This is the question you need to ask yourself before doing anything else.  Having an E-Business is like having a shop and a sales person that’s open for business 24/7.

 It’s potentially the most cost effective way of advertising and selling your products and services. You can use a simple single page web site with a sales telephone number and e-mail address or you can use a more elaborate multi page website with shopping baskets and online payment facilities. Of course whichever type you go for has it’s own cost and maintenance implications.

What is a web Site?

A website is a portal through which the whole world can see what you are offering. Websites generally fall into two groups, the Information Provider and the Direct Sales.

• The Information Provider sites simply offer various facts about products or services which may have associated contact phone numbers e-mails addresses etc.. A search engine is also an Information Provider, just look at Google. They started as an information service to find the Direct Sales Sites described below and now look at it, worth millions. These websites make money from advertising and sponsorship.

• Direct Sales websites are intended to be the main focal point of selling your products. People want a simple and fast way to look at your goods, get as much information about them as possible, find out how much it costs and how to order it. These are a few of the key reasons for having a website.

First the bad news

Don’t expect to get rich quick with a traditional web site, despite what you read, see or hear about. This only happens by accident. However, milliondollarhomepage.com, is a rare if not unique example of a get rich quick scheme that actually worked. This young English student made over $1.37 million dollars in less than 5 months. But believe me this is not the norm. It takes time to build up popularity. You have to ‘Get Noticed’ on the Internet to sell anything. They say if you're not listed in Google then you don’t exist or you got banned for trying too hard.

Now the good news

If your web site is set up properly and what they call “Search Engine Friendly” you stand a good chance of getting a good start, remember what I said earlier about getting noticed.

This will not necessarily mean that getting noticed will increase your sales figures. There are too many other things to mention that affect sales performance that I could possibly fit into this brief. There is oodles of information sites out there which you can learn from.

There is lots of help and guidance to be found here at sol22 if you spend some time exploring sol22.com. First place to start for more detailed help and information maybe our e-Library.