1. Be Open For Business 24 Hours A Day

Your business is open to the world 24 hours a day, 7 days a week with no labor costs to watch out for and a website faces no time zone barriers.

2. Reach New Markets With a Global Audience

The Internet is the most cost effective way to trade nationally and internationally. A website will broaden your base of customers, members, distributors or suppliers. You can generate more and more clients for your business without doing additional marketing or having to endure additional marketing costs. Today, more and more customers are making purchases through the Internet. Why should you limit your business to your immediate locale when the whole world may be your potential market? Thanks to the Internet, it is as easy to sell halfway across the world as it is to sell across the street.

3. Marketing Hot Spot For The Global Economy

The Internet has become the marketing hot spot for the global economy. Many business leaders are realizing that their organizations will thrive in this global internet economy who will grasp its importance before their competitors do. A well-designed website is not only an internet identity for your organization, it is an essential part of the success and future of your company this new information age.

4. Present a Professional and Credible Image

Your organization must make the leap into the new marketing realm if it is to be perceived as professional in today's marketplace. Today, customers, employees, and suppliers expect to be able to find and communicate with a business online. It is very much like having to be listed in the yellow pages in the past, if you do not have a listing, potential customers will not be able to find you and have confidence in your business over your competition. Businesses that do not have a Web presence are making a statement about their inability to embrace technology and adapt to change in today's growing technical environment. For a small business, a well-designed website is a great way of creating credibility and looking bigger than you actually are. You can look like one of the big corporations at a very small cost. When one compares the cost of establishing a website to what it costs to promote a business in any other traditional media (newspaper, radio, television), it is evident that a website is the cheapest form of marketing ever created for the audience and value it brings to your business.

5. Improved Customer Service

You can provide 24 hour customer service without hiring any additional employees. Your customers are better served when they can access information about your products or services immediately via your website rather than waiting for a mailed brochure or a return telephone call. In today's fast-paced market, how quickly and conveniently customers can access the information or purchase the product is frequently the factor that determines who will win the sale. Providing answers to frequently asked questions on your website. fulfilling information requests that are processed immediately via online forms and autoresponders are all valuable tools to satisfy new customers whether someone is in the office or not.

6. Save Money on Printing and Distribution Costs

A website is your online brochure or catalog that can be changed or updated at anytime at a much cheaper and faster rate than print material. It saves you money on printing and distribution costs.

7. Automation, Productivity, and Profitability

Through Internet automation you can increase productivity and profitability. Automating your sale process can reduce costs for advertising, sales personnel, and other support staff. A website increases your company's productivity because less time is spent explaining product or service details to customers since such information would be available 24 hours a day on your website at your customers chosen time not yours. A website saves costs by allowing users the flexibility to download invoices, business proposals and other important documents. Your website can also allow the customers, employees, and suppliers to have their email address added to your mailing list. Sending an email to your entire email list can be done at virtually no cost.

8. Sell Your Products and Services Online

Selling through your website is much cheaper and a great way to supplement your offline business. Providing secure online ordering is very affordable today. That explains why the online commerce has surpassed $188 billion in 2004.

9. Stability

You may move your place of business, change your phone number, alter business hours but your website address never changes and your website is always open.

10. Great Recruiting Tool

You can post job opportunities with your company on your website plus provide company information for all of your employees.

About the Author

Chris Maley is the CEO of All Pro Web Designs. They help small to medium size businesses achieve success online through cheap hosting and design costs yet free valuable insight into how and why you should start a business online. More information