HD is a Vortal

Let's get VERTICAL...

Vortals (Vertical portals) are luring traffic away from the major portals. And it's causing quite a stir.

The attention of businesses and even Venture Capitalists has changed. Soon, everyone will want one.

Businesses that today offer content, products, and services through the portal giants (Yahoo, AOL, etc.) are looking for alternative sites that are more relevant to their customers' interests.

One of the Red Herring's top ten trends for 1999 is that "vertical portals take over."

Yes, this new strategy has allowed the owners of vortals to take control of their vertical markets. Examples include WebMD.Com, Travelocity.Com, BidCom.Com and Garden.Com. The list is growing larger by the hour as Webmasters work busily to shift focus.

As a VORTAL, HD undoubtedly has huge potential as an alternative site for virtually every product and service aimed at residential households.

Think about it for a minute. Our site is bringing interested customers in to build their dream homes inside our site. Along the way, they are going to be making choices about hundreds if not thousands of items ending up under their roof.

: What does Vertical Market mean?

: A household is a vertical market. On average, anywhere from 30,000 to 250,000 products go into households. Not only building materials, but furnishings, fashions, decor, appliances, toys and other belongings.

: If there's a Vertical Market, then there must also be a Horizontal Market, right?

: Precisely! Being able to continually meet needs in a given area for a number of years, is a horizontal market. Lightbulbs, carpeting, food and just about everything else that is consumed and repurchased are all examples of horizontal markets.

: What word can be created from Vertical and Horizontal?

: Hee hee hee ha ha ha... We'll have to think about that one for a while. We'd have a good chance to take household industries away from all of the portals then wouldn't we? Some people seem to think so.

: What's going to happen to portals then?

: Companies such as Epicentric who specialize in portal infrastructure software are going after Corporate Intranets. That's a great place for the portal concept. It will give companies a great opportunity to serve their employees across any IT platform. This is one example of how large PC application packages will be replaced by Web Browsers.