Whether we like it or not, the internet has become a very major part of life and business. The majority of people nowadays are more likely to go to the internet to find a business, person or information than they are to phone books or other sources.

So the plain and simple of it is that if you have a product or service to offer the public, then you need a website. Even if it's just a simple one - but you do need to have a presence online.

Now there are ways to make yourself more visible online, and I'll touch on some of those in a later module, but even a simple website is better than nothing.

Having a website also signals to others that you are in touch with where business is at these days, that you understand that the internet is important.

Once you realize that you need a website, one of the first questions I would ask myself, is ... What do I want this website to do for me and/or my business?

I suppose another way of putting that is ... what is the purpose of this website?

Websites are a wonderful tool, but they are not the be-all and end-all of marketing, and they certainly aren't a magic one-stop solution to all your marketing problems. They need to be part of a full marketing package.

So one of the first things you need to think through is what you want a website to do for you.

Okay - so what can a website do? Here are some of the more common uses.

• As an online brochure - a way of telling the world about your product or service.
• It could also be used as a teaching tool, a way of educating your prospects and customers about your product or service. One common way to do that is to include articles on your website.
• Websites can be used to build lists of prospective customers.
• They can be used to sell products or services.

If you are an artist, for example, you would want your website to highlight your artwork. So yours would more likely be a fairly graphics-rich website. You might also have artwork for sale, so you could set up a website to sell one-of-a-kind or original pieces, or you could set it up to sell prints, cards or whatever you have multiples of.

If you are a business, then obviously you would want to highlight your product or service. So you might need to think through whether your product or service is something that everybody already knows about, or whether it is something unique enough that you may need the website to educate people about what you have.