Fact 1: Americans conducted 19.9 billion total core search queries in November. Google Sites ranked first with 13.1 billion searches.-comScore Releases November 2011 U.S. Search Engine
Fact 2: 85% of qualified Internet traffic is driven through search engines, however 75% of search engine users never scroll past the first page of results.
Fact 3: 78% of U.S. adults believe it is very important to look up information about people
A website will give you exposure to potential customers. It is really just another form of advertising. A lot of people think that they have to set up complicated shopping sites in order to have a website. This is not the case at all. There are a lot of people that use the Internet as a form of Yellow Pages. They are simply looking for business that they can turn to for a product or service. They will then call or visit the places they see listed on Google. It really is as simple as that.
If you do want to set up a website that is more sophisticated and take orders online, it really isn't hard to get something like this set up. A company can do it for you and then give you step-by-step instructions to follow on how to use the site to fulfill orders. If you're not tech savvy you can always hire somebody to help you with the website part of your business. The important thing is to get a website onto the Internet as quickly as possible to increase your bottom dollar.
Yes, there are a lot of people in the city that have thrown out their Yellow Pages because they are simply not used anymore like they used to be. Likewise, a lot of companies are not advertising in telephone books as they did before because they are finding that the value simply isn't there anymore.
People aren't just using their computers to shop anymore either. A lot of your potential customers are using their cell phones to find businesses in their local area. If you don't have a website you are missing out. It is easy to go shopping on a cell phone and more and more people are changing their shopping habits around and using their cell phones to find a business.
The Internet has become a new form of advertising that people are using on a daily basis. If you aren't targeting this audience you can be sure that your competitors are. They are the ones that will also receive repeat business from the customers they get on the Internet.
It wasn't too long ago that having a website wasn't all that important. Nowadays it is critical to the advancement of your business. People are going online to search for businesses in their local areas and if you aren't showing up with your own website they may never find you.