Accessing On-line Data

Finding What You Want

Direct and efficient access to information on the Internet has become an essential part of modern business. Wireless and PDA technology presents new demands for efficiency - why waste time, money and space extracting unwanted information and risk missing information that matters. The ability to filter web information typically reduces access times as only the required information is present. Extraneous data, such as advertisements, is eliminated making access by wireless and PDA devices to required information faster and more efficient.

FINDbase supplies the technology required to extract, analyze and compare data from multiple sources. The virtual elimination of manual extraction and analysis techniques decreases costs and increases productivity. The Internet is an Ocean of Data, FINDbase is your Island of Knowledge.

Rich Source of Data
The Internet is one of the richest and most rapidly growing sources of information available posing unique opportunities and problems. The speed at which the Internet changes means that information of interest may change location, content or disappear completely. This problem is already concerning historians due to the way in which information can be subtly changed over time - something that is not possible with printed matter. It is possible to manually copy information of interest, but the sheer volume on the Internet can make this a daunting or even impossible task. Even finding information of interest can be difficult as the major search engines are not guaranteed to list the most comprehensive source, something made worse by organizations paying for better prominence. Increasingly search engines are providing information that people are paying to display and this new advertising format is becomingly increasingly common. Equally common is the practice of copying and mining information to facilitate:

• Off-line analysis.
• Elimination of the consequences of information disappearing from the Internet
• Faster analysis
• Comparison of data with other sources
• Highlighting and analysis of changes of data on the Internet

FINDbase provides you with the tools you need to extract and analyze information to accomplish your goals. FINDbase is your Island of Knowledge in an ocean of information.

Internet Sites and Your Data
Providing a dynamic, content rich Internet site is a vital part of all eCommerce and web sites. Content typically changes over time and obviously only the most recent data should be accessible to site visitors. Old data however, often remains on an Internet site as the result of inexperienced operators, poor design, the content management tools being used and other reasons. The effects of access to this data by site visitors could range from negligible (outdated description) to extremely expensive (product price data). Whilst modern content management tools provide highly effective ways to maintain and manage large quantities of data and site content, the ways to determine what visitors to the site can see involve time consuming visual inspection and even this will miss "hidden" content. The jukeSPACE family of products can extract data from all accessible parts of the site putting you back in control of your data. jukeSPACE provides reports on the way the site is linked and analysis of the data. Better still, you will get an analysis of what visitors and potential customers see.  External site analysis helps identify potential problem areas which could include links to now redundant areas, outdated, conflicting or incorrect critical data such as price information. External views are vital if deploying ASP or other database driven on-demand content sites which are notoriously time consuming to manage and check by visual methods.

The Case for Quality
Every organization strives to provide the best quality. From product to customer care, Quality is an integral part of the delivered product or service. If Web design and content are considered a vital part of an organization, it follows that they should be embraced by the same Commitment to Quality. Yet incredibly web content and management tools pay almost little or no regard to revision control, testing and quality that in other business activities could result in huge financial loss. All too often eCommerce sites are tested by the well known "go live and see what breaks" testing philosophy. The costs of this strategy range from lost customers to giving your competitors a huge insight into your operations. In an Internet world where the competition is a click away, can you afford to neglect a quality commitment to your customers?

For example, amongst the aspects of a total quality solution:-

1. Do you know what your site looks to to visitors? All of your site?
2. Do you know what data can be accessed from your site? This could be different to what you think is there!
3. Have you tested your site for access problems and if so, what did you compare the results against.

The testing content and overall site quality provides one of the great challenges to the eCommerce world and yet is almost completely ignored. For example, how can you be certain that the prices in the database are the same as the prices presented to your customers? Quality is more than testing for broken URL links and missing graphics.

jukeSPACE provides you with tools needed to analyze site content to determine what can be accessed. For database driven content (such as ASP) servers, external access is often the only way to verify what information can be accessed.   FINDbase Technology puts you back in control. Can you afford to offer your customers anything less?

eCommerce - get the real view

The Importance of Site Analysis.
Being informed is an essential if not mandatory part of success in today's eCommerce markets where competitors are only a click away. eCommerce sites need accurate and timely information to compete and attract customers. Existing research can be costly and slow, requiring visual inspection of site content and the manual gathering of statistics. While these techniques work well for traditional advertising campaigns, the sheer volume and rapid rate of change of data contained in eCommerce sites makes it virtually impossible to be accurately informed of market trends and equally important - what your competitors are doing.

Example Problem
Let us consider 4 companies competitively selling imaginary components called widgets. Each company knows that their customers can discover the existence of the other companies in the market. So each company tries to ensure that their products are presented in a manner that makes price comparisons difficult, yet makes item selection easy for their customers. One of the companies (lets call them A-Vendor) decides to use jukeSPACE for market trend analysis. Now A-Vendor can quickly and easily :-

• Perform quality analysis on the A-Vendor web site.
• Analyze and compare other widget suppliers sites for specific information such as pricing, range and type of products being offered.
• Check other widget suppliers sites for redundant content such as data that is not directly linked from any page. This could include old price information and test data giving a potentially invaluable insight into the sites content and operations.

Using patent pending technology, jukeSPACE cuts through product descriptions to the actual content meaning which can be presented in an easily managed form - such as input to a spreadsheet.

FINDbase technologies provides A-Vendor with information which could have taken hours, days or even weeks to compile giving A-Vendor a market advantage over it's less well informed competition.

Delays caused by on-line Advertising
Internet advertising typically slows access to data to ensure that the displayed advertisement has a "fair" chance of being seen. The practice of leaving an advertisement visible while the rest of the site loads is common and when coupled with multiple advertisements can result increasing and potentially unacceptable delays.