Web Storefronts
Web storefronts integrate various functions such as physical presence as a store, sales representatives, ordering and payment functions (combined cash register, credit card reader, etc.), backoffice supports and various data interchanges (for inventorying, supply ordering, etc.)
Those accustomed to the old text-based Internet seem to favor simple, information-driven Web sites with not much fancy graphics. New generations of Web designers prefer graphic-rich, jazzy layouts. This is not surprising since they come predominantly from graphics professionals, and newspaper and magazine layout artists. In fact, most fancy Web sites decidedly look a lot like a magazine or a front page of a newspaper. As both these print media and screen-restricted Web page have the same spatial limitation and the need to grab "eyeballs", this jazzy approach seems to make a lot of sense. Furthermore, popular sites tend to have jazzy graphics.
However, are jazzy sites drawing more visitors, or do (already) popular sites tend to employ a lot of graphics? That is, New York Times Online does have the definite advantage of being well known so that even if its Web site is text-oriented, easy to navigate, and well classified for organization, it might still draw heavy traffic. Greater emphasis on contents than on appearance will reduce congestion and unnecessary delay. Too much emphasis on graphics and multimedia (although that may be interesting and act as a drawing factor) but not enough contents will ultimately convince us that the Internet is indeed as shallow as the media we have known all along.
