The main reason your business needs the web is to interact with potential customers. As more and more people get connected, they will expect your business to be connected as well.
They will want to know when you are open, what hotels and transport are nearby, what you charge, what cultural events you offer, and what you sell. They will expect to have a rich variety of interactions with you over the Internet.
The percentage of adult Americans online is at 63 percent, says a new study from the Pew Internet & American Life Project. That percentage is expected eventually to rise, but not as quickly as the boom years from 1995 (14%) to 2000 (46%).
Lee Rainie – director of the Pew project, stated, “the Internet is eventually going to become as important and universal a technology as telephones and televisions are now.”
Ninety-four percent of American homes today have telephones; 98 percent have TVs. “The Internet is eventually going to get to that level,” he predicts, “but it’s going to take at least 10 years – or maybe even 15 or 20.”
(full report available at www.pewinternet.org).
Soon an Internet connection will be seen as being just as essential to business as a telephone connection.
It’s essential not only for communication, but is an essential tool for doing business – banking, making sales, selling tickets, as a marketing and promotional tool, and as a way of generating new business and expanding audiences for your products.
Benefits when You Get Your Business Online
- Text and graphics are displayed on a screen in a format that you are familiar with in magazines.
- Add sounds and movies to make it a potent and creative ‘publishing’ medium.
- Links on Web sites enable you to find other Web sites using nothing more than a mouse click. A link can be text, a graphic or a button.
- A Web site can act as a gateway to other software, allowing very powerful interactions. For example, it can be associated with a database which either displays or collects information.
- You can fill out forms on a Web site. Such things as shopping, reservations and banking are made possible by Web forms.
With so many advantages over traditional media, the Web is rapidly becoming indispensable to your business.
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