Business websites can be roughly categorised into three categories: brochure, ecommerce and hybrid.

1. Brochure website

This is for businesses operating in the ‘offline’ world, also referred to as ‘bricks and mortar’ businesses. They have a physical office or shop that they operate from, and they don’t sell goods or services through the internet.

A brochure website is simplest and most economical type of website; it can even be just a home page and nothing else. It’s an information source about your business - like a brochure that you would hand out to potential customers – that contains some sales and marketing copy and contact information.

A website for a restaurant could contain information about the style of food served, the location, operating hours, menus, how to contact or make a booking.

Increasingly, this is how people look for a business.

2. Hybrid Website

Businesses who operate a traditional ‘bricks and mortar’ business, but who also take advantage of the ecommerce possibilities the internet provides, are businesses that may have a hybrid website.

Diversifying your business to include an online component can introduce efficiencies and enable you to reach new markets.

Examples:

· retailer selling online
· banks
· newspapers

3. Pure ecommerce

With the explosion of internet use around the world, new business models have been appearing to take advantage of the new space.

Many businesses now operate purely in the online space, with no offline operations. This can be a very efficient way to conduct business, as ordering and fulfilment processes can be automated.

Examples:

· Google
· hotspotting.com.au
· eBay
· realestate.com.au

This entry was posted on Sunday, April 20th, 2008 at 4:20 pm and is filed under Website Strategy. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.