As I see it, there are three main types of Internet sites. Most sites are some combination of the three, but there is usually a dominant characteristic.

The first type of site is for conducting actual business. Companies that can immediately deliver or mail out their goods can take full advantage of this technology. Want to order a pizza, buy a book or sell some stock? The Internet is a fast, convenient way to do it. With secure credit card transactions making things safe, many companies exist entirely within the confines of cyberspace.

The focus of the second type of site is to disseminate information. You might not be able to sell your products on the Net but you can sure tell everyone about them. Almost every site provides information of some form or another. Most of them don’t even have anything to do with commerce at all. However, an electronic brochure with interactive multi-media effects can be very impressive when compared to its paper counterpart. This also has the potential to save money if enough customers view the on-line brochure instead of requesting the paper one. Changes can be made without reprinting and a lot more information can be made available.

The third type of site primarily delivers entertainment. Games, trivia and contests are all a big part of why many people spend time on the Internet. A site that I personally maintain, called Legends of Sport, was created for my own enjoyment and for others to enjoy for free. It was designed so that visitors would come back again and again to see what had changed. With no advertising, the site was able to draw close to 10,000 visitors in its first year. The power of giving something for free is evident. Many popular sites like Tune Mania, Sports Extra and Cosmo’s Conundrum offer games and prizes for free and actually generate income from advertisements shown to their visitors.

Click "CoolSmile" to visit the site.	So what type of site is right for an orthodontic practice? Well, unless someone figures out how to take impressions over the modem, it certainly isn’t going to be a transaction oriented business site. How about providing information about the practice and braces in general? The fact is this is what 99% of all orthodontic sites do. The problem is that this is all they do. Most orthodontic sites do a great job of providing information about the doctor, staff, braces and treatment, but who reads it? Do the patients? They might visit once to see the site, but do they really care about where the doctor went to school or how many articles he or she has written? Any other information they need is just a phone call away. Do potential patients visit the site? Not this type of site. People don’t generally surf the Net for an orthodontist. Orthodontics is still a referral-based business. So how do you get potential patients to visit? How do you increase referrals? You’ve got to have a little fun. An orthodontic site needs to be a combination of information and fun to be effective. Games, contests and other fun things that are constantly changing to provide ongoing interest for patients and their friends is the key. " I want to go to Johnny’s orthodontist because I can win prizes on his Internet site", is the cry we want to hear.

How do you go about getting a site that can deliver this powerful combination? Just like anything else, you can do it yourself or pay someone else to do it for you. Most doctors have better things to do with their free time than to learn how to create web sites. That leaves someone else. To create a purely informational site would not be that expensive. It rarely needs to be changed so ongoing expenses are also low. However, to add the extra element of constantly changing fun requires a lot more time and expertise to set up. The ongoing costs for prizes and development would, in most cases, be prohibitive. So what is the answer? I have developed a system that looks like an individual web site for an orthodontist. It has games, links, contests and other interesting features. What makes it affordable to the individual doctor is that all the fun features, contests, prizes and games are shared. You still have your custom pages about the doctor and the office, but all the fun pages, which require the bulk of development time, are shared amongst all the orthodontists on the system. This way each doctor gets what looks like a really cool web site to their patients at a fraction of what it would cost to have it done just for them.

You can check out a demo of this site at www.coolsmile.com

George Bodiroga is the developer and owner of "COOLSMILE"