According to Great Business the total sales in the UK that come from websites are worth £164 billion.
However there are around 2 million sole traders and small companies that are missing out on this, because they do not have a website.
Having your own website is very affordable, and easy to set up and manage thanks to content management systems that let anyone update the site.
One other benefit of having your own web address is that you can also set up an email account as well – so rather than just a free website address, this enables customers to see your web address from your email.
However, one thing to be aware of when having a website is to ensure that you respond to enquiries – a few years ago I contacted 1500 local businesses through their websites as part of a project, but many did not reply or had out of date contact information. One person even contacted me from overseas saying that he had shut his business years ago… but had not thought to keep his site updated, or to close it.