This paper offers a multi-trajectory framework of ebusiness readiness, and assesses the e-business readiness of selected, comparable German and American companies based on an analysis of their corporate websites. Armed with our framework, we identify the different e-business strategies, or what we call e-business trajectories, theoretically available to the firm and analyze which one it has chosen to pursue in what way and to which degree. We propose a model of e-business strategy and apply it to websites of comparable American and German firms.