Word has it that the Internet levels the playing field so small business owners have a chance out there. Your site is just as accessible as General Electric's, or Volvo's, or The Gap's. So many hapless business owners have raced to stake their claim on the Web. They buy a program that creates HTML pages. Then they wait.
Traffic goes up.
The ISP proudly tells them that their hits are up. But the cash registers aren't ringing. Must be the lack of online ordering and purchasing. So they evaluate a number of e-commerce options. They invest in a database and more software.