A website is going to give potential clients an opportunity to seek further information about your products and/or services. This means that the website gives you an opportunity to extend your sales message beyond a business card, advertisement or referral. You could run a terrific magazine ad that successfully directs loads of traffic to your site, but site visits are not sales. Your site must be a functional piece of your marketing.
We’re all consumers and we all feel overloaded with options and advertisements. When we’re out shopping for something we haven’t tried before we go into "scam-alert" mode… constantly on the lookout for anything that doesn't look up to par. Either steer clear of the internet entirely and give your company the hometown feel, or get yourself a killer website that helps sell your products/services. And, by all means, don't launch an ugly, half-functional website just to have a web address on your business card. It won't help you. It will hurt you.
Will a good website make my business flourish? No, not by itself. Even the best website is still a storefront without windows. People must come looking for something in the store to ever make it inside. There are no passers-by on the internet. Your business needs to be active off-site in order to draw visitors to the site. Some common methods include: regular newsletters through email and/or standard mail, passing out business cards every chance you get, word of mouth between other people, traditional advertising like newspapers and magazines, and online advertising. Some of these methods will work better than others depending on your business and a good web development company can help steer you in the right direction.
How do you know how successful the different methods of advertising are at driving traffic to your site and, ultimately, at making sales (not always a direct correlation between the two). It is the industry standard to have detailed tracking of all activity on your website. This will give you all the data you could ever need. When you send out a newsletter, for example, you can see who on your email list opened the email, who clicked on some link bringing them back to your site, and what they did (made a purchase?) when they came to the site. The same level of detailed tracking applies to all the methods of advertising your business that you can think of. Remember, this level of detailed feedback on the success of your advertising efforts is industry standard. You must have it.