Nearly half of small businesses do not have a website

It's 2010, most small businesses do not have a presence on the Internet,
and even those that have, aren't putting enough time and effort into making
online marketing work for them. Such are the results of a
Webvisible/Nielsen Online survey.

by Helen Leggatt

While sat at my desk the other day, I remembered I had to make an
appointment to take my dog for a check up at our small, rural veterinarian
clinic. Without wanting to rummage around for the Yellow Pages, I decided
to look up the vet's opening hours and contact information online, using
Google.

The search engine returned nothing. The vet clinic had no website and, it
seemed, had not registered with online directories. New research from a
joint Nielsen Online and Webvisible survey in the U.S. found that this is
not unusual, reports Marketing Charts. According to their data, 44% of
small businesses don't have a website despite many people, like me, turning
to search engines first for local small business information.

Furthermore, while the majority of small business owners use the Internet
as consumers to search for local services and products, they rarely
implement them in their own marketing plans. In fact, 82% of consumers and
small businesses use search engines first to find information online,
compared with 52% who turn to Yellow Pages online.

When you consider the apparent lack of financial and physical effort being
made by small businesses to build an online presence, it's no wonder they
can't be found by consumers. According to Webvisible's survey, 78% of small
businesses with websites divert 10% or less of their marketing budgets to
Internet projects and 61% spend less than three hours a week marketing
their website. Surely there aren't still people out there of the 'build it
and they will come' ilk?

However, it's not all gloom and doom. There are signs that small
businesses are slowly warming to the world wide web. Over the past two
years, 43% of small businesses say they have increased the use of search
engines in their marketing efforts. Perhaps as a consequence, their use of
some traditional media is declining with 23% of small businesses saying
they use Yellow Pages less and 42% using local newspapers less.

Many small business owners don’t have a web site because they think it
will cost them big bucks to create. They mistakenly believe that they need
to hire a “professional” to get their business on-line. This is a myth.

It is NOT necessary to spend hundreds or thousands of dollars to have a
web designer create a web site and marketing campaign to get your business
on-line.

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