I got an e-mail today from a man who has been thinking about starting a business online, but thinks that he may have missed the boat. His reasoning was that all the good ideas have gone and all the best domain names likewise.

That simply isn’t the case.

It may seem like the internet has been around forever, but Google has only been around ten years and eBay is only a year older. And neither became the households names they are today overnight. The fact is the worldwide web is still in its infancy, opportunities abound and there is still so much to play for.

Every day more people hook up to the internet and more importantly for the likes of you and me every day more people dip their toe into buying online.

Paypal Europe estimates that the number of people in the UK who buy online will rocket from ten million today to 25 million by 2010. By then 6% of all shopping will be done online - worth some £18.5 billion pounds a year.

Here’s some growth areas to look out for. Sales of electrical goods are likely to rise by 136%. Food and grocery sales will be up 235% - and are likely to account for almost a third of online sales by 2010. DIY goods will be up 172% and the sale of clothes and footwear will rise 160% over the same period.

Affiliate opportunities abound in the above fields. Start building a site today that targets a niche of the above and who knows what kind of business you will be doing in 2010. By then you may well be THE number one choice for those 25 million buyers when it comes to your speciality.
Driving this growth will be the availability of broadband. By 2010, it is estimated that two thirds of homes in the UK will be wired for broadband. Which means faster page loading and a better shopping experience all in for customers.

Up until last year, I was still using a dial-up internet service and noticed a huge difference in how quickly web pages loaded when I finally made the switch to broadband. Sites that previously took an age and a day to load were now appearing instantly.

That’s something that sticks in my mind and I still design all of my web pages with dial-up users in mind. It amazes me how many e-commerce sites have been created in design studios without any thought to how visitors will actually interact with the pages that they have designed.

If a site is slow to load you end up going elsewhere. If a site requires a plug-in that you don’t have just to view it chances are you will go elsewhere too. And if you have to view an all-singing all-dancing presentation just to enter a site and you’re on a dial-up connection, you will definitely go elsewhere.

So I keep things plain and simple. I use images to brighten up pages, but almost always in moderation. I never use Flash or the like. That way I don’t alienate the 50% of potential customers who aren’t using broadband to view my sites.

It’s certainly not too late to consider creating an online business.

And that last sentence will be as true in 2010 as it is today so you don’t have to build Rome in a day to claim your slice of the internet cake. So come on in. The water’s lovely!