Brochure Website
A company portfolio website acts as an advert for your brand and its products and services. The website should normally have a few pages including your business’s custom logo design, with content explaining to people about your company and providing key information about what you have to offer.  Basically, it serves the same job as your printed brochure but allows you to reach a much wider audience and without the print and postal costs.

A brochure website can also include an integrated blog, so that you can combine the benefits between a traditional brochure website and the new blog marketing.

Weblog
You probably hear the word blog used a lot these days, but what does it really mean?.  Quite simply, blog is an abbreviation of weblog, and as the name suggests it is a type of an online journal.  This may sound irrelevant from a business point of view but it does have some real benefits.

It’s a very good tool if you want to make regular dated posts on a subject related to your organisation or your personal interest. For example, you can publish industry news, tell the story of your business, or demonstrate your professional expertise by giving regular tips to your customers.

It also has the added feature that it allows readers to subscribe to your posts and to leave comments, which is a great way of encouraging your potential customers to interact with your business.

Just like any site, a blog has a proper domain name and will be indexed in search engines, but its purpose and layout is different from a full information site.

As mentioned above, a blog could be integrated as a section of your organisation’sinformation website.

E-commerce Website
An e-commerce website is an online shop.  It is very different than a brochure or blog website because it not only displays information and products, but enables customers to order products directly through your website and pay using their credit card.

This takes your site to a new level, from a powerful marketing vehicle to a direct source of revenue.

Other Features
There is no end of possibilities to what can be achieved with a website and there are many more possibilities such as online communities, and interactive games.

Whatever type of site you need it is possible and your only limit is your budget and imagination.  Even a basic website can be optimised for your needs with additional features such as:
•    Event registration forms
•    Clocks and calendars
•    Photo galleries
•    Fund-raising widgets such as Justgiving.com
•    Web 2.0 marketing tools such as Twitter, Facebook and YouTube integration

You should also give a careful thought about issues such as accessibility and seo web design to ensure that your site is easy to find and easy to navigate, as well as ensuring that your brand design looks good online.

No matter what type or size of organization you are, a website can form a integral part of your marketing strategy.   What is most important is that you think carefully about what you really need from a website and what your customers are likely to want from it.

Related posts:

1. Building My New Website
2. Make it Easy to Buy From your website