There's been a lot written on what technology platform a Web site should use. Everyone has their favorite: your internal IS (Information Systems) division may be standardized on Microsoft or your ISP (Information Service Provider) may be recommending using Apache Servers with Free BSD. So, as the Marketer in charge of your company's Web site, how do you determine what's the best technology to use?

To me, the answer is straight-forward: your Marketing Objectives and Target Audience need to drive your technology choices. Simply put, if the technology that you're using on your Web site puts such overhead on the site that your customers get irritated and click off, then you're out of business...

Here's how we translated the Marketing Vision and Marketing Objectives of a major world-wide industrial manufacturer into their Technology of choice.