What is Electronic Commerce? Well of course it's commerce over the Internet ! What is commerce ? Maybe everyone knows this but it is the buying and selling of products or services. We can't get any simpler than this and it's straight out of the economics text books. What though, is special about ecommerce verses other forms of commerce. There are fundamental and actually quite powerful differences. First you don't need a shop. You can run a tiny or massive operation out of one website! That website is really just a series of electronic impulses in a computer, happily flicking back and forth displaying stuff for sale, having conversations with customers and most importantly performing transactions where real money changes hands for real products or services. The owner of this website might be asleep on the couch or could be a multi national corporation, we might never know. We might never know the location in this big wide world and we probably don’t mind too much. After all a satisfied customer is simply that, satisfied. You can’t do better than that !

At Websiteneversleep we are really interested in words.

Words are what drives communication and words are what drives the internet. We specialise in in content which is primarily designed for the Internet but also preform copywriting for any useful purpose. We don't mind the topic, we can talk about anything, really in any way!

Our main foci here are copy writing (particularly the unique content which is the only kind search engines are really interested in) and this can be topical, travel, sport, blogging, politics, world affairs (you name it), email marketing and electronic direct mail, newsletters, search engine optimisation (SEO), Ecommerce, Search Engine Marketing (SEM and PPC), User Interface Design and reviews, website reviews Conversion analysis. You get the drift?

Ok maybe words bore you or you're just too busy but words are by far the most powerful form of communication and on the Internet they rule because that's what search engines can read, so if you get stuck, we can help.

We are your copywriting solution for the Sunshine Coast or in fact anywhere !

These definitions are for people like you and I who just want to know how the internet effects us as normal people. We are not trying to re-explain the internet in all of its massive complexity! These are nice simple explanations that anyone can hopefully understand which is going to make it possible to not have your eyes glaze over when contemplating a new website, an upgrade, some search engine marketing, search engine optimisation etc etc.

Website Addresses

A website address is a bunch of letters that allows you to find a webpage. It is the bit of info you type into the address bar of your web browser. Examples of website addresses are www.google.com, www.websitesneversleep.com and a billion more. How these website addresses are given out, kept track of and generally organised is quite a task when you consider how many there are and all of the languages in all the different countries. The good thing about the internet is though that it is just a bunch of computers and only speaks one language ! This language (and you're going to need to forget this) is called the TCP / IP suite of protocols (a bunch of rules for computors to talk to each other with).
But that's not important, the real trick about the internet address system is that it all boils down to one question. When you type an address into a browser address bar, how on earth can your computer find that page ?

Now this web page we are after is on a computer somewhere and computers don't have names like "websitesneversleep", they have very unhelpful numbers like 129.168.1.234. Well here is a problem straight away. If my compulter is looking for a webpage called www.websitesneversleep.com but it's on a computer called 129.168.1.234, we straight away have a problem. If my computer just keeps sending out requests for www.websitesneversleep.com, trust me know one will answer. Unless ! Yes help is at hand. Enter the Domain Name System (DNS). The domain system is a bunch of very helpful computers who sit around with very long lists and names and numbers. For every website  name it has a matching web page serving computer's numbers. These DNS servers have nothing better to do than sit around and listen for computers like yours and mine, asking for websites by name. As soon as they pick up this request, they match it to the correct number and send the request happily on i's way to the waiting web page serving computer.

Web Servers

Sub Domain

This is simple and is quite like it sounds. www.websitesneversleep.com is a domain www.aspecialbit.websiteneversleep.com is a sub domain. The aspecialbit between the full stops could be anything but it just creates a way to seperate sections of your domain.

Domain Registration

Is the process of registering your domain. We can do all of that for you.

Domain registrant (usually also the domain owner)

Is the person or entity that registers the domain and their contact details are attached to the domain.

This is the computer program that is used to look at web pages. The big examples are Internet Explorer, Firefox, Google's Chrome, Apples Safari and there actually quite a few more. Here is a sample from Wikipedia

Yes there are lots, although most people use Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox, Google Chrome, Apples Safari and one or two more. It is important that when your website is designed, that it looks good in as many browsers as possible. When contracting a web designer, make sure you ask them that question.

1991     WorldWideWeb (Nexus)     
1992     ViolaWWW, Erwise, MidasWWW, MacWWW (Samba)     
1993     Mosaic, Cello[2], Lynx 2.0, Arena, AMosaic 1.0

1994     IBM WebExplorer, Netscape Navigator, SlipKnot 1.0, MacWeb, IBrowse, Agora (Argo), Minuet

1995     Internet Explorer 1, Netscape Navigator 2.0, OmniWeb, UdiWWW[3], WebRouser[4], Internet Explorer 2, Grail
16
1996     Arachne 1.0, Internet Explorer 3.0, Netscape Navigator 3.0, Opera 2.0,
PowerBrowser 1.5[5], Cyberdog, Amaya 0.9[6], AWeb, Voyager
36
1997     Internet Explorer 4.0, Netscape Navigator 4.0, Netscape Communicator 4.0, Opera 3.0[7], Amaya 1.0[6]     70
1998     Internet Explorer 5.0 Beta 1, iCab, Mozilla
147
1999     Amaya 2.0[6], Mozilla M3, Internet Explorer 5.0
248
2000     Konqueror, Netscape 6, Opera 4[8], Opera 5[9], K-Meleon 0.2, Amaya 3.0[6], Amaya 4.0[6]     361
2001     Internet Explorer 6, Galeon 1.0, Opera 6[10], Amaya 5.0[6]     513
2002     Netscape 7, Mozilla 1.0, Phoenix 0.1, Links 2.0, Amaya 6.0[6], Amaya 7.0[6]     587
2003     Opera 7[11], Safari 1.0, Epiphany 1.0, Amaya 8.0[6]     719
2004     Firefox 1.0, Netscape Browser, OmniWeb 5.0
817
2005     Safari 2.0, Netscape Browser 8.0, Opera 8.[12], Epiphany1.8, Amaya 9.0[6], AOL Explorer1.0, Maxthon 1.0, Shiira 1.0
1018
2006     SeaMonkey 1.0, K-Meleon 1.0, Galeon 2.0, Camino 1.0, Firefox 2.0, Avant 11, iCab 3, Opera 9[13], Internet Explorer 7, Sputnik
1093
2007     Maxthon 2.0, Netscape Navigator 9, NetSurf 1.0, Flock 1.0, Safari 3.0, Conkeror
1262
2008     Konqueror 4, Safari 3.1, Opera 9.5[14], Firefox 3, Amaya 10.0[6], Flock 2, Chrome 1, Amaya 11.0[6]     1565
2009     Internet Explorer 8, Chrome 2, Safari 4, Opera 10[15], Chrome 3, SeaMonkey 2, Camino 2, Firefox 3.5
1734
2010     Firefox 3.6, Chrome 4, Opera 10.50[16], Chrome 5, Safari 5

So what is the big deal with Facebook and Twitter? These two famous web phenomena are the most prominent examples of Social Media in the form of Social Networking and this media is normally found on the Internet. Wikipedia explains this well but what does it mean and what does it mean in particular to you considering building or updating your website. Well Social Networking is all about that: people networking via the internet. They chat, share ideas, images, opinions and more and basically carry on a huge complex conversation.

Why is it so popular ? Well I guess people love chatting to other people. We have always loved to interact so this is simply another method. Of course it's handy because you can interact in real or delayed time and do it from most spots on the globe, regardless of where you are. Yes but why is it so popular in a discussion around internet Marketing? Two reasons, Social Networking sites are unparalleled rich resources for marketing companies to learn about user preferences. They do this by eavesdropping on your online conversations and then sifting through this in order to market products to you. The second reason is that online marketers, finding great value in all this chatter, use their huge marketing muscle to market social media as well ! In effect it's a self reinforcing cycle. Marketers love to listen to your chatter (and sell that info to their customers) and love to hype the channel so they can listen to even more chatter !
What does it mean to us ? In my humble opinion not a heck of a lot. Yes you can have a conversation with your own customers and listen to what they are saying without running surveys. You could try and create hype around your product but I suspect the advertising agencies you use will make more bucks than you from this. You can hope for an SEO boost by having search engines like Google note your relative popularity but on a pure Return On Investment basis, it's a dog.

Go ahead if you have the urge but there are better uses for your marketing dollar. Social Media from a marketing point of view is, in my opinion, a bland mass of boring conversations boiled down to "He/she loves me / He/she loves me not and on and on and on and on...... Of course that’s just my opinion.

Social Media has overtaken Pornography as the Number One activity on the Net.

Hmmmm not sure what that means.