Q: My business may be very small, simply me and two employees, and our product definitely can’t be bought on line. Do I really need a website?
— Robin C.

A: Congratulations, Robin, you’re the only millionth individual to invite me that question. Smile for the cameras, brush the streamers and confetti out of your hair and pay attention intently, due to the fact I’m about to reply for the millionth time what has come to be one of the most critical and regularly-asked questions of the virtual business age.

Before I answer, however, allow’s flash lower back to the very first time I become asked this question. It become circa 1998, all through the toddler years of the Internet, simply after Al Gore laid declare to having given birth to the concept a few short years before.

I became giving a speech on the effect of the Internet on small commercial enterprise at an association luncheon in Montgomery, Alabama. My motto then became: Feed me and I will talk. I even have the equal motto nowadays, however I now count on dessert to be protected in trade for the sharing of my substantial wisdom.

In 1998, which turned into a long time ago in Internet years, the future of digital commerce or "ecommerce" because it’s become regarded, was all of us’s bet, but even the most bad futurists agreed that every one the symptoms indicated that a huge portion of future business revenues could be derived from on-line transactions, or from offline transactions that had been the end result of on line advertising and marketing efforts.

So, Robin, should your commercial enterprise have a website, even in case your commercial enterprise is small and sells services or products that you do not suppose can be bought on line? My solution in 1998 is the same as my solution nowadays: Yes, if you have a enterprise, you should have a internet site. Period. No question. Without a doubt. Thank you, force via.

Now serving customer quantity one million and one…

Also, don’t be so quick to disregard your product as one that cannot be offered online. Nowadays there may be very little that cannot be sold over the Internet. More than 20 million buyers at the moment are on-line, buying everything from books to computers to automobiles to actual estate to jet airplanes to herbal gasoline to you name it. If you could imagine it, a person will discern out how to sell it on line.

Internet advertising and marketing studies corporations expect that on-line revenues will variety among $a hundred and eighty and $200 billion bucks in 2003. They additionally are expecting that the number of online consumers will grow at a fee of 30-50% over the next few years. These numbers by myself must be enough to convince you that your enterprise need to have a internet site.

Let me clarify one point: I am no longer saying which you should put all your efforts into selling your wares over the Internet, even though in case your product lends itself to smooth on-line income, you sincerely should be considering it.

The point to be made right here is which you ought to not less than have a presence on the World Wide Web in order that clients, potential employees, enterprise companions, and perhaps even buyers can fast and easily find out greater about your commercial enterprise and the products or services you have to provide.

That said, it is now not enough which you simply have a internet site. You ought to have a professional looking internet site if you need to be taken critically. Since many customers now search for statistics on line prior to making a buy at a brick and mortar keep, your website may be the first chance you’ve got at making a good impact on a potential consumer. If your website looks like it become designed by a barrel of colorblind monkeys, your danger at making a very good first affect may be misplaced.

One of the brilliant things about the Internet is that it has leveled the gambling subject when it comes to competing with the big boys. As stated, you have one shot at making an awesome first affect and with a properly-designed internet site, your little operation can venture the image and professionalism of a miles large employer. The inverse is likewise genuine. I’ve visible many massive business enterprise websites that had been so badly designed and hard to navigate that they absolutely lacked professionalism and credibility. Good for you, too bad for them.

You additionally mention that yours is a small operation, but on the subject of making the most of a internet site, length does no longer depend. I don’t care in case you are a one-man display or a 10 thousand employee company massive; if you do now not have a internet site you are losing enterprise to different businesses that do. Here’s the exception to my rule: It’s genuinely higher to don’t have any website in any respect than to have one that makes your commercial enterprise appearance bad.

Your website speaks volumes about your business. It either says, "Hey, appearance, we take our commercial enterprise so significantly that we’ve created this extremely good internet site for our customers!" or it says, "Hey, appearance, I let my ten-year vintage nephew layout my web page! Good good fortune locating some thing!"

What does your website say about your business?

Here’s to your achievement.