In today's market, most businesses will explore posting a web page, customized to whatever your company needs it's customers to know about their products and services.
You may be selling products or services to businesses or consumers, using your web page to market your business or you may be a nonprofit organization. In any case, your web page has something to say to the people who are searching the web for information and products.

As you develop your web page content, think about how your website will benefit your business. The easiest and most obvious benefit is sales and profits, but there could be many others. Some websites exist to provide more product information to make a buyer's decision easier, improve customer satisfaction, and substitute for time-consuming telephone communication.

The main point is that there should be a payoff, either through sales or informational support for your business. You don't develop a website just because somebody says you should. You develop it because it has a business or organizational purpose. There are infinite numbers of possible models for websites.

Your Business Card on a Web Page: Portfolio Sites
These sites offer information to people who are looking for information about a business. They don't specifically sell anything, but they do support sales (or donations for a non-profit) by generating contacts or making the buying decision easier.

Portfolio sites are the millions of websites that don't really sell anything but present the equivalent of sales literature to searchers on the web. Restaurant sites that post their menus, legal and accounting practices that post professional biographies and related information are two examples. The web started with these kind of sites because they are relatively inexpensive to produce and provide significant benefits.

The Basic Commerce Model: Sales and Profits
The simplest website business model is based on making sales and profits. A classic commerce website sells products, takes orders, charges credit cards, and ships goods. Software and some information sites have the advantage of being able to deliver what they sell online, at the time of the transaction.

These sites normally offer their target customers the benefit of ease of use and selection. Commerce sites offer a huge selection and a wealth of additional information on the products it sells.

The Content Model: Based on Advertising
The content sites work economically like mainstream network television in the United States, free content to users paid for by advertisements that users put up with. This is also a lot like the classic newspaper and magazine business, content paid for mainly by advertisers, with the exception that most magazines and newspapers sell for a small price while getting most of their revenue from advertisers. The "business model" isn't really new, just the fact that it is offered over the Internet.

Consider Internet portals, newspaper and magazine sites, entertainment sites, and other types of sites that are free to browsers and make money by charging advertisers or sponsors for banner advertising and sponsorships. These are content sites that depend on Internet advertising for their revenue.

Community Sites
A good example of a community site is the bulletin board in a local supermarket. The market doesn't charge for posting notices on the board, nobody pays to read them, but the business takes the trouble to manage the board. The underlying business benefit, we guess, is that the sense of community builds traffic and loyalty.

This value is similar in the Internet community site. A typical community site offers email, bulletin boards and forums, a common focus for some group that has a common interest. Community sites are often started by groups, clubs, and government organizations. Some of the best of them, however, are sponsored by businesses that want to take advantage of the common interest. For example, a rock climbing community site might be sponsored by a local store.

Most Sites are Really Hybrids, Combinations
In truth most sites offer a combination of target user benefits. This site, for example, combines content and community with a touch of portfolio and commerce. Amazon.com combines commerce with content and community; Yahoo.com also combines content, community, and commerce.

How can you benefit from posting a web page?
How will you turn users of your website into money? Is there a plan for it? How will you measure it? Will you have a commerce portion? Will you be depending on sponsorships and advertising? Will you be selling services to your users? Make sure that you think about how you will ultimately make your website venture bring in real money.

Try to think of your website benefits in monetary terms. This is a good time to consider the sales forecast table in your business plan. There might actually be business benefits instead of sales: increased closing percentage, increased customer satisfaction, or increased retail traffic. Think about how those benefits might fit into a sales forecast, because then you'll be able to compare monetary benefits to expenses.

The following article was found at http://www.inc.com/articles/it/internet/hosting/15237.html

Setting Up Shop in Cyberspace

With research firms projecting e-commerce revenues totaling more than $100 billion in 2003, businesses large and small are considering jumping into the electronic commerce marketplace.

The Internet is quickly becoming a crucial factor in many small companies' growth strategies. According to an e-merchant study released earlier this year by Internet market research firm Keenan Vision, the number of e-merchants will number 400,000 in 2003.
Yet, building an electronic storefront may seem particularly daunting to small businesses and retailers; the maze of e-commerce products and services available makes it easy for a merchant to get lost. Many small companies find building and hosting a Web site on their own to be cost-prohibitive, and generating traffic to their sites can also prove to be a difficult undertaking.

Clearly, building the right foundation for successful "e-tailing" takes careful consideration and solid strategy, but the step-by-step process that follows should help demystify the process and provide an easy-to-follow guide.

It's also important to note that a full-service transactional Web site may not necessarily be the right strategy for all merchants. If the products or services you offer do not lend themselves to the Web, or if selling online is not a key objective for your company, you may want to consider a "brochure" site that promotes your business and helps create foot traffic at your brick-and-mortar office or shop. A brochure site does not sell products or services online, but instead is meant to be informational and serve as an advertising/promotional tool.

Five Basic Steps
There are five basic steps to complete before transacting business on your Web site. You may select separate vendors to assist you in each step or look for a vendor that provides an integrated solution. Choosing one vendor that offers a suite of e-commerce services can simplify the process (and save time and money). The following steps outline the things you need to consider when moving your business online.

1. Domain Name Registration
What's in a name? Plenty when you are an e-tailer. It is not only your company's brand name, it's also your address in cyberspace. Once you've selected what that name will be, you must register it with InterNIC, the agency that registers and maintains a database of domain names. You can obtain a domain name directly from one of many providers - NetworkSolutions.com and Register.com are just two examples of these registrars. However, your Internet Service Provider or your e-commerce service vendor(s) will often perform this task for you.

2. Web Store Design
The key decision at this step is to determine whether you plan to build your site yourself or have a provider build it for you. If you choose to build your site yourself (either by purchasing a related software package or using a "browser-based" store-building package that you download from the Web), keep in mind you will not only have the initial task of construction but also the ongoing responsibility of making modifications to the site.
With many Web-building services and software products available to assist businesses in designing a Web store, you do not have to take on this project by yourself. However, even with a Web-building service provider, you still must consider several critical issues to ensure that the site you build meets your vision and needs:

· What products/services do you want to sell?
· What do you want the look and feel of your logo and your site overall to be?
· What type of navigation tools do you want to use?
· By what forms of payment do you wish to transact business?
· How are you going to calculate tax and shipping charges?

Once you've made these decisions, you are ready to develop your product catalog. You'll need to provide necessary information on each product, such as description, color, size, and price. This catalog is expandable, so that you may add to it as your business and product offering grows.

After the product catalog is completed, your Web building vendor can publish your Web site online.

3. Server Hosting
Another major decision that businesses joining the electronic market place must face is whether to buy a server and host their Web site in-house, or to outsource the entire operation to a service provider. For many smaller businesses, outsourcing is the most viable and cost-effective option. Establishing your own operation is complicated and can take several months' setup time, whereas you can get set up in less than an hour if you use a hosting service. A hosting service will also speed the time it takes customers to download pages on your Web site, improving the customers' experience on your site.

4. Payment Solutions
In order to become truly e-commerce enabled, you must have the following:
· payment software
· a merchant account
· payment processing services
· a gateway to connect all these elements of the payment process.
You also will need cash register software to help easily calculate sales tax and shipping charges, and you may want to include a shopping cart function as well.

In order to start transacting business and accepting payments, you must first open an account with a merchant bank. Once you have established an account, your merchant bank retains the services of a payment processing company to "acquire" transactions of your customers, secure the funds from the customers' credit card issuer, and place that money into your merchant account. This is the last part of the payment solutions equation

5. Traffic Coverage
"If you build it they will come." If only it were that easy with e-tailing. However, no matter how great your Web site is, no one will come to it if they don't know you are there. This is where driving traffic and transactions becomes an essential element of your e-commerce plan.

The first step in building traffic is registering your site with search engines. Again, there are vendors that will do this for you. For registration, you will need to think of "meta tags" or keywords that will be associated with your site.

In addition, one old rule that still holds true in the virtual economy is "Location, location, location." Much like putting your store in a real shopping mall, having your storefront in a shopping portal not only gives higher visibility but helps draw in "window shoppers."

Another advantage of being a part of a virtual mall is the possibility of cross promotions with other e-stores. You can establish relationships with sites that reach a similar demographic group and offer premiums in exchange for links, referrals, and demographic information. For instance, you and another e-merchant could include taglines about each other's stores in your purchase confirmation e-mails.

In Conclusion...
Now that you've read about the five stages of building an electronic storefront, take a deep breath. These five steps may sound a bit cumbersome, but remember, you can streamline that process by using an integrated e-commerce solution.

Congratulations. After completing these five steps of development, your electronic storefront is open and ready for business, 24 hours a day, seven days a week, accessible to the millions of consumers logging onto to the Internet each day.

Web Page Resources

http://dir.yahoo.com/Computers_and_Internet/Internet/World_Wide_Web/Site_Development/
http://www.ecommercetimes.com Free daily Internet business and technology news
http://www.inc.com/articles/biz_online/do_biz_online/sell_online/ Selling from Your Web Site
http://www.inc.com/articles/ecom/ E-Commerce articles
http://www.inc.com/articles/it/internet/hosting/ Web hosting articles
http://www.inc.com/guides/marketing/market_methods/grassroots/24074.html Grass Roots marketing
http://www.onlinewbc.gov/docs/market/sell_online.html How to sell your business online http://www.asbdcnow.com/plv/asbdc/home.asp Build Your Small Business Websites
http://smallbusiness.yahoo.com/resources/business_plans/web_strategy_guide.html?f=0.1.1
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http://www.hoaa.com/ Home Office Association of America
http://www.bigstep.com Website design, hosting tips and services
http://www.bizland.com Website development, hosting information
http://www.bizweb2000.com E-commerce tips

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