The United States  had 3.6 trillion  dollars in retail sales in 2008. Internet Retail  sales went up in October.  They went down in November by 1.8%.  Regardless the number of online retail  sales over the Internet in  November was about 8.3 billion dollars. It's  expected that online  retail sales in the last two months of 2008 will increase  by %12. Search  engine optimization helped  Internet sales on December 1st increase by over 40% compared to last  year.  
If  Internet sales are increasing then  people are buying goods from  websites. And if people are buying goods  from a website then it could  be your website that they are buying it  from. That's billions of e-commerce and that's real money. 
Maybe  you don't have a website. Still,  about $400 billion dollars of retail  sales are affected by what people  read on the Web. Even if you don't  have a website your sales can be  affected by what is on the Web.   
Maybe  you don't have a website. It's common  sense that even if your business  is not on the web it's not doomed to  fail. That's right. It's not  doomed to fail. It's only not succeeding  as much as it could be.  
Everyone  wants their business to be  successful. People are still going to be  using the Web regardless of  your company’s web presence.  
And the Web influences  over  $400 billion of retail sales. That's offline real world hard sale  numbers.  With the millions of potential customers searching the web  some of them  are going to be looking for your product or service. And  if you don't  have a website up then how are they going to learn about  your product?  What is going to make them want to go to your company  when they want  to do business and they can't find your website? A  competitor’s website?!  I don't think so.   
If  your company is going to be on the  web then it needs a website. Think  of it as a 24 hour business card  on the global network that people are  going to look at. That's where  professional web design is important.  However there is more then web design in making a successful website. There's also search engine optimization. Search  engine optimization  has  been around since about 1996-97 and is now more then ever  necessary to  help your website be found by potential customers.  
