Most people now realise that it is important for most businesses to have a website. Just in case there were some of you that didn't I created this infographic. What a lot of people don't realise is what is important when it comes to web design (including a lot of web designers it turns out) however that is a topic for another day.

Another thing people often don't realise is just having a website is akin to buying a shop in the middle of a deserted area. You aren't going to get much out of the Internet unless you promote your website. But I digress.

Here is the infographic:

Feel free to embed this infographic using the code below:

<a href="http://www.sensibleinternet.com/blogs/tom/why-you-need-website"><img src="/sites/default/files/web-design.png" alt="Web Design Infographic" />Infographic</a> by Sensible Internet - <a href="http://www.sensibleinternet.com">Lancaster web design</a>

I also thought I should probably go through the stats, talk about them a little, and attribute the sources. So here goes:

As of 31st December 2011 almost 1/3 of the world population access the Internet. (source)

More than 3/4 of the total U.S. population will be online in 2012. (source)

I'm sure I don't really have to point out that this is massive. The potential market you can put yourself in front of online is huge, and we aren't bound by location.

There are over 400,000 searches on google every minute with a geo-targeted term (source)

In one day on the Internet 2 million blog posts are written (enough posts to fill TIME magazine for 770 million years) (source)

Once again, 770 million years worth of content from TIME magazine is pretty significant. Theres a lot of people talking and they could be talking about your business. Also you could be getting your share of the traffic from those 400,000 searches if you approach the situation correctly, and those are just the searches with geo-targetted terms!

64% of smartphone owners are using their mobile devices to shop online (source)

Mobiles are becoming incredibly important when it comes to how people use the internet as demonstrated by this statistic. At sensible internet we use responsive design techniques to make sure the websites we design display correctly across a range of devices.

When asked to choose between never watching television or never accessing the internet again 49% of respondants chose to eliminate TV whereas just over 48% chose to eliminate the Internet (source)

I would expect the amount of people 'choosing to keep the internet' to significantly increase over the coming years. In fact you can clearly see some transition towards broadcasting television via the Internet (4od, Hulu, Netflix etc.).

78% of Internet users conduct product research online and 57% of businesses have acquired a customer through their company blog. (source)

Although I don't see the below points as being requirements in all cases, I would expect the percentages to be lower if businesses were paying their websites the attention they deserve: