Good question! Let us give you several answers:
- Always available - It's accessible 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year. It covers all time zones.
- World-wide - As in World Wide Web. You may not want to deal with the entire world, but many businesses commonly deal across borders. You can reach customers you never would have access to otherwise.
- Cost Effective - Compared to advertising in Yellow Pages, newspapers, TV and radio, there is no comparison. An effective Web site will pay for itself quickly - you can't get better advertising anywhere else!
- Interactive - With e-mail and on-line forms, your customers can communicate with you whenever they want.
Why Do I Need An Efficient Web Site?
Complaints while Web-browsing:
- Slow loading Web pages - users will leave a slow-loading page
- Confusing navigation - users will give up on a site if they cannot easily navigate its pages
- Too Many Images/Too much information - "Busy" sites are irritating to serious shoppers
- Pop-Up Windows - Continually distract people from their original focus
- Irritating advertisements - a good site does not need extra income from unsightly ads.
Factoids:
- On-line sales are increasing exponentially
- More people than ever are shopping on-line
- Millions of people make Web-influenced purchases every year
- Increased security for on-line transactions have boosted consumer confidence in on-line shopping
- Growth to 40 million Web sites in the past 10 years
- Estimated 580 million users - 10% of the world's population
- Over 1 billion people will be on-line by the end of this year (2005)
- Google, the most popular search engine, indexes over 2.5 billion Web pages
