If, on the other hand, you want to grow your business you may find a web site is the most cost effective way to do it from the standpoints of cash, energy and time expended. Over the last several years a number of very prominent, independent groups including the Gallup Organization, Harris Interactive, Verizon and the Pew Internet and American Life Project have uncovered some astonishing facts about today's online consumers.

     The gist of all their findings is that there is no better marketing vehicle available at comparable pricing! As a group, people surfing the World Wide Web have significantly higher incomes, with more disposable cash, and are better educated that the population as a whole. By its very nature a web site is more closely targeted towards those with the means to buy your product or services than an ad in the newspaper or a phone directory.

     What the studies discovered about small businesses that had already invested in a web site was even more astonishing. Almost 2/3 of the companies with web sites that were polled stated that their web sites had provided at least a 100% return on investment. No other money spent in any fashion can make such a claim. Very few marketing methods pay for themselves as rapidly or completely as the investment in a professionally designed and maintained web site.

     On average, companies with web sites reported a 23% annual growth in sales as a result of going on line with an entry into the World Wide Web! How much growth have you experienced over the last few years? "Could you keep up with the increased demand?" may be a more important question than "Should you build a web site?"

     The population that web marketing reaches (more affluent and better educated) is not the only reason these results are being experienced by small businesses going online with a web site. The dynamics of the marketing exercise in itself offers a better prospect of success than typical print or other media advertising.

     When the affluent, educated web surfer reaches your site they are already pre-disposed towards your product or service. After all that's why they got there in the first place! The typical web surfer spends five to fifteen minutes looking at any given site. In that time your well-designed, professionally built web site can make a fully balanced sales presentation that would be impossible with a print ad or cost six figures as a radio or tv infomercial!

     While still immersed in your marketing material, a well designed, professionally built site will provide your new prospect with an exceptionally non-threatening method of making that vital first contact with you - the business owner. In the comfort of their own home, a simple button click makes them a potential new customer.

     While you were reading this, weighing the costs and considering other options, one of your competitors has contracted a professional web design company so they too could profit from the twenty-first century market. By the end of 2000 fully 37% of small businesses reported having a web site. That was a 6% growth over 1999. The percentage of small businesses successfully having entered the cyber marketplace with a web site has steadily increased by 3 - 5 % per year.

     In today's competitive economy the increasingly sophisticated consumer is "letting their mouse pads do the walking" before making a buying decision. It only makes sense to target one's marketing at a population skewed towards higher income and more disposable dollars.