If you just go into creating a website without any business plan you will fail.

The first step is consider what type of online presence you want, these fall roughly into 5 categories although a number of websites do offer more than one.

  1. e-commerce:
    provision of products available to purchase online.
  2. information:
    typically help to generate offline sales of services by providing information.
  3. brand:
    focus is to support your brand.
  4. portal:
    provision of news and information around a range of topics.
  5. social networks or community:
    enables community interactions between different consumers.

All these categories influence in slightly different ways when it comes to website design, development, website launch, operational ongoing costs and marketing. For example, a brand building site needs less monthly work than an e-commerce or portal site which depend on fresh updated information.