Why Your Business Needs a Website

Websites work. No matter what your business or profession, a website can generate business, promote goodwill among customers and prospects, and deliver strong marketing messages - whether your business is small, large or in-between, well-established or brand-new. People use the Web in greater and greater numbers, more and more every day. Even if you are a completely local small business, service, contractor or consultant, odds are people have used search engines to look for your web site - and if you don't have a web site... well, you get the picture. Your business Web page delivers that picture to your customers and prospects, and does it 24/7/365. Perhaps the most common misconception about business websites is that they must offer products for purchase, accept credit cards and process financial transactions, and so on. Nothing could be farther from the truth. While ecommerce websites are increasingly popular, the vast majority of business websites are still information and communication rather than purchase-oriented. If your business offers products and services appropriate for retail sale over the Internet, then by all means you should consider an ecommerce website. But if, like most businesses, your products and services aren't intended for Internet sales, you still need a Web page of your own. And you can get one quickly and economically. The first thing you will need is a Web hosting service - that's the address of your business Web page, and the company that actually stores your business's website on its computers and makes it available to Web users. Many Web hosting companies offer both domain and hosting services.