How To Set A Sensible Web Portal Strategy

There's quite a frenzy today surrounding Internet portals. With all the hoopla, it's easy to forget a few important points:

• All Web sites are not portals. A portal is a Web site or service that offers a broad array of resources such as e-mail, forums, search engines and online shopping malls. Although there is no single model for what constitutes a portal, all portals offer at least five core features: Web searching, news, reference tools, access to online shopping venues and some communications capabilities. Few enterprises possess the ability or desire to build portal sites themselves; most enterprises should concentrate on leveraging the marketing benefits of third-party portals.

• Not every enterprise needs to be a portal. Although it is trendy to speak of all things Web as part of a portal today, reality requires a more pragmatic approach. Gartner Group has take the wraps off the win/place/show model to describe the options for an enterprise's Internet portal strategy.

  The "win" strategy is the most aggressive of the three portal strategies. The competition in this space is fierce, with contenders such as AOL, Yahoo, Netscape, Infoseek and Lycos leading the pack with established brand identity, interactive services, aggregated content and ISP functionality. The enterprise's strategic goal must be to become a "network."

  The "place" strategy is to be an element of the content mix within existing portals. The goal is to ride the coattails of the leaders, much the way a studio places a promising broadcast series on a leading network. Enterprises that have compelling content should strike deals with those in the first category.

  The "show" strategy is to show up as output in portals' search engines. Most enterprises will find themselves in this category, as companies that do not seek to become a network. These enterprises have a firmly established Internet presence and seek to leverage that investment across a broader audience.

• Not all Internet content will be driven by portals. While the buzzword "portal" will likely die in 1999, to be replaced by yet another buzzword describing similar concepts, the ideas behind portals-as access point, branding-will still be important. But enterprises should not overlook the most important tool for a Web presence: the lowly, much maligned URL. Web addresses and the underlying Domain Name System are not broken despite conventional wisdom and political posturing. After all, even the portals themselves have based their strategies on their URLs.