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VIRTUAL IDEAS
Hosting a Website ? Be my Guest

It's the e-quivalent of a make or buy decision. You've decided that the Website forms an integral part of your business strategy. Now, do you D-I-Y or outsource? The latter, advises Jeanne M. Schaff, a consultant with Forrester Research. The logic in preferring a hosting service over an in-house effort:

Most companies do not boast of Web-design experts or e-Commerce whizkids in their ranks. Hosters do.
Hosters possess expertise in maintaining a Website. Companies do not.
Companies cannot afford the kind of high-speed connectivity hosters have.
Hosters can have a site up and running overnight. Companies will take months.
The costs involved in the first year in setting up and maintaining a high-end e-Commerce site will be in the region of $1.5 million. If outsourced, it would cost around $2,000 a month.

However, companies should not opt for the first hoster they come across, warns Schaff. Managing hosters is a process that should comprise 3 steps:

Users must understand what they wish to achieve before looking for a hoster.
Users should be ready to work with hosters in debugging e-Commerce sites.
Users cannot expect to sign off once they have appointed a hoster.

Schaff classifies companies seeking hosters into Maximalists, or e-Commerce laggards; Minimalists, who have basic sites: Customisers, for whom e-Commerce is a priority; and Trailblazers, who pioneer e-Commerce in an industry. Check out where you belong.

WWW.GETORGANISED.ORG

You'd never believe it when you look at them, but Websites do require a certain amount of organisation and structure. Ideally, Websites should have structures that make it easy for the user to access any information on the site, while accounting for the level of interactivity and involvement she exhibits. Based on these factors, Jean Trumbo, a researcher at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, has come up with a list of 3 optional Website structures and the contexts in which they are best applied. In effect, the structure you should decide for your Website must be based on its content as well as the way people wish to use it. Now get that HTML going.

SITE STRUCTURES

The linear structure. This is ideal for information that is sequential in nature. Users have to learn the first step before moving onto the second.

The hierarchical structure. This is best used for data presenting a key idea, which then branches out into smaller ones. The caveat? Users prefer to find what they are looking for within 5 moves.

The networked structure. Some sites require a network of links, but there is no evident hierarchy of data. Users need to be able to move across sections in any order. But there must be links everywhere to the homepage to ensure that the user isn't lost in a maze of information.

INTERACTIVE BRANDING

It can. It can't. It can. It can't. Can the Net function as a brand-building medium? That it can was proved by Baccus Strategic Services, a boutique consulting firm, which conducted a series of discussions with Web-literate consumers. Not only did the participants express an immediate empathy for companies advertising on the Net, there is no distinction between advertising and content for them.

Building on this, Ogilvy Interactive developed an e-branding initiative for IBM's e-business service. This took an unlikely form: success stories. The company created detailed interactive case studies explaining the problems being faced by IBM's clients, and how it addressed them. These ads-but-not-ads sidestepped the problem faced by most companies advertising on the Web: poor click-through rates. Bottomline: e-branding should leverage the interactivity of the Net to demonstrate the company's-or, the brand's-expertise. But will it work for soap?

-R. Sukumar

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