Online business or business online

How do you do business? Do you operate offline? What is the objective of your web site? If you do business purely online, perhaps a home based business or affiliate scheme then hits are probably everything to you. However if like me you make your bread and butter primarily offline then focusing on hits and becoming obsessive could destroy you like it nearly did me. Think for a minute, what am I offering here? am I doing everything I can to make the most of this Virtual Customer in my Virtual shop? Lose your focus, stop paying attention to the things that matter and it could seriously impact on your business, you could become the "here" today "gone" tomorrow DOTCOM that your constantly reading about. For a moment lets focus on the third point, what is the objective of your web site? If for example you manage a main stream engineering brand you may have decided to publish a web site to promote awareness of your latest offering or if the manager of a small bistro that decide to promote his "specials"menu, every time they changed the menu they leafleted everyone in the village to look online at their new menu and sent submitted a press release to www.24/7pressrelease.com . The point being that in both cases they are very much dependant on business offline and the objective of the web site is only consumer Awareness. They will not go bust if they the visitor to their web site doesn't buy anything or come in the shop. Let me tell you about a bathroom fitter that spent