Australian Businesses in 'Online Denial'

Australia, it's time to get real about the internet.

For years now we have put up with our smaller businesses trotting out the same old excuses for not improving their substandard web presence(s).

"Its just a fad", "We prefer personal service", "It doesn't work for us", "It's too expensive", "We're not really that tech savvy" and that old chestnut – "It's just another advertising ripoff".

If this sounds like you, let's cut the ribbon now. Because it's official. You are in online denial.

I'm sorry to go all Gordon Ramsay on you but polite encouragement doesn't seem to be working. Most smaller businesses still fail to provide a web presence that reflects the quality of their 'physical business'.

The fact is that unless a customer is walking directly into your door, the web is now the very first place that they will look to find out about your business

What's worse, there is a fundamental failure on the part of many of our business operators to grasp that the web is in fact an inherent and inseparable component of their physical business.

The fact is that unless a customer is walking directly into your door, the web is now the very first place that they will look to find out about your business, its product and your professionalism.

Let them down on any of these scores and they will simply click off to a competitor. Yet the web is so often seen as an insignificant afterthought.Let's draw some parallels between some common website disasters and their physical equivalents...

By Craig Reardon @ SmartCompany.com.au - Read the article

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