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The Upside of 62% of Small Businesses Not Having a Website

Author: Ray Gulick; Published: Jun 8, 2009; Category: Business, Marketing, Search/SEO; Tags: Local Search, Marketing, SEO; 4 Comments

A couple of days ago, I posted my reaction to an article I read that said 62% of small businesses do not have a website, which astounded me. But there’s a big upside in that statistic. You might think I’m talking about the upside for me, owner of a web development company, but I’m talking about the upside for you, the small business owner. Whether yours is one the businesses that already has a website or not, that statistic represents a “sweet” opportunity you can take advantage of.

First, you need to understand that more than 70% of consumers have adopted the web as a place for finding information before they buy (and sometimes as a means of purchase: e.g., Amazon). A great deal of that information gathering results in a local purchase from a local business found online. In support of this trend, Google has made recent changes that enable people to find local providers of goods and services more easily. If you want customers, you want to be where 70% of them are looking (radio ads, newspaper ads, and even Yellow Pages ads do not draw that percentage).

Second, of the 38% of small businesses that do have a website, fewer than one-fourth have websites that are effective in terms of drawing search traffic or giving web visitors reasons to become customers. This is for a variety of reasons, but from observation, I believe it’s mostly because typical small business websites are static, non-interactive, and haven’t been updated since the day they were launched. We call those set-it-and-forget-it websites. A few years ago, they were of some value, if for no other reason than to show your prospects that you were “with it.” But things have changed and that’s no longer enough.

That means fewer than 10% of small business websites are of any value whatsoever in attracting new customers. Which means that, if you create an “effective” web presence, you’re in better position to take advantage of search traffic than 90% of your competitors, and that opportunity is open to you if you already have a website that isn’t effective, or if you’re one of the 62% that doesn’t have a website at all.

The thing about the web is, it’s a constantly changing environment. What worked 5 years ago is hopelessly outdated. What works today will be outdated 5 years from now. That might seem discouraging, but only if you decide to let it discourage you. There are some things to learn in order to use it effectively as a marketing tool, but as my wrestling coach used to say, “It ain’t rocket surgery.” Once you get into it, you will find it all within your capabilities, and you’ll be able to keep up as things evolve.

Let your competitors keep their assumptions that it’s too hard (not knowing makes everything seem hard), or too expensive (certainly not compared to that Yellow Pages ad!), or ineffective (and it is ineffective, if your website is the set-it-and-forget-it variety). As long as they think that way, your opportunity is intact (and as long as you think that way, so is theirs). But as a business person, I’m sure you know some action is required to turn opportunity into reality. (Our phone number, BTW, is on our contact page. I’m just sayin’…)

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4 Responses to “The Upside of 62% of Small Businesses Not Having a Website”

1. Ray Gulick says:

   September 2, 2009 at 12:07 am

   Coby – I’ve found it very difficult to sell my services to businesses that don’t already have a website. It’s more productive to spend time talking with people who already have one, but recognize the need for greater return. And there are lots of websites out there that aren’t doing much for the businesses they represent. so it’s a good-sized market.
2. Coby Helse says:

   August 30, 2009 at 2:49 pm

   Great article (I found it via Dzone’s RSS feed, in case you were wondering). The folks you described as being from the “I don’t need a website” camp pretty much describes my clientele over the past year, for some strange reason. I feel like I’m always having to justify to these clients why it’s so important to NOT just “set it and forget it” with the websites I do for them. All too often I hear, “well, we just need some kind of web presence to start with…in 5 years, we’ll think about making some ‘upgrades’.” And what they end up with is a poorly-written (they do their own content, for the most part), in-no-way-interactive-or-compelling, bland, boring website that nobody would spend more than 5 seconds looking at before they decide to go elsewhere. However, as long as these folks think their site “looks good” (to them and them only), has enough boilerplate, unengaging copy, and simply fills the void left by not having a website, they’re simply happy with themselves. What’s worse is that I feel as though I haven’t done my job, even though my tireless pleas for them to just take things a bit further are mostly ignored. Isn’t it weird how, for no reason, you’ll suddenly get hit all at once with clients like this? I can’t wait for this year to be over!
3. Ray Gulick says:

   June 22, 2009 at 8:33 am

   Stuart – “one-fourth have websites that are effective in terms of drawing search traffic or giving web visitors reasons to become customers”. That’s my observation, rather than a stat. And actually, I think granting 25% the status of “effective” is probably too generous, but it made the math easier. Your 17% of vendors with websites is another eye-opener. I suspect the numbers would get really interesting if we could break them down by type of business and industry.
4. Stuart Lander says:

   June 22, 2009 at 8:26 am

   Ray – great post. I totally understand how astounded you are. To back-up your research even more, we have 2,200 government certified vendors on PublicSpend today and only 17% of them have websites. I can hardly believe that but it’s an absolute fact. Granted that many of the types of businesses on my site are service rather than product based but still quite an extraordinary fact. I also agree that way too many of those small businesses that do have sites are “set-it-and-forget-it” but I wondered where your one-fourth stat comes from. Do you have research to back that up?