Online, your website is your business' clothes.

Would you show up to a business meeting with a client or investor in a t-shirt and sweat pants? Maybe, if it were representative of your company. But if you're selling anything besides sweat pants and t-shirts, it's important that your image represents the professionalism and quality of your products or services. Online, your website is your business' clothes.

You're losing business without one.

If you have ever gone on vacation, you have probably experienced browsing through dozens of hotels. Did you book an immediate reservation at the hotel with no photos posted and no information listed? It's more likely you chose the hotel with a professional image, price rates listed, photos of rooms, and detailed information about what they have to offer. These hotel listings are much like your business and its direct competition. If your competition has everything online that your potential customer needs to make a decision to purchase, and you have no website in comparison, it makes the customer's decision easy to avoid your business.

It's the foundation to all your online marketing and a stronghold to your direct marketing.

Do you promote your business with direct marketing like flyers, print ads, or postcards? Do you occasionally hand out a business card? Or do you market online? Either way, you'll point that potential customer somewhere for further information and persuasion if you're not closing the sale at that exact moment. This is where your website comes in - it says as much about your company as any advertisement can, and can be accessed anywhere there is Internet, at any time. You'll even soon realize that you won't have to find as many customers - they'll find you.

Customers expect it.

With the exponential growth of technology and use of the Internet, a website for a business is expected. Not having a company website now is like a business not having a phone 20 years ago or e-mail 15 years ago. It provides your potential customer better customer service by answering questions and accepting contacts, even when your office is closed. Provide potential clients with further information, invoices and useful forms, links to helpful resources, and contact forms to get in touch with you when you're out of reach.

It takes a customer less than 5 seconds to decide to stay or leave your website.

Customers will either give you their business or they won't. If they have no past experience with your company, and come across your website, that's solely what they will base their decision on. If your site does not woo them in the first 5 seconds, it's likely they will leave and never return. In the long run, an unprofessional website can lose many potential customers - much more monetarily than the one initial cost of a website. Our company, for example, made a key decision in February 2010 to re-design our entire website. Since then, we have experienced a 300% increase in the number of clients filling out a contact form. Just a couple images changes at one point nearly doubled our number of contacts. This investment was paid off within a month by the increase in business. Think of what having your entire website remodeled could do for your business.

So what's the next step for your business.

There are many customers currently looking for your service as you read this. Each day you wait, you lose several interested potential customers. Whether you don't have a website, or your current website lacks professionalism, it's time to take the step to prevent further missed opportunities and revenue. Either invest your own time to design a website or hire a professional web design company. Since you're taking the time and making the investment, make sure it's designed correctly. Whatever your budget or schedule, remember this is an investment that will last the life of your business.