Prof Mark here,
I’ve been accused of being “opinionated” on the topic of E-commerce/website use for businesses by more than one person in my life, and try as they might to convince me otherwise, I pretty much remain the same on this issue. I believe in today’s world it is imperative and even detrimental to “not have” a web/social media site. In this two part article, I’m going to discuss my “reasons” on why I believe that even if your target market is strictly local, your small business can’t afford not to have a web site while fleshing out some examples of what this practically could mean in terms of business.
I’ll start with a few statistics for examples: From a study done in 2003, there were about 12 million households in Canada, and of those 12million, about 8 million had regular access to the internet from work, home and/or school. Around 60% of these total households had a computer and internet access at home. Within these homes that had internet, almost 90% were cited to be using it for web browsing; but more importantly for our discussion- 34% used the internet for purchasing goods and services. And of this 34% that were purchasing goods, the estimated e-commerce sales for that year totaled over $7.2 billion dollars.
These statics are almost unimaginable! Keep in mind also that these statistics are a little over 10years old too. I can only guess as to how they have grown since this study!
These numbers alone could probably convince many people to invest in a small business web site, particularly if they’re in an industry where their target market isn’t restricted to a purely local one. But many people push back with arguments such as: “I have a local business so I don’t need to advertise; I advertise better myself; the internet is more trouble than it’s worth, etc…” To these arguments I say, “What worked for your business in the past may been great, but as with most things in life the only constant variable is ‘change’.”
What I mean by this is that while some methods in the past may have been tried and true, or the business principles behind them are solid, different times require different mediums to attract your business audience.
In part two of this next article, we’ll discuss some practical ways the small business owner can implement website advertising/marketing and some of the overwhelming benefits of it.
Till next time,
Blessings