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Publishers push ''Phase Three'' Web sites; Magazine sites revamp packaging in response to online users'' reading and research habits.

Article Excerpt
In Phase One of the Internet's development, b-to-b publishers ambled online, merely transferring magazine content to a companion Web site. In Phase Two, many publishers joined the supposed online gold rush by sinking money into developing e-commerce Web sites, most of which have been abandoned. Now, in Phase Three, some b-to-b publishers are viewing the Web's potential with a clearer eye.

In industries ranging from technology to agriculture to construction, they're creating Web sites that focus on silos of carefully organized information. Ultimately, these sites fall somewhere between recapitulations of print publications and grand e-commerce portals.

Industry observers say that some of the best b-to-b Web sites developed by traditional publishing companies include Hanley-Wood's ebuild, Successful Farming magazine's Agriculture.com and CMP Media's TechWeb.

These leading Phase Three Web sites were not designed as online magazines. Instead, they were developed for the way business people are actually using the Internet today.

``They're not surfing the Web; they're searching the Web,'' observed Amy Sklar, managing director of CMP's TechWeb, describing how business people use the Internet. The best b-to-b Web sites are offering innovative ways for marketers to reach this audience through a variety of targeted methods, including microsites, keyword searches and white papers.

Media strategists agree that business people garner information from magazines differently than they digest data from the Web....