Just 15% of Small Businesses Are Putting Money Toward E-mail Marketing
Gathering data from various resources, Formstack recently shared a visual report titled, “How Small Businesses Are Engaging in E-commerce,” which showed that less than half of small businesses have a website.
In the third quarter of 2010, e-commerce retail sales reached $41.5 billion, up 13.7 percent from the $36.5 billion made in the third quarter of 2009. Nevertheless, small businesses seem to be slow to catch on to this trend.
Pointing to a recent survey from Discover Credit Cards, Formstack highlights that just 45 percent of small businesses had a website in 2009. The main reason why small-business owners didn’t feel the need to have a website or participate in e-commerce was that they didn’t feel the need for one, a response that had 41 percent of respondents’ backing. This was followed by cost with 19 percent of the response, lack of time with 16 percent, complexity with 9 percent, a sentiment that their business would never need a website with 4 percent, and other reasons with 10 percent. One percent wasn’t sure why they didn’t have website.
Formstack also points out that 13 percent of small businesses intend on setting up a website for their business.
Of small businesses that have websites, just 30 percent have e-commerce functionality. Meanwhile, 45 percent have customer service functionality, 15 percent are able to take reservations/appointments, 35 percent are able to catch leads and 13 percent have a blog to post to. Eighty percent of small businesses that have a website offer “general information.”
The report also showed that 17 percent of small businesses plan on increasing their budgets for their website, 15 percent plan on putting more money toward e-mail marketing and 13 percent plan on boosting their budgets for social media marketing.
Not surprisingly, the larger the annual revenue for a small business, the more likely it was to participate in e-commerce activities. This may also explain why many small businesses are more willing to dip their feet into social media marketing than to spend money on websites.
According to a report from BIA/Kelsey and ConStat, 29 percent of small and medium-sized businesses used print Yellow Pages in the fourth quarter of 2010, while 19 percent used Twitter. Back in the third quarter of 2009, just 9 percent of SMBs used Twitter.
Forty-eight percent of SMBs used Facebook in the fourth quarter of 2010, while a quarter used some other social network.
The report also found that 35 percent of SMBs had increased their use of links/ads on social sites and blogs within the previous 12 months, while 46 percent planned to do so in the next 12 months.
Sources:</strong
http://www.formstack.com/How-Small-Businesses-are-Engaging-in-E-Commerce
