webmarket.boom.ru — the site of "WebMarket", a catalog of Russian online stores that lived on a subdomain of the free hosting service boom.ru. As the home page announced, its pages "brought together the best Russian online stores, offering thousands of goods from around the world"[1]. The copyright notice in the footer covered 2000–2003 and belonged to the "Web-master for Your Site" service, which handled the making, upkeep, and "promotion of sites on the Internet"; the contact address given was ars-nn@mail.ru[1]. The site belongs to the Nizhny Novgorod Internet by virtue of its record in the local counter: in the overall counter.nn.ru top list for 2000, it is entered under Counter.nn.ru with the description "A Nizhny Novgorod supermarket — a huge online store offering thousands of goods from around the world"[2].

Catalog of stores

The home page's title began with the digits "001" and read as "Catalog of the Best Russian Online Stores"[1]. At the top were two invitation links — "Add to favorites" and "Make homepage" — followed by an introduction promising the visitor the chance to "purchase practically any items of interest that you may have been searching for in vain in the stores of your own city"; the main shared trait of the goods on offer was named as sale in rubles and delivery "to any city in Russia and most countries of the CIS"[1].

The catalog itself was divided into eleven sections, laid out in two columns: computers and office equipment, flowers and gifts, mobile phones and accessories, perfumery and cosmetics, books, magazines and posters, audio and video products, general stores, household appliances, children's goods, medical goods, and a section of adult goods. A separate line at the bottom led to a "LIST OF ALL STORES" — a combined page with no division by topic[1]. The surviving page shows neither a shopping cart nor its own prices: "WebMarket" did not trade itself but sent visitors on to other people's stores — that is, it was a signpost storefront, not a store, contrary to the label the counter's catalog description gave it[1].

Discounts, electronic money, and link exchange

Besides the catalog, the home page carried three service blocks. The first was the Allshops discount card, which, as the home page stated, "gives you the opportunity to get discounts from 1% to 12% on purchases at online stores that are part of the Allshops system"[1]. The second was ROBOXchange, described as "a service for automatic exchange of electronic money", listing the payment systems of the day: e-gold, WebMoney in three wallets (WMZ, WMR, WME), Yandex.Money, and e-port[1]. The third was a "Links" section with a direct offer from the author: "I invite website owners to exchange links"[1][5]. The author pursued link exchange beyond the catalog's own pages as well: in May 2004, the Subscribe.Ru newsletter "Web Promotion. Where to Place Your Link" carried, from the contact address ars-nn@mail.ru, an exchange request from a catalog under the same name — "catalog of the best Russian online stores" — which by then was hosted at shops.pp.ru; traffic was given as about 100 visitors a day, and sites about goods, services, and e-commerce were invited to exchange[5].

The footer directly tied the catalog to web-studio work: below the 2000–2003 copyright notice stood the line "Web-master for Your Site. Making, upkeep, and promotion of sites on the Internet" and the mailing address ars-nn@mail.ru — that is, "WebMarket" was run by someone who built sites to order[1].

Place in the Nizhny Novgorod internet

In the surviving sample of the counter.nn.ru overall top list for 2000, "WebMarket" holds a score of 194 and is described as a Nizhny Novgorod supermarket[2]. This is the only known trace of the site in local measurements: in the surviving results table of the Nizhny Novgorod Internet Day vote of 2004, the domain webmarket.boom.ru does not appear[3], and no votes for it are recorded in our data. For more on the sample and the counting method, see the Archival study of the Nizhny Novgorod internet from the counter.nn.ru rating.

How it closed

The project never had its own domain — it lived on a subdomain of the free hosting service boom.ru, and the address outlived its content. By the snapshot of 22 January 2009, the address webmarket.boom.ru held an entirely different site — "The RuNet Hosting Market: Data and Analysis" — with a five-item menu: "About the Project", "Virtual Hosting", "Special Hosting", "Domain Names", "Contacts"[4]. Neither the store catalog nor any mention of the former owner remained on this page. The last web-archive snapshot of the address is dated 22 January 2009[4].

Sources

  1. web.archive.org — Home page, 2003 (archive)
  2. proto.nnov.ec — Archival study of the Nizhny Novgorod internet based on the counter.nn.ru rating (archive)
  3. web.archive.org — Results of the Nizhny Novgorod Internet Day vote, 2004 (archive)
  4. web.archive.org — Home page, 2009 (archive)
  5. subscribe.ru — Web Promotion. Where to Place Your Link — That Is the Question! Issue of 28.05.2004