The internet - what a load of rubbish, is it? maybe not, don't know.

According to an article on the BBC news website here only half of UK small businesses have a website. That's an astonishing number of either 'refusniks' or 'can't be bothered'.

As an example, my parents, who run a number of holiday houses have had a website for about the last 2-3 years. As you may/may not know holidays are where Britons spend the most of their online cash. To improve their reach, they've signed up for various sites that actively promote the sort of holidays they offer. They've also signed up for a Google Adwords account (well, actually I did it for them). They spend a few quid each month and probably get a few enquiries as a result - I'm yet to get them on to Joomla and get Joomlastats up and running so we can close the loop on this, and then see proper ROI - it's on the cards.

On Busgoons I spend quite a lot of time analysing where people come from, using Joomlastats - the amazing thing is how linear the cause and effect is within the traffic stats - post on a site, with a link in your signature and people come calling. Post a link in a post and generally even more people come calling!

The key take-away message from the BBC article is that you can't expect to just slap up a website and sit back and wait for business to roll in - you've got to work hard at promoting it to make it work (just like people have always had to in business). This means creating a search engine friendly website, doing stuff like Google Adwords, creating gated entry points for valuable content like whitepapers, so you can gather visitor (marketing) information and so on.

A lot of the issues with websites is that they're created by enthusiastic developers, who generate a beautiful looking site, that isn't as focused on the business aspects of the site. A close friend has recently set up a business to deliver business-focused SME sites and is having a lot of success, simply because he focuses on providing solid business-focus and ROI.

With this sort of business accumen the internet can and does work - it changes from 'brochures on a shelf' to people on internet street corners shouting about your business and handing out virtual flyers all over the place and however annoying that may be - it works.