Given the potential impact an online presence can have, if you intend to build a website, then an essential, earlier step is the development of an eBusiness Strategy. The development of your website must fall in line with the stated objectives of this strategy. If you have one already it will help you to have a vision of what you are trying to achieve with the site in terms of the development of the overall business. If you do not have a formal eBusiness Strategy, then the first step is to develop one. This strategy must be fundamentally driven by the overall business strategy and therefore in evolving an eBusiness strategy, both the business and the IT people must be involved.

Refer to the Advanced Guide "Formulating an IT/eBusiness strategy for SMEs" - link as this should give you a clear focus on how to develop an eBusiness strategy.

A full eBusiness strategy, although desirable, may not be essential if you are simply planning to invest in a low budget basic website. But even in this case, you should have a clear vision as to the business benefits you expect to get from your website and from other aspects, if any, of the Internet , and how you plan to achieve those benefits.

2. Develop a Website Strategy Document

In preparing to develop a website strategy, you should consult with as many relevant people as possible - this process will unveil an enormous amount of worthwhile information and highlight options you may not have considered Some sources of advice include; -

• Talking to web design and web development companies who want to get your business.
  
• Talking to business colleagues who have developed a site about their experiences, the developers they used, the benefits they obtained, if any, and the costs involved.
  
• Talking to your suppliers and customers about the type of information they would like on the site and the extent to which they are willing to use a website to get information about your company and its products.
  
• Finding out whether your staff is spending a lot of time answering queries which could be answered by posting the information on the website.
  
• Enterprise Ireland maintains a database of eBusiness Suppliers which is available here
  

The Strategy Document itself should outline the following;

• The specific objectives that you want your website to fulfil
  
• A detailed description of the target audience
  
• Whether certain areas of the site are to be available only to certain target audience groups e.g. customers/suppliers etc.
  
• The type, quantity and depth of information to be made available on the site
  
• The level of interactivity required e.g. is the site a pure brochure site, will it have free downloadable documents, will it allow business to be transacted and for, example, take payments online.
  
• The overall timescale and total budget allowed for the initial development and an outline of future development requirements and related timescales and costs. Note that it's essential to consider future requirements as this can dictate the manner in which your site is built by the developer and the technology used.
  
• The Corporate Branding Guidelines will need to be included and made applicable to an online environment - often conventional guidelines cannot be simply translated online and therefore may need to be adapted and agreed in advance of the development work taking place. .
  
• The overall Security Policies of the company and the way in which these apply for internal and external online users must be documented as part of a development of the Website Strategy
  

If you are planning to use the website for anything more than simply providing basic information you may also need to consider one or more of the following:

• Consider the legal implications of trading on-line
  
• Identify processes that need to be re-engineered
  
• Investigate systems for order fulfilment and logistics