How to Grow Your Business on the Internet
Pop quizzes
Each quick quiz lets you know if you picked up the main points in a chapter. I’m not
trying to be tricky here. You should know the answers to these without hesitation.
Business at the Speed of Light: Pop Quiz
- Besides marketing and sales, can you name three or more other reasons for a business to
connect to the Internet?
- Which product might be easiest to profitably market on the Net and why; financial
software for chemical companies, a book explaining standard office procedures for
university clerks, or lambada lessons by email?
- Which would be the hardest to profitably market on the Net and why?
- Do a higher percentage of Webheads buy books, clothing, or travel tickets on the Web?
Which is bought by the lowest percentage? And which of those three product categories
is mostly sold to consumers?
- Do all Internet sales occur on the World Wide Web?
- Which category generates the most sales on the Net, sales to government agencies, sales
to businesses, or sales to consumers?
- Does Mr. Doom think all businesses will be successful on the Net? And should he buy a
toupee or use Rogaine for his bald spot?
12 Reasons Internet Projects Fail: Pop Quiz
- Which three of the deadly 12 Reasons pose the biggest threat to your own Internet project?
- Which two of the 12 Reasons are the least of your worries?
- To prevent Sturgeon’s Law from affecting your Web site, do you need to pay more
attention to your site’s graphics, to your writing, or to computing details?
- The stage of feature lock should happen before which of the ten steps?
- If feature creep isn’t an obnoxious movie reviewer, what is it?
Breaking the Law: Pop Quiz
- True or false: You don’t need permission to copy just a little, tiny piece of someone else’s
Web site for your own.
- How much in damages was Playboy awarded from unauthorized online use of its photos?
- If you design your Web site to imitate the look of the Yahoo! Web site, would you be
guilty of copyright infringement, trademark infringement, or trade dress infringement?
- Name three things for which another country’s government can try to prosecute a
business in your country.
- Name two ways you can make an email message a valid contract.
- True or false: If some text or a picture has no copyright notice, you can use it as you see
fit.
How to Prevent Break-Ins and Fraud: Pop Quiz
- To cause you serious pain, how many times does an attacker need to break into your
system?
- Which of these three groups is the most likely source of the people who would damage
or steal your information: a) Disgruntled employees (even if you don’t work for the Post
Office) b) Professional commercial spies who wear better suits than you do c) Smart
teenage hackers with thick glasses and no social skills
- Which of the three groups above is the least likely to damage or steal your information?
- If an intruder copied your most valuable information and sold it to your competition or
to a shady investor, would you ever find out about it? If so, how?
- How do you plan to keep your Internet computer and software separated from your
business computers and software?
How Firewalls Block the Bad Guys: Pop Quiz
- Which product is more secure, a proxy server or a packet filter?
- Which of the following kinds of software should go inside your firewall and which go
outside?
Your public home page?
Your password file?
A Web page where customers check product availability?
A Web page where your sales reps file expense reports?
Your customer address file?
A Web page where customers enter sales orders?
Outbound emailed purchasing bids?
Employee names and phone numbers?
- Joe Bloggs’ Lava Lamps & Volkswagen Parts is a fictional business with three retail
stores, a warehouse, and a busy World Wide Web site. Joe’s Web pages are on a Web
host’s computer, not on his own. Joe’s employees surf the Web using 28.8 modems
which hang up when a session is done. All four locations communicate via email, which
employees read using Eudora, replying to customer email within 10 minutes on
average. Joe does not accept email containing credit card numbers. His Web pages accept
credit card orders, which are immediately encrypted when received on the Web host’s
computer and transmitted to Joe in scrambled form via email. Joe’s order clerk moves
the scrambled email messages to a floppy disk and by hand moves the floppy to an
isolated computer before decrypting it. What vulnerable opening should Joe Bloggs
block with a firewall?
- True or false: Packet filters can inspect the contents of Internet messages.
- Which of these is not one of the leading reasons that businesses with firewalls still suffer
damage?
A firewall or router is not properly set up in the first place
A commercial spy knows a software bug in the firewall itself
An employee accidentally deletes files
Credit Cards and Digital Cash: Pop Quiz
- Name three bad things that could happen if your business took naked, unencrypted
credit card numbers over the Net.
- Pretend one of your customers bought something from you using a credit card and later
had $2,000 in bogus charges to that card number. Your bank determines that the card
number was stolen from one of your computers. Who will pay for most of the fraudulent
charges, your customer or you?
- If the incident above did happen, where would you look first?
- True or false: If a digital signature is intact, it guarantees that the document containing it
was not altered in transit.
- Is encrypted data totally safe, or just more difficult to get to?
Email: Pop Quiz
- Name two ways a written company policy on email use helps prevent lawsuits.
- If one of your salespeople was flamed by someone outside your company, how would
you handle it?
- How would the top person in your company handle being personally flamed?
- True or false: A list server costs less and is easier to maintain than a Web server.
- How many lines are in your own sig file?
Levels of Marketing and Types of Sales: Pop Quiz
- Print, broadcast, or direct mail; pick whichever your company uses most. Name at
least two ways Internet marketing is different and one way in which it is similar.
- True or false: Internet marketing is not direct marketing.
- Will your prospect understand your marketing message more if they feel in control or if
they feel you are in control?
- Which costs more, netlurking and posting, or creating a Web site?
- From what you know of Internet user demographics, do you think a reasonable
quantity of prospects for your business are on the Internet?
Publicity Heaven: Pop Quiz
- If someone posted newsgroup messages with jokes about your products, what would you
do?
- What is the term used by Internet people to describe TYPING IN ALL CAPS?
- This chapter describes four alternative types of publicity activities using email lists.
Which of the four would most benefit your company?
- Which of the four would be easiest for you to do?
- An easy question: What does FAQ stand for?