A recent report done by Yankee Group, a Boston-based market research company, states that at
end of 2004 around 34 percent of small and medium sized businesses in North America are selling goods and services on Internet and another 25 percent is planning to do so within next 12 months. Online sales in United States represented 8.4 percent of country’s Gross Domestic Product in 2004. This figure is increasingly rising. This means, if your company is not paying serious attention to this vital channel of sales and marketing, you are simply missing boat.In its basic form a website is a bundle of pages full of texts, graphics and other electronic files published on Internet for people to view. How you organize your website depends totally on your online goals. Websites are built for various purposes. You can use a website as a sales point, a marketing channel, a corporate image building tool, a branding channel, an information center, a CRM center, a product launching center, and for number of other reasons. When you plan to build a website, you should base your online strategy keeping in mind two things: your online objectives and your potential audience.
SOME OF THE MOST COMMON TYPES OF CORPORATE WEBSITES ARE:
Information providing sites
Most of today’s sites fall in this category. The simplest of them are actually mere reflection of offline corporate brochures.
Promoting company The idea behind some of information-driven sites is to give maximum information related to company. A holding company, for example, may prefer to have a site like this. These sites usually include: company history, company related news, mission statement, profiles of key executives, a good FAQ section, etc. Graphics are used in these sites only to accentuate text information. However, sites may include video and FLASH presentation as well.
Promoting products or services A pharmaceutical company to promote its recently launched medicine may develop a website surrounding product. The sole purpose of this type of sites is to create awareness of specific products or services.
Creating brand awareness A manufacturing company that sells its products exclusively through distributing channel may develop a website to provide ultimate information on products and create brand. These sites complement company’s offline promotional efforts and always built in consistence with other commercials.
E-commerce
Online sales are done through e-commerce sites. Main characteristics of an e-commerce site include:
1. Detail products or services information with pictures and sometimes with multimedia presentations, drawings, charts, etc. 2. Shopping cart – so that buyer can select one or several items to purchase. 3. Payment gateway – so that buyer can make payments for products or services purchased.
Corporate portals
A Website that offers a broad range of resources and services such as email, forums, company pertinent news & articles, members only area, etc. is generally called a portal. Portals are intended to be gateway for their respective audience.
B2B exchange
Business to Business Exchange is an online platform where buyers and sellers come to communicate, collaborate and make business transactions. The main objective of a B2B Exchange is to create a venue, filled with features that allow members to efficiently conduct business processes through Internet. A private B2B exchange is a corporate portal with a marketplace. It is designed to provide services to company’s own buyers, sellers and workforce.
