Not long time ago, I read a comment of a well-known industry observer, where he stated that companies that are not selling through Internet by 2007 will probably become extinct. As dramatic as it might feel, although exaggerated, but there are some truths in it.

Consider this: Although diminishing due to bad economy, average growth of e-commerce is around 25 % per year. 81% of small businesses that have an online presence during last year’s holiday season reached new customers, leading to an increase in sales and profitability according to a survey conducted by Harris Interactive. Thirty percent of small businesses with a web presence and fewer than 20 employees now generate more than 25% of their revenue online claims Gartner research.

If this does not convince you to take your business online, below I pointed out 10 more reasons why you should start doing business online right now.

1. New economy Internet has created a new economy, which by its explosive growth and sheer size already changed our perception of traditional way of doing business. Companies like Amazon and Ebay have successfully created domination on areas, where just few years ago traditional brick-and-mortar companies were kings. However, in order to be successful on net, you don’t have to be a giant like them. Many small and mid-size companies managed to build online businesses quite profitably. In fact, studies show small and mid-size companies will be main growth force of e-commerce in coming years.

2. Internet is a perfect venue for business In order to make a sale you need visitors to come to your shop. On Internet, your shop could be only a click away from your prospective customers. With proper marketing your Internet storefront can have more buyers than you ever can get in a brick and mortar shop. 3. Company’s image Whether you sell products or services online or not, in today’s world you have to have a corporate presence on Internet. Otherwise, as you must have noticed that people simply don’t take your business seriously if you tell them that your company does not have a website. A nice corporate site definitely increases image of a company especially if it has great product or service related content to go with.

4. Provide better customer support

Customer accusation and retention is one of key factors of business value chain. Thanks to Internet technology, business can provide customer support more effectively. This means better customer satisfaction and increase of profitability.

Many companies after spending a substantial amount of money on development of their websites assume that once website is published on Internet, people will flock onto it and, therefore, do not take website promotion as seriously as development part of it. Today, with millions of websites around, no matter how great your website is, if you don’t promote it effectively, you will not get visibility that your site deserves.

Effective promotion of a website starts with submission of site to various search tools available on Internet. There are two different types of search tools – search engines and directories. Search engines index their listings based on information retrieved by their spiders that crawl through Internet following links constantly looking for new websites. The directory listings are compiled by human editors from URLs submitted to directory. If your website is listed in directories you can be sure that spiders of different search engines sooner or later will index your site. That’s why you should start submitting your website first from search directories.

Search Directories

Among all search directories available on Internet, Yahoo! and DMOZ are most important ones.

Open Directory Project or DMOZ

DMOZ is second largest human compiled search directory on Internet after Yahoo! Open Directory Project is a huge web directory of Internet resources. All submission to directory is evaluated by volunteer editors. There is no fee to be paid to get an inclusion in directory. As a human edited directory it might take more than a month to get your site evaluated. Once you are listed in DMOZ, within two weeks to two months your website will start appearing on search engines like AOL Search, Teoma, HotBot, Google, Lycos, AllTheWeb, Excite, Go2Net and a number of regional search engines. At present around 354 different search engines and portals use data from Open Directory Project. This is one of main reasons why you must consider submitting your website to DMOZ.

Submitting your site to directories is a bit trickier then submitting to search engines.

Following rules are common for almost all directories:

* Check to see if your website is already in directory * Write an objective description of your website * Search out specific subcategory from directory hierarchy * Follow rules of submission as specified

Make sure you follow these rules while adding your website in DMOZ. This will improve your chance to get your website accepted and reduce processing time. Yahoo!

Yahoo! is by far number one destination for Internet surfers. Although search results for Yahoo! is provided by Google, many people still prefer to browse through Yahoo! directory to find whatever they are looking for. This makes an inclusion to Yahoo! directory quite valuable for ecommerce sites. Yahoo! presently charges yearly fee of US $299 for each web site submitted. The fee is nonrefundable, which means if for some reasons Yahoo! declines to add your website in its directory you will not get your money back! The only thing Yahoo! guarantees is that editors will look at your submission within seven days and send you an answer.

Should you consider submitting your site to Yahoo!? It all depends on kind of business you are in. Some sites receive an overwhelming number of traffic from Yahoo!, others hardly receive anybody. My suggestion: list your website in Yahoo! directory for a year and see outcome. If you feel comfortable with result you are receiving – continue. If result is not satisfactory you can always cancel their service after one year. LookSmart

Although it is third largest directory on Internet as a search portal LookSmart is not that popular. However, it provides directory listings to MSN search, About.com, Infospace, Inktomi and others. It is probably still best way to get high ranking in MSN search. LookSmart is a fee based service. You pay US $49 submission fee for site review by their editors and 15 Cents for each click through. Pay per click minimum monthly payment is US $15.