When you get right down to it the fusion of the web and business is a bold lesson in abstract thought.

Think about your grandparents and the work they did. Their job could have been on the farm, in the factory, in a store or in the work of their hands.

If your grandparents were business owners most of their customers were met face to face. Customers may have gone to church with your grandparents or attended high school sports events and concerts. They knew each other and that made marketing much less taxing and far more trusting.

Advertising was often in the form of an print ad in a school program or a booster club for the airing of the local high school football games. The advertising wasn’t always essential to the success they had in their business, it was often used as a way to support the local reputation associated with their business.

Your grandparents knew the other business owners in town and often worked together to keep the local spirit of a town alive.

As larger retail businesses began to paint the landscape these small businesses (like your grandparents) often died when no one was really paying any attention. The vast number of empty storefronts in rural America pay tribute to the radical change in the 21st century retail market.

Why has online business created the need for abstract thinking?

Internet stores are composed of graphics and text… Not friends and family. These shopping carts are developed with software and not brick, mortar, glass and wood. These online businesses can operate 24 hours a day including holidays and the owner does not have to be present for a customer to make a purchase.

The business owner cannot see the site’s visitors or customers, they can simply track the number of visitors and some analytical data.

It is this uncommon sense of intangibility that may makes online stores seem more like some elaborate computer game and far less like traditional business.

In order for some businesses to move in to the Internet marketplace there was a need to hire younger more computer savvy employees who were schooled with an insatiable appetite to learn and utilize the skills associated with online marketing and business.

Early on many business owners did not believe the web was even worth their while and ecommerce was never going to be successful. Many of those business owners sat back as time passed, the Internet grew and online sales improved, equaled and then surpassed what the business had previously been able to do with a local brick and mortar shop.

Many brave businessmen were early pioneers in ecommerce, and while they may not have understood everything there was to know about ecommerce, the results were crystal clear – ecommerce was a force much more powerful than they would have ever thought and was the road to continued success and the future of business. Many business owners who could not break out of their brick and mortar box have since had to sell that brick and mortar business.

As time passes more and more online business owners have accepted their new role as Internet marketer, dream maker and web design professional. They have grown accustom to this brave new world where faces are not associated with the sale, where customers probably aren’t your neighbor down the street and where the online store doors are always open.

Online business defies the notion of a simple local marketplace by tapping into something more global and more deliverable. Many small shops around the world have become staging areas for a worldwide customer base. Niche products once lost in a sea of big retail shops can now be the primary thrust of a successful online company instead of just one of many diversified products one might have found in an old general store.

Online business has challenged our way of thinking and changed the way the world does business.