For any business looking to grow, E-Commerce represents one of today's single greatest opportunities to target new customers and increase sales. Selling your products or services online is like having a shop that's open 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, all year round. And the best part of that always-open shop is that there's no rent or utilities to pay for, no additional fixtures to buy, you don't even need to staff it (unless things get really busy!)

Clearly this is good news because until recently, the only means a business had of selling to customers in regional, national or even international markets was to set up an expensive mail order operation or open additional locations.

E-Commerce is an ideal solution since it allows you to reach all potential customers for your product or service while also automating much of the sales process.

Another trend in online business is a new phenomenon called pretailing, which Garter says, "consists of the multi-channel shopping activities consumers do before they even visit a retailer's Web site or local store. Pretailing will increase in importance as consumers get access to more retail information and services on the Internet." (Source: Gartner Group, 28 February 2007)

And if you don't think that eCommerce is important enough to the global economy, according to the PriceWaterhouseCoopers' Global Entertainment and Media Outlook 2006-2010, online advertising spend predictions will reach $26 billion by the year 2010.