You don’t need to be a big multi-national enterprise to profit from having a website. A company website can be beneficial to any business, no matter how small. Even a business that doesn’t sell online can find that an internet presence can boost their business.

Let’s take the hypothetical example of a small picket fence manufacturer who does business within a limited range. Our business owner, Stan, manufactures picket fences in a small factory and delivers and installs them only in suburbs that lie within a fifty mile radius of his factory. Stan was on the road almost every day chasing leads and was becoming increasingly frustrated because only about a quarter of his leads turned into sales.

He was talking it over with his employees one day and one of them offered to make a website for him. Stan agreed. The employee got his digital camera and make a kind of online scrapbook album that included photos of the factory, the manufacturing process and a collection of photos of completed work. There was nothing fancy about it, but it worked!

When people called Stan to inquire about his fences, he encouraged them to look at his website first and if they liked what they saw, he went out to their homes and spoke to them in person. As a result, Stan got a far higher percentage of sales from his initial home visits. He didn’t make more sales, but he was able to use his time more efficiently and profited from that.

Impressed with what the little website his employee made for him could do, Stan asked him what else they could do to make the site work even better. The employee suggested that they contact other local businesses who had websites and do link exchanges with them.

The first one to agree was a small home decor accents business that was located in their suburb. Stan made a prominent link to their site on his and they reciprocated. This simple link exchange resulted in a significant number of leads. Stan’s website had cost him only the hours that it took for his employee to make the site and a few dollars a month for a hosting service, but it was now increasing his profits by more than ten percent.

Stan was thrilled with that, but it just got better. He found a housing developer who was doing a new property launch for a nearly completed project that had over a hundred new homes. Everyone who went to the developers website saw a link to ‘Stan’s Picket Fences.’ When they purchased their home, many of them wanted to add a fence and Stan was the first business they thought of.

Thanks to an internet savvy employee and a small website, Stan’s business has doubled in size. That’s the power of the internet, even for the smallest business!

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