FW: Why websites matter, especially in Kenya

Today a friend of mine from college called me up. He was assembling a P.C for a friend of his and needed some help in determining which brands offered the best value and where he could get them at the best price. Seeing as I was someone who trolls through computer shops in his spare time ( I really need a life! ) he knew that I could probably help him.
Point was that I then proceeded to recite computer part prices over the phone and when his credit/minutes/airtime ran out, I proceeded to text him the required quotes.
In order to provide more detail, I scanned the available pricelists and emailed them to him.
The point that I'm trying to make here is that if those computer shops had working websites, my friend would have been able to pull those quotes of their sites without needing to in through a middle man ( me ). His decision would have been made quickly and the lucky shop would have gotten his business.
A website that is used in that manner ( an online brochure ) is relatively easy to set up and cheap to maintain and why our local *computer* shops lack them is just shocking especially considering that this shops spend money to design, print and dish out pricelists/brochures while very unwilling to spend a fraction of that getting online.
That was just one instance of a situation where a website does matter and it is probably a situation which is replicated a hundred times over throughout the country.

This blog post was typed up and submitted on a mobile phone *without* a qwerty keypad, touchscreen or 3g. Go mobile net!

Disclaimer: The author designs and hosts web sites for a living ( over at netivity.co.ke ) and may just have posted this to get more business.