Your website is GLOBAL. With a website you can interact and reach more clients, buyers, suppliers and partners locally and internationally.  This gives you a globalize mode of product / service exposure and a useful vehicle to generate revenues.

Before you decide to have a website for your business though, you need to have a clear idea of what you want to achieve. The first step is to review your business processes and help you decide what aspects could benefit from an internet presence. Here are a few examples of how a well thought out website can be a valuable asset:

1. Routine queries / extensive details

A website is a good vehicle for providing information about products and services that is routinely requested.  After the initial investment in setting up a website, a large amount of information can be continuously available on-line at minimal cost - and with no further effort required by you.  Compare this with a brochure or catalogue, with the costs of printing and mailing - and what to do with those out-of-date brochures which get left over.  A website can effectively compliment a brochure, and it may be practical to reduce the size of a brochure or extend it's currency by putting detailed or time critical information on the website.

2. Specialist goods and services

If your business provides specialist goods and services then your customers / clients are likely to be spread over a wide geographic area.  Since a website is generally accessible from anywhere with internet services, it can be a good way to ensure potential clients are properly informed about what you have to offer.

3. Changing information

Websites are ideal places to publicise information that changes frequently.  Some examples:

• Performing artists can have an up-to-date tour schedule for their fans  
• Catalogues with stock and prices that are prone to change.
• Ongoing projects development status.

                                                           
4. Cost-effective advertising

A website can enable you to put small adverts in prestigious places which would have previously been too expensive (eg. specialist journals, the Sunday press, ..).   Something as minimal as a catchy slogan with your web address can lead a large number of potential customers to a site.  Alternatively, a larger advert can be supplemented by comprehensive details on your website - eg. advertising employment opportunities.

5. Indexing / searching

Websites can provide powerful indexing and searching tools with which printed material cannot compete.  For example, customers can search products by keyword or price, books by author (if you're a bookseller), or retail outlet by geographic area.
When considering what features to have on your website it's a good idea to look at what your competitors are doing.  Do they have a website?  What have they got on it?  Can you improve on what they have and tailor it to your strengths?