As old as 2003 but guess the article still makes sense

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Maybe you own an established business, or maybe you own a “new” business, or starting a business for yourself. If you belong to any of the groups this question may or may not have crossed your mind, “Do I need a web site for my business?”

Web sites, are they necessary?
This article seeks to help you make that decision. Notice that I didn’t say this article seeks to answer that question for you. If you own a business or are thinking of starting a business, you’re an intelligent individual, perfectly capable of making that decision for yourself. I’ll just present you with some information, objections and opinion and let you draw your own conclusion.

First, let’s look at a couple of the most common reasons business owners think they may not need a web site. These are real objections from business owners with whom I have spoken concerning a web site for their business. For your business’ sake, I certainly hope not, but maybe you think the same thing:

One, we don’t have a computer and don’t have Internet access at my business. So we don’t need a web site. Please don’t take offence, but a web site is not for you to sit in your office and look at thinking, “this site is beautiful”.

A web site is for your customers or potential customers to learn about you, your business and what products and/or services you provide. It’s an opportunity for you to inform your customers, bring in new customers and most importantly an opportunity for you to increase your business’ bottom line. After all, making money is your business bottom line and that is why you are in business and nothing more.

Second, we’ve been in business for many years and have never advertised. We’ve always depended on “word of mouth”. Well, I hail you very seriously. If you can say this and I only hope your good fortune continues. But let’s face facts. We live in a rapidly changing world. Competition is getting hotter and hotter by the day. There is also population explosion with influx of people from rural to urban areas in their hundreds on daily basis. Due to an ever-growing increase in population, population moves from one end of the country to the other, at any given time, for a multitude of reasons.

While word of mouth has always been, and I’m sure will always be the best form of advertising, how about the families that just moved into your neighborhood and haven’t made any friends yet but they have Internet access. They don’t have the resource that people that have lived there for 30 years do. Isn’t that a missed opportunity?

Third, Nigeria is not yet ripe for that kind of thing. Each time I sought to know exactly what Nigeria isn’t yet ripe for I meet a blank wall. This is sad because in every street cyber cafes are springing up. We all make use of the Internet either to send and receive emails, browse for information or as is becoming common with secondary school students watch nude girls on the Net much to the indifference of the cyber café owners who depend on such regular customers to survive.

Outside Nigeria, the main benefit of Internet apart for education is business: e-commerce. Countries look at the Internet as it relates to their citizens in terms of money generated and employment opportunities created. Billions of dollars are made on online shopping and there is more than enough millions of naira to be made even as I am writing this. I am not talking about business opportunities here because business opportunities remain what they are called, opportunities. It won’t make you rich. Only one person will be making money on business opportunities and that person is the very person selling the opportunity to you and is indeed happy that you do not understand how the Internet works. You may begin to see why education is important here.

Four, I have also met honest business owners who would admit they would very much like to get websites for their businesses but don’t know how to go about it. Unfortunately again, some that have risked going online have had sad stories to tell. For some reasons, their web sites won’t come up even after paying the web designer. Some web designers will register a domain name and stop there probably having problems with opening an account with a good hosting company outside Nigeria. This has happened to some established businesses in Nigeria that list their website addresses on advertisement even when such web sites are not functional. And the result, you see a web site address, you type the address and you are told that such web site don’t exist. The beginning of another sad experience and who knows, word of mouth condemnation this time around is even the more powerful businesses nursing the idea of getting web sites retrace their steps.

You’ve read the objections and opinions. Here’s the information:

Firstly, all over the world generally speaking, established companies have web sites and I believe that means one thing; owning web sites is a plus and beneficial otherwise they won’t bother. The good news and the blunt truth is that small and medium scale businesses stands a better chance of making money through their web sites when compared to the big companies.

Secondly, have your ever bothered to estimate the cost of running your business 24 hours a day, 7 days a week in terms of electricity bills, extra staff, over time salaries, security concerns, among others? Attempt to do that estimate and compare it with having a web site. A web site actually opens your whole business to the public 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Whether you want to see directly or not is another topic altogether that requires it’s own critical analysis for us to understand the issues at stake.

Thirdly, I have saved time, energy and money simply by having a website. How? You may ask. At least 80% of calls and emails I receive actually seek for information that are already on website and all I do is give out the website address to go check out the answers to most of the questions they may have. Without having a website you can imagine the time, the energy and money that will be wasted trying to repeat the same thing to so many people everyday.

Fourthly, according to the US Department of Commerce, Internet traffic doubles every 100 days. In the year 2000, there were approximately 102 million Internet users in the US alone. Today, 70% of America is on the Internet. In 1994 the entire Internet economy was $5 billion, in 1998 that same figure was $301 billion, and Forrester Research predicted that that figure would be $3.1 trillion by 2003.Well 2003 is almost over, and the latest statistics available at the time of writing show this to be a reasonable expectation. 65% of people in America (maybe less than 1% in Nigeria) that are on the Internet make their buying decisions online… there are more people that access the Internet when they’re looking to buy products and services than there are that pick up the yellow pages to search for addresses. This means that internet users these days don’t just go to check for business addresses, they actually hope to see business websites where they can actually buy what they need sometimes from the comfort of their homes, offices and cyber cafes after the day’s activities.

You might be thinking; this last point that referenced US statistics don’t really relate to us but to the US. Well, since we have refused to take the leading role let us at least not lag behind indefinitely for the sake of pride. For example, Nigerians are busy buying used and outdated laptops (some current and very useful and basic software programs can’t even run on them) when the current trend is getting wireless enabled laptops that you can use even in your car or in any coffee shop and be connected to the internet without any wires, just your wireless enabled laptop.

Now, I ask you, does your business need a web site?

There are many qualified web designers that are quite capable of developing a cost effective, appealing and functional web site for your business. You can find them on the pages of newspapers advertising their skills or you can look for some of them on the web. Some web designers actually design business websites and deliver them to you even before you deliver a single naira. Good luck with your business!