The Online Money Making Storefront: The "WebFront"

Up until the internet became what it is today, people were limited to the number of ways they could market and sell their products or services. Direct mail (junk mail), telemarketing, television, radio ads, newspaper and billboard ads and of course the brick and mortar store front were the methods of choice. Most of them required a great deal of effort, time, and of course money in order for them to be effective. Marketers would often have to do extensive research in order to make sure that their product would be reaching the right target market before investing their funds in advertising. Moreover, the costs per lead were very high and there was often very little one could do to avoid pay it. It was (and still is today) not uncommon for a traditional business who advertised mainly through billboards and local radio/television to incur thousands per month in advertising cost just to get the necessary exposure or (traffic) to see their name.

Over the last decade, the website has become the storefront of choice for many small businesses (hence the term ?web-front?. With a well-designed site, a catchy domain name, some space on a remote server and a much smaller budget, marketers can now be seen by hundreds of thousands of potential customers with nothing more than a few small ads and a well-targeted campaign.

According to a survey conducted by Netcraft, there were responses from over 64 million websites in June of 05. Furthermore, the US Department of Commerce reports online retail sales in the 3rd quarter of 06? to be about $27.5 billion, an increase of almost 21% from the same quarter in 05?. Of course, along with the emerging e-commerce comes more and more competition for web-marketers. Simply put, this means that more creativity in web-design and advertising strategies will be required in order to remain competitive.