There’s been a lot of talk in the last year or two about small businesses increasingly preferring to use social media, sometimes rather than even having a website.
But a recent Verisign-sponsored survey (PDF download) pours some cold water on that idea, and shows that the vast majority of SMBs are still relying on a website as their primary online presence.
The survey canvassed small businesses (less than 50 employees) in six countries — China, France, Germany, India, Turkey, U.S. and the U.K. In each country, a website was the primary online presence, but adoption ranged widely from just 57 percent in India up to 83 percent in the U.K. and Germany. Here in the U.S., 78 percent of the SMBs that responded said a website is their primary web presence.
You could actually bump those numbers up a bit if you want to lump “e-commerce site” in with website.
This is good to see. I’ve argued in the past that a website is more important for SMBs than Facebook or Twitter, and I’ll probably keep arguing that point for a long time to come.
Also important these days is having a mobile presence, but the Verisign survey doesn’t have good news on that front: Only 21 percent of the SMBs surveyed said they have a mobile version of their website.
That’s similar to a recent AT&T survey that showed less than one-third of small business owners have a mobile-optimized website. You can read more about in a post I wrote for Local U: Small Businesses Use Mobile Devices, But Don’t Optimize For Them [Survey].
This is a post from Matt McGee's blog, Small Business Search Marketing.
Small Biz Owners Prefer Websites To Social Media, But Are Ignoring Mobile