I'm as much of a HyperCard fan as (almost) anyone else, but that is almost certainly not where the term "hyperlink" comes from. Ted Nelson used the word "link" back in the mid 1960s, in the context of another coinage of his, "hypertext". The historical record is already a little unclear about whether or not he was using hyperlink that early, but by the time HyperCard came to be, the term was already differentiated from a "simple link", with some level of implication caused by the "hyper" prefix that it was most likely on another computer/server. The most HyperCard could offer was a link into a different stack.

The "hyper" prefix predated Hypercard, and it's meaning in the context of information processing/retrieval/presentation meant more than the majority of links that HyperCard offered (even though they were also great). Yes, I know that the wikipedia page on the word "hyperlink" claims that HyperCard "may have been the first use", but the cited reference for that claim offers no evidence for it whatsoever.

The early web's competition was things like FTP, Gopher, and email-driven apps (e.g., Listservs, the Usenet Oracle). Plus paper-based stuff, like department phone books, mailing documents around, etc. It was hugely better than any of those for many common uses, so adoption was rapid.

Once you have a critical mass of users, then it can make sense to add other things in. But for that first audience, we can't be vague, selling some shining future that will happen eventually.

As I recall, one of the example CGI programs from NCSA presented a form to fill out a Papa John's order, which was then sent via the email-to-fax gateway. Which, now that I think of it, was indeed more "economic".

Cookies was definitely a Netscape thing, for profit making - a shopping cart for MCI.