering” over them, allowing you to scan many sites without having to click through to them.

While free visual search isn’t yet fully baked, and while the server-side Kartoo isn’t as sophisticated as the client-side Grokker (see below), Kartoo is an intriguing early glimpse of how search may evolve in the next few years.

Grokker, www.grokker.com

This Web-search tool requires a large download, the free trial is only 30 days, and the program isn’t as fast as one would like. Nonetheless, Grokker’s graphical approach to search is fascinating.

You surf from high-level topics (represented as colored balls) to sub topics (represented as balls within balls), eventually down to actual Web pages. This program is a blend of knowledge mapper, meta-search engine and smart browser. Grokker offers an interesting early glimpse of new metaphors for organizing and finding data online.

What’s the connection to online retailing? Many e-tailers have found organizing products into useful hierarchies surprisingly challenging yet critical for success in site search, guided navigation and shopping feeds. In a few years, search metaphors such as Grokker may enable you to offer site visitors easier ways to surf for merchandise and find complementary items.

The Invisible Web Directory, www.invisible-web.net

For all their power, search engines do a poor job of indexing the so-called “invisible Web,” domain-specific databases hiding behind government, industry and academic portals. To access these databases, you first must know which site to visit, then run your query on that site.

This site helps you find these databases and thus is a useful gateway for government statistics, regulations and industry data.

SITE DESIGN ADVICE

Good Experience, www.goodexperience.com/

Usability is becoming increasingly essential to your e-commerce site’s closing ratio. This site focuses on the challenges of providing good customer experience. (It also chronicles poor design of things, places and Web sites at www.thisisbroken.com.)

UseIt.com, http://useit.com/

Jakob Nielsen, founder of the “discount usability engineering” movement for Web testing, publishes his ongoing insights in his biweekly “Alertbox” newsletter. Past issues are archived on his site. Rate your site against Nielsen’s “Top Ten Web Design Mistakes of 2003” checklist.

TOOL FOR CORPORATE KNOWLEDGE SHARING

Wiki, http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?wikiwikiweb

“Wiki” means “fast” in Hawaiian. Ward Cunningham chose this appropriate adjective for his Web-based, open editing collaboration software. Open editing means any visitor can change Web page content and site organization. While this sounds like a recipe for chaos, wikis are getting favorable coverage in the business press as low-cost, flexible tools for corporate knowledge sharing. My firm recently installed kwiki, (http://kwiki.org/) a simple, free, Perl-based wiki on our Intranet. Installation took less than 10 minutes, and we find it a useful tool.

WEBLOGS

Blogging, www.blogger.com/

Freedom of the press takes on new meaning with the arrival of “blogs,” an abbreviation for “Web log.” Blogs let writers publish online with little technological hassle. As you can imagine, blog content ranges from personal diaries to political commentaries.

Now blogs are going corporate. Some brands create external blogs to communicate with their customers (e.g., Google’s www.google.com/googleblog/). Businesses can blog to establish themselves as experts in an area. For example, at http://hipaablog.blogspot.com/, lawyer Jeff Drummond discusses medical privacy.

Was your favorite site omitted? I welcome your suggestions on other Web resources useful to e-tailers. Visit my Web site: www.rimmkaufman.com.

Alan Rimm-Kaufman, Ph.D., is president of the Rimm-Kaufman Group LLC, a marketing services firm providing direct marketing strategy, technology, and advanced analytics to leading online retailers and catalogers.