BROCHURE WEBSITE

This is the most common type of website and is perhaps the easiest to set up for your business. Imagine if you were to "translate" your brochure to the Web. That's what you'd have here. This type of website is fairly static and can be changed or updated once or twice per year. Sample pages include:

- Home

- About us

- Products

- Services

- Contact us

The beauty about this type of website is that it requires little maintenance yet gives you a professional presence on the Web, and of course the respect you deserve. Also, the price is usually a lot lower but that doesn't mean you should sacrifice your company objectives for what appears to be less expensive.

E-BUSINESS WEBSITE

An e-business website is one that includes all of the above but in addition it does something for you. Ideally, it should automate some process that you would otherwise have to do manually.

This doesn't have to be a complex process. It could be something as simple as a Mailing List manager, or an online Order Form that processes payment offline, or a system to provide after-sales support.

E-COMMERCE WEBSITE

An e-commerce website includes all of the above plus it would also have the ability to accept credit card or other types of payment online in real time. To get this, you would need a merchant account, a security certificate which is commonly referred to in the industry as an SSL certificate, and depending on how many items you're selling, a shopping cart.

E-commerce websites are expensive for international merchants but very affordable for US-based merchants. Why this disparity? The argument is that there are better anti-fraud laws in the US that can deal with cybercrime. In fact merchants from some countries are not allowed to buy SSL certificates at all.

PORTAL

A portal as the name implies, is a website that aims to provide everything and be your point of entry to the Internet. Personally this is not my favourite type of website because I don't believe one can be all things to all men successfully, but if you think you can take on Yahoo and MSN, go right ahead. :-)

Maybe what you can do is become the portal for your niche market. That would work great. For example, if you sell nuts and bolts, you can become the nuts and bolts portal.

Some believe that international portals like the ones previously mentioned are going to lose market share to regional local portals. The belief is that if I'm searching for a hairdresser, I don't want to get links from an international portal to some great salon in Paris. I want to know who's the best gardener in my little town. In this case, this seems very true and highly relevant, especially if you're based in that town because you would even be able to post first-hand reviews.

Skeptics though, say that the big boys know this and are going to start setting up local branches of their operations. This, they say, is why you see some of them buying up country domains and extensions. However, a wise man once said, "The competition will do what the competition will do." So go brave if you have an idea that would make the big fish look small! It's better to try and fail than fail to try. OK, enough cliches.

SEARCH ENGINE

Why are Google's shares the highest? Possibly because everyone needs to search. Everyone goes to the Internet for information of some sort.

Search engines, though are branching out into other areas, from video delivery to telephony. They would have their reasons but it's interesting that even while they do that, some are maintaining their search focus. Perhaps this is because search would remain the number one activity of people online.

These are the most common types of websites you will see around the web and before getting a website, you may want to perhaps know which would work best at helping you to achieve your company objectives.

If I may now start my own cliche: know thyself and get the website to suit.

Aleem Khan is an accredited Internet Expert with the International Internet Authority http://www.InternationalInternetAuthority.com which is a safe and reliable place to http://www.GetYourNAMEin.com