So how do you see it? The on-line equivalent of one of those eighth-of-a-page display ads which appear near the back of magazines? A headline, a few words of text, a special, perhaps a splash of color and a phone number? Are you hoping a reader will spot your ad as she finishes an article which concludes near the back of the issue and give you a call? Maybe she'll miss your ad altogether. Web site as small display ad.

If you're a Fortune 500 company maybe you'll have a large, splashy, Shockwaved Web site, on-line equivalent of a one- or two-page spread near the front of the magazine. Striking image, catchy phrase, company logo, and no telephone number. Web site as large display ad.

But the Web can be more than a glorified billboard if you can grasp a new concept, make a paradigm shift (to employ a well-worn but still current expression). Many businesses are coming to see their Web site as a new locus for doing business, a branch office in cyberspace.

There was a time when people went out to a fast food restaurant, sat down at red plastic-topped tables, and ate their fries and burgers on colorful paper placemats. Then some hare-brained restaurant owner invented the drive-through window. My local Burger King manager tells me that nearly 50% of their food now goes out of the store through that window. I can hear the old fogies sputter "It's undignified!". Undignified or not, times are changing, people are busy, and they'd rather not cook, but neither do they want to dress up. Since they've outfitted their restaurants with drive-through windows, Burger King is reaching people who were never customers before, or retaining people who would otherwise go elsewhere. Half their business!

Try looking at your Web site as a drive-through window, a locus where you can do business with people as easily in New Orleans as in Bismarck.

What will have to change? Maybe your contracts will be in HTML rather than on watermarked paper. Maybe you'll need to supplement your cash register with shopping cart software. Maybe you'll develop a whole new way to relate to customers, stay in touch, provide product support, and let them know you care about their needs.

Put yourself in your prospective customer's place. What will she need? What will make him feel more comfortable? How can you design your system so ordering food through a two-way speaker becomes the way some people prefer to get dinner?

Paradigm shift? Yes. The scary unknown? You bet! But business people who refuse to be scared off will learn how to do business on the Internet. Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but soon, and for the rest of their lives. And those of us who have the most to offer, who learn how to communicate effectively via this brand new medium, will have built national and international businesses two or three years down the road.

The stakes are high. Last week one of my clients called me: "Ralph, how can we translate our Web site into Chinese?" Times are changing. Today, I can buy egg rolls to go. Soon, who knows, maybe the Golden Dragon will offer a drive-through window on the Internet.