Assignment 7:
What are cookies?
Cookies are information packets embedded in the HTML info sent back and forth between servers and the user's computer. Originally, cookies were created to build website customization for the user (ex. personalized website or save shopping carts at particular websites).
Cookies store user information that be accessed by the original server or other servers. Most often, this access goes unnoticed by the user.
How do cookies work?
Cookies are stored on the user's computer without their consent or knowledge. User specific information is collected by the different links the user clicks, information they provide when signing in to services like Yahoo! The web server creates a specific cookie that includes all the user's preferences and is then stored on the user's computer for future visits.
If and when the revisits that web server, the cookie is activated without the user's knowledge and personal information is sent back and forth between the Web server and the user's computer.
Files to download if you'd like to detect and delete your cookies:
You can delete cookies by going to your computer's files and deleting the temporary files folder. If you'd like to avoid having cookies installed on your computer permanently, please go here.
I loaded Cookie Pal, and wasn't pleased. I lost information saved on Amazon.com and my logins for MSN and Yahoo. I am not concerned with security, I have nothing I don't mind sharing, so this was not a beneficial experiment for me.
Doubleclick.com
Doubleclick.com is an online company hired by businesses to market their product online via email marketing, database marketing, and various other online marketing strategies. Doubleclick.com then helps these companies with post marketing analysis to determine how successful their campaigns were.
Cookies
Pros: Cons:
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Final Project Research
Traffic Building:
To increase traffic to my website, I will make my website more easily attainable in major search engines by listing with event planning sites, DMOZ (a free directory listing) and attach tags to my website so "event", "party", "corporate", "function", "meeting" etc will increase the likelihood that someone searching on Yahoo! or Google for example would be able to find my website.
For a nominal fee I can also subscribe to companies that will promote my site on major search engines. Additionally, Google and other such search engines offer pay-per-click or other pay services to make links to my site more prominent.
The more places my website is listed on the Web, the more likely people will find it when they do a search.
Obviously, the website must be aesthetically pleasing and easy to navigate with a quality product for them to stay.
Navigation:
I used a frames setup for my site to facilitate visiting different areas including mission statement, contacting the company, and examples of work.
Other Companies:
NXTevent www.nxtevent.com
I like their website, although with Flash it takes longer to load on slower computers. I found navigation difficult, so I chose to do a frames layout instead. Contact information is difficult to come by. Also, the font is too small on most of the site for many users.
Professional Meeting Planners www.pmpmeeting.com
Their site has frames and it was very easily to find any information needed. The front page of the site however, is boring. Graphics would pump this up.
Student Websites:
Terutaka Aizawa- I looked at Terutaka's website for my project, and liked the way the site was set up. There were plenty of graphics, something I needed to add to my page.